Neolithic Revolution (~12,000 BC)

The Neolithic (New Stone) Revolution occurred about 10,000 years ago and dramatically changed the way that ear humans lived. Two important factors come out of the Neolithic Revolution: The development of agriculture and The domestication of animals.

These two changes allowed people to stay in one spot instead of wandering from place to place following their ma food source (animals). Somehow Neolithic people learned how to plant and raise crops and keep and raise livestoc for food. Now people were put in the situation of living together permanently and as a result much cooperation wa needed for survival and civilizations started to arise.

Characteristics of a Civilization

With the Neolithic Revolution civilizations now began popping up in unsurprising locations - river valleys. These riv valleys provided people with fertile soil due to their floods. These floods, combined with the new-found knowledge of farming and animal domestication, allowed for a stable food supply and so the Neolithic people settled down around these rivers. As these people lived together in one spot civilizations arose, which often shared theses common characteristics: Advanced technical skills - Sometime around 3000 BC, the Neolithic peoples around these river valleys learned how to make and use bronze tools and weapons. This in part allowed these peoples to construct permanent shelters and homes since they no longer were nomads, following their food source and looking for caves as shelter.

A form of government - The floods that helped to provide the fertile soil for survival also posed a problem. The floods were sometimes massive and could wipe out an entire village if uncontrolled and farmers needed to get water to their fields during the dry season. As a result an irrigation system (dikes and canals) was necessary to control these waters. The construction of these projects required organization and cooperation among the Neolithic people on a massive scaled. So governments probably developed to direct these projects and to provid rules by which to live.

A division of labor - As agricultural productivity increased, fewer people were needed to work in the fields producing food (much like the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century in England). These "extra" people who weren't needed to farm could then become artisans, or merchants or traders and production of all sorts was abl to increase thereby providing a better standard of living for all.

A calendar - Calendars were created out of the need to predict and know when the floods would arrive. Most of these early calendars were based on the cycle of the moon. A form of writing - Writing systems developed to keep records, put down rules, and to pass on complex instructions (maybe for irrigation) to future generations. For example the Egyptians developed a system of writing called hieroglyphics and the Sumerians developed cuneiform.

Civilization

Geographical Factors The Nile River provided predictable floods and a stable food source The River flows northward and empties into the Mediterranean but the winds blow south This enabled river travelers to move north or south along the river, which promoted trade and unity in Ancient Egypt Deserts and seas surround the valley and offered some protection from invasion

Accomplishments Hieroglyphics Wrote on sheets of dried papyrus plant Used geometry to survey fields and build canals as well as pyramids as tombs for the pharaoh Knew astronomy and produced a calendar of 365 days

Nile River Valley (present-day Egypt)

The initial formation of these civilizations is based on the movement of peoples into the river valleys and plains.

Geography The hills and mountains of the Greek peninsula are relatively rugged and thus made it difficult for the early peoples of Greece to travel overland. This geographical factor resulted in three important impacts on the lives of the Ancient Greeks: There was no common Greek empire, which united all Greek-speaking peoples. Instead separate city-states arose along the Peninsula. Also due to the rugged terrain there was relatively little cultural diffusion between the city-states of Greece. Each of these city-states had its own distinct form of government and culture. Athens and Sparta are two excellent examples of completely different cultures that developed along the Peninsula. In addition, the rugged terrain forced the Greeks to turn out to the sea for trade and food production, since the Greek land could mostly support the growing of olives and grazing of sheep. The Greeks were great sailors and fishermen. They traded with many other of the great civilizations in existence at this time, like Ancient Egypt, Scythia (part

of the former USSR), Mesopotamia, and Phoenicia.

Two City-States: Sparta & Athens Sparta Sparta's government was basically an oligarchy, which is a government controlled by a small group of people. In this case power was in the hands of a few aristocrats. Often times at meetings the group that was able to shout the loudest would be the ones who won a vote or had their policy accepted. The Spartan government was mostly concerned with ensuring that the city-state had a powerful military machine to protect itself from outside invasion and to conquer others. The government also forbade its citizen to travel abroad and did not often accept visitors. They feared that outside contact would weaken the discipline of the population. Athens Eventually the Athenian government developed into a direct democracy. In a direct democracy all citizens vote on major issues instead of electing representatives to do it for them. As a result, this governmental system required frequent meetings of the Athenians to vote on important issues. These meetings often entailed debates among the citizens over policy decisions, such as going to war against another city-state. Athens' direct democracy served as an important step toward individual freedom and the involvement of individuals in the decision-making process of the government. However, only males over the age of 18 could vote. Cultural advancement, balance, order, education, and debate were all very important as was citizen-participation in the government. However, even though Athens was a democracy there were slaves and women could not vote, hold office, or inherit property.

