EBA - Early Bronze Age (c.3500-2000 BC)

Mesopotamia
(=Iraq) - 3,500 BC

Sumer
Political system: Agriculture led to the creation of the first “city-states”, indipendent political systems which tended to endure as stable units. Then came the first cities Uruk (6 miles) where citizens were all undifferentiated fellow workers tightly grouped in an economic and spiritual unity. Finally they unified in a kingdom (3,100 BC)
Religion: Man did not yet recognize the distinctiveness of his own nature. There was a weak sense of human individuality and not a great interest in nature. In fact, Sumerian civilization had a very strong religious imprint: only in the confidence born of their common belief in divine support could these men have endured the hardships of life. Their gods were the forces of nature, but represented in human forms and manifested bad human behaviours. God-fearing mentality. “The world was the product of conscious divine action for divine purposes.”
Law: money payment
Social classes became differentiated; economic exploitation and social unrest inevitably followed; law developed both to regulate social and economic relationships and to prevent undue oppression; interstate warfare appeared (mostly for economic reasons among independent citi-states) and led to imperialism, which in turn produced military classes and burocratic systems to run the larger states born of conquest.
Depression of the tribal farmers into the position of peasants!

Akkadian Empire
(2350-2150)
Imperialism: Near Eastern imperialism starts with Sargon I (and even this early vengeance followed imperialism: the Guti ended the First Mesopotamian Empire).
Hurrian (2500-1300)
They lived in the northner part of Mesopotamia

Egypt
3,200 BC
Religion: Life was more secure than in Mesopotamia. Consequently, people were more confident, enjoyed life, and less fear of the Gods. The king was a god on earth. They had a complex concept of human soul and a view of the afterlife.
Political system: Menes unified the kingdom (3,100). The king governed all aspects of life with the aid of a simple central administration, directed by a vizier and largely composed of his relatives, then nomarchs conducted local administration for the king.
The old Kingdom ended in 2,200 BC as the local nomarch acquired more power and tended to become local lords.
Peasants became virtually serfs!

Elamite Empire
(Iran) 2,700-539 BC
Susa founded in 4,000 BC was the main city.
Social: Elamite strength was based on an ability to hold various areas together under a coordinated government that permitted the maximum interchange of the natural resources unique to each region. Traditionally, this was done through a federated governmental structure.
Religion: the Elamites practised idolatryandpolytheism.
Its culture played a crucial role in the Persian Empire, especially because the Elamite language remained in official use until the conquests of Alexander the Great.

Indus River valley
2,500 BC
Evolution and change were almost absent. People lived for the following centuries in a monotonous, complacent stage, repeating the ways of the ancestors.

China
The Hsia dynasty (2205-1766)

Norte Chico
(Peru) 3,200-1,800 BC
The Norte Chico chiefdoms were almost certainly theocratic.
There is no evidence of warfare of any kind or at any level during the Preceramic Period. A vital resource was present (arable land generally, and the cotton crop specifically) but the move to greater complexity was apparently not driven by the need for defence or warfare. It is still under debate the degree to which the flourishing of the Norte Chico was based on maritime food resources instead of intensive agriculture (always seen by historians as the essential in the emergence of complex society)

MBA - Middle Bronze Age (c.2000-1600 BC)

Amorite
(Hurrians) – 1,700 BC
1730 BC Mesopotamia is united under Babylonian rule.
Law: Codes of Law established by king Hammurapi (Babylon). “Eye for an eye”

Egypt
2,000 BC
Imperialism: The Middle Kingdom had a stronger emphasis on its military power.
Ethics: ethical requirements for a civilized life and their union with religious views was not reached in Egypt.
Political system: the king had lost some of its powers, and agin the Kingdom fell because of local independence.

Semites
(2000)
Tribes who infiltrated in the Fertile Crescent. Abraham is heading one of such groups (Hebrews).
Seminomadic people; organized in tribal groups around patriarchal families; impatient of tight social and political structure; don’t value private property and the measurement of life in material terms.

Minoan Civilization
(Creta) 2,000 BC
States did not have a warlike class and kings did not swallow up all disposable resources (virtually unique in second millennium). An individual view on politics, religion, and culture.

China
The Shang dynasty (1766-1122)

Maya
1800 BC
The first settlements. The Classic Period will go from 250-900 AC.
A typical Classic Maya polity was a small hierarchical state (ajawil) headed by a hereditary ruler.
Religion: the Maya believed in a cyclical nature of time. The rituals and ceremonies were very closely associated with celestial/terrestrial cycles which they observed and inscribed as separate calendars. The Maya practiced human sacrifice. The gods had affinities and aspects that caused them to merge with one another in ways that seem unbounded. The Maya believed that the universe was flat and square, but infinite in area. They also worshiped the circle, which symbolized perfection or the balancing of forces.

Hupa
(North American Indians) 2,000 BC
Hupa tradition suggests that they lived in the Hoopa Valley for over 4,000 years, but their language suggests that they are relatively recent immigrants from what is now western Canada.

LBA - Late Bronze Age (c.1600-1200 BC)

Mesopotamia
Lower– Kassites
Babylonia
Upper– Assyria
Ashur
Far North - Hurrians
kingdom of Mitanni (1500–1300 BC) the most powerful kingdom of the Near East

Syria
Arameans descend in this areas from Mesopotamia
City of Damascus (the site existed since 8000 BC).
Later (1500) Syria was controlled by Egypt, it subsequently went through two centuries when no power was able to gain complete control. And in 1,200 new waves of invasions were mounting.

Hebrews
They descend in Palestine from Mesopotamia. Then a portion of the descendants of Abraham go into Egypt and in 1,300 BC the Exodus (in reality quite unimportant in the eyes of Egyptian lords of the New Kingdom). Moses defines a much more definite and conscoius set of rules and beliefs that bound God and His worshipers in a voluntary union. At this early time, Yahweh was still a jelous god and “a man of war”, whose worship revolved arout the bloody sacrifice of beasts.
The term Hebrew (a member of an ethnic group) gave way to Israel (a nation of members of which were united with each other and with the one God who protected them).

Egypt
1500 BC
The New Kingdom
Political: Infiltrations of peoples from Palestine, a ruling class called the Hyksos (1,600). They were then expelled from Egypt back to Palestine (some scholars have associated the Semitic Hyksos with the ancient Hebrews, seeing their departure from Egypt as the story retold in the Exodus) and Egypt entered a path of continuing imperialism (mainly in Palestine and Syria).
Social: the pharaons were no longer able to concentrate in their hands that tight control which had been exercised in the Old Kingdom. The generals and the priests begun to gain an independent role [break between cult of Amen (worshiped by the priests) and cult of Aten (worshiped by the pharaohs)].
Decline of Egypt (1,300) when priests steadily expanded their sway and men’s care for their afterlife become steadily more a matter of desperate ritual and magic.

India
Came destruction by the Arians (Indo-European speakers). They were divided into classes (priests, warriors, and herders) and kept the earlier population as serves

Hittite Empire
(Asia Minor)
Altough they were in Asia Minor before 2,000BC and in 1,700 BC a kingdom was formed, the Hittite civilization covers the era 1600-1200. It was heavily influenced by Mesopotamian models. Religiously it was heavily affected by Hurrian influence. The realm felt to invasions shortly after 1,200BC.

Mycenaean Civilization
(Greece) 1,575 BC
Attemped to imitate the advanced political and economic systems of the Near East. The riches exploited native peasantry. They took and ruled Crete.
They felt to the invasions of the Dorians in 1200

Olmec
(MesoAmerica) 1200-400 BC
Religious activities were performed by a combination of rulers, full-time priests, andshamans. The rulers were probably the most important religious figures, with their links to the Olmec deities or supernaturals providing legitimacy for their rule. Speculation concerning infant sacrifice.
Created the concept of zero.

Men raised themselves to “civilized” levels largely by imitation of or assimilation by peoples who had already made the great step.
In 1,200 BC invasions took place and shocked great parts of the world. Aegean World, Asia Minor, and India slipped back to uncivilized levels.