Government

Above all, the Spartans valued strength and virility. Babies that did not appear strong were often discarded. Values Since strength was valued over intellect and academic achievement the Spartans made few cultural contributions to Western Civilization.

Conflict

As in the rest of Africa, the people of ancient Egypt werepolytheisticthroughout the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, and theNew Kingdom. That means that they believed in many gods. Some of these gods were Ra, Anubis,Seth, Osiris, Isis, andHorus. Egyptians worshipped these gods with animal sacrificesand with incense and many processions where people carried the image of the god from one place to another. People believed that all of Egypt belonged to the gods, and that the Pharaoh was the representative on earth of the gods, or maybe a kind of god himself, and so everything in Egypt sort of belonged to the Pharaoh. They thought that when you died, Anubis would weigh your soul against a feather, and if your soul was heavier than the feather (with bad deeds), you would be punished. They thought that after you died you went to a new world, just like this one, and so they put into your grave everything you would need in the next world. Osiris was an ancient Egyptian god of growing things, like the Greek goddess Demeter. That's why sometimes his face is green, like the Nile river whose floods made a good harvest in Egypt. Osiris was the oldest son of the earlier Earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut; this makes sense because that's how plants grow - the earth works together with the sky. As the king of the gods, Osiris wears a pharaoh's hat and carries ashepherd's crook and a flail for beating barley. Like Demeter, Osiris had brothers and sisters. As Demeter had her daughter Persephone with her brother Zeus, Osiris married his sister Isis. As early as the Old Kingdom, about 2000 BC, people were already thinking of Osiris as the god of the afterlife and rebirth, as well as the god of growing things. Growing things come up out of the earth and go back under the earth as seeds, and then come up again, so many cultures think of plant gods as also the gods of rebirth. (Compare the Greek story of Persephone, or the West Asian story of Magna Mater).

KIDIPEDE SIGN IN / SUBSCRIBE TO KIDIPEDE ALSO READ: Why did people want to punch Socrates?

Where did Egyptians bury your liver?

How old are the Rocky Mountains?

What does a half-timbered house look like?

How do you spin wool? (a project)

13 5

In one story, the god Seth tricked Osiris into getting into a wooden chest, which he then threw into the Nile river to get rid of Osiris (Compare the Greek story ofPerseus). When Isis found the chest and took her brother's body out to bury it, Seth cut Osiris' body into pieces and scattered the pieces all around Egypt. Isis searched and found all of the pieces of her brother's body and brought them back together, where she blew lift back into the body. When Osiris came back to life, he and Isis had a baby, Horus. Egyptians in the Old Kingdom thought of the living Pharaoh as being like Horus, and the Pharaoh's dead father as being like Osiris. Later on, people thought of even ordinary dead people as being like Osiris. Still, people even in the Old Kingdom thought it was kind of yucky to be dead under the ground, and that it would be nicer to be dead up in the sky, with the sun god Ra. By the New Kingdom, about 1500 BC, people combined these two ideas to think of Ra and Osiris as the same god, where Re was the day-time form of the god and Osiris was the night-time form. To find out more about O
Ra (sometimes spelled Re) was the ancient Egyptian god of the sun. He was already well known in theOld Kingdom, by 3000 BC. He had the sun (a circle) balanced on his head, as you can see in the picture, and he traveled in a boat from sunrise in the east to sunset in the west every day, accompanied by his followers.

KIDIPEDE SIGN IN / SUBSCRIBE TO KIDIPEDE ALSO READ: Why did people want to punch Socrates?

Where did Egyptians bury your liver?

How old are the Rocky Mountains?

What does a half-timbered house look like?

How do you spin wool? (a project)

58

You could compare Ra to the Indian god Vishnu or to the Greek god Helios. The Greek sun god travels in a horse-drawn chariot, because the Greeks usually traveled in horse-drawn chariots, but the Egyptian sun god travels in a boat, because Egyptians usually traveled by boat up and down the Nile.

The ear-liest Egyptian artists clearly learned their art from even earlier African artists. But, thanks to the Nile River and a strongstate government, Egypt was richer than other parts of Africa, and by about 3000 BCEgyptian artists were able to work longer and harder and make bigger, fancier pieces of art than other African artists.

KIDIPEDE
SIGN IN / SUBSCRIBE TO KIDIPEDE ALSO READ:

Egypt was also closer to West Asiathan any other part of Africa, and so Egyptian artists were able to trade ideas and skills with West Asian

artists. Slowly Egyptian artists figured out how to build big buildings like the Pyramids, how to makeglass and metal, how to use apottery wheel, and how to carve bigstone statues that could stand up on their own. But by about 1500 BC, in the time of the New Kingdom, the Pharaohs and other rich Egyptians wanted more and more art, and they couldn't really afford to have their art so carefully made. Some of the art became loose and sloppy. Or, maybe that's just the style that people liked in the New Kingdom. By about 1000 BC, though, Egypt's government had collapsed and Egypt became much poorer than it had been before. Soon the Persians conquered Egypt, and then the Greeks and the Romans. Egyptian artists continued to work, and they did interesting mixes of their own art with the styles of each of these conquerors, but they didn't have the time or the money to make the big, beautiful buildings, paintings, and statues they had made before. People began to carve sculptures in Egypt about 4500 BC, about the same time as in West Asia and in southern Africa. These early sculptures are small figurines, mostly of women. Nobody knows why Egyptian artists made these sculptures.

Rahotep and Nefret (4th Dynasty, about 2500 BC)

By the time of the Old Kingdom, about 2900 BC, Egyptian artists began to carve life-size stone sculptures. At first sculptors carved these statues sitting down, which is a lot easier to carve. Most of these life-size statues were to put in rich people's tombs after they died. The statues were like replacement bodies for the dead people, to use in the afterlife. To make the statues look more real, Egyptian artists painted the statues too. They

painted men dark, to show that they spent a lot of time outside, and they painted women light-skinned, to show that they were rich enough to stay inside out of the sun, and didn't work in the fields. In other ways, too, ancient Egyptian sculptors didn't show people the way they really looked. Instead, they tried to show what they were really like inside - their true self. Rahotep was probably old when he died, but his statue looks young and strong. People tend to think that Egyptian building styles stayed the same for the whole period of Egyptian history, from the beginning of the Old Kingdom to the end of the New Kingdom two thousand years later, but that's not true. The Egyptians built different kinds of buildings at different times, just like any other group of people. In the early part of the Old Kingdom, the Egyptians built mainly mastabas, a kind of tomb with a flat roof like a house. Then throughout most of the Old Kingdom, the Egyptians built the pyramid tombs which are now so famous. Of course they also built smaller buildings like houses and butcher shops. In the Middle Kingdom, the mastaba tomb came back again, although in a more elaborate form for the Pharaohs. They didn't build any more pyramids.

New Kingdom temple of Amon at Luxor

Then in the New Kingdom there was a lot of building that was not tombs: temples for the gods especially, but also palaces for the Pharaohs. You could compare these New Kingdom temples, with their columns mainly on

the inside of the walls, tobuildings from Shang Dynasty China, about the same time, where the columns are around the outside.

Over 2400 years ago, the famous Greek general, Pericles, said, "It is true that we (Athenians) are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not the few, with equal justice to all alike in their private disputes." Only in Athens, and only for a short time, "rule by many" meant that all citizens had to be willing to take an active part in government. That was the law. Each year, 500 names were drawn from all the citizens of Athens. Those 500 citizens had to serve for one year as the law makers of ancient Athens. All citizens of Athens were required to vote on any new law that this body of 500 citizens created. One man, one vote, majority ruled. Women, children, and slaves were not citizens, and thus could not votefter the Peloponnesian War with Sparta, which Athens lost, once again Athens was ruled by a small group of people. But for a brief period of about 100 years, Athens was a democracy. It was not a perfect democracy, but it established the roots of democracy. We owe Athens a lot! A Direct Democracy: A government in which people vote to make their own rules and laws