Patterns of World History Vol 1

Humans and Ideas Some of the most powerful ideas humans essential during early divination of 3000 BCE to 618 CE work been about techniques to improve living. sunrise(prenominal) technological ideas from the invention of the wheel to the hand crank pump have transformed how millions of hoi polloi live. The way technological ideas have accumulated over time and the effects they have had on society is one of the main(prenominal) themes of realness muniment. Shortly before 3000 BCE, Mesopotamians invented a technological idea which terminate in a make-up system jawed cuneiform that increased communication, evidence keeping, and abstract intellection.Through symbols written on wet clay t equal to(p)ts that represented objects and sounds, history could be recorded for the premiere time. Writing was a major magnification of the conceptual horizon of human kind-hearted that reached back to the first flaked lapidates, ornaments, figurines, and cave paintings in the Paleolithic (Von Sivers 44). Early metallurgists discovered that by adding tin to copper they were able to make bronze which was much harder than copper and provided a sharper desolate edge which was the start of the Bronze Age (Lecture).By 2800 BCE Sumer entered into what is described as the protoliterate stay where scribes would work with pictograms and authoritative seals but there was still no official written language (Lecture). Harappan cities were unique to the 1700s BCE due to the meticulously plotted grid-like design that included a most polish urban sewage system for ancient times. Remarkably straight, brick paved streets ran in north/south, eastmost/west axes forming square blocks of public buildings, temples, and markets in convenient locations.Houses had brick-lined indoor rise and primitive toilets emptying into terra-cotta cesspits whose overflow connected to the citys drains and sewers (Von Sivers 80). primed(p) some(prenominal) miles up the Sabarmati River from the Gu lf of Khambat, Lothal was a large, perhaps the chief, of all occupation seaports close to 1700 BCE. Lothal central structure is an enormous basin, approximately 120 feet capacious and 70 feet wide. The location of Lothal on the Arabian Sea indicates a relate between Harappan cities and trade that would have reached Mesopotamia and possibly Egypt.Lothal was also a famous regional deceitfulness center, with micro beads used for nonfunctional craft items and jewelry as its chief product for internal trade and merchandise (Von Sivers 80). Around 1700 BCE, the chariot and composite bow make their entry into the shopping center East and eastern Mediterranean region, transforming armies who previously relied solely on innovation soldiers. Black smiths mastered the art of constrict making and incorporated weigh into their chariot armies, in the form of swords, helmets, and protective armor (Von Sivers 53).The Shang Dynasty used the sawbuck to drive chariots, which transformed t he Chinese warfare for transportation, which bear oned disparate regions of mainland China and helped the Shang to expand. It was a featured in art and poetry and thus offered a new symbol for artist and poets to work with. It will also link China to nomadic horse people from the north and west (Von Sivers 110). The people in Meroe mined, smelted, and forged iron which they were the first to do so in sub-Saharan Africa. The craft of iron smelting evolved gradually in Hittite Anatolia during several(prenominal) centuries after 1 euchre BCE.The possible spread of iron-working sills from the Middle East to Africa has not been satisfactorily proved. Iron workers in African villages adapted iron-making to local village circumstances. The proceeds of iron, or prominenter import was the knowledge f how to forge the bloom-the compounding of raw iron and slag- into an iron- carbon allow that was neither too velvet nor too brittle (Von Sivers 165). Chariots and bows were introduced to th e Shan army between 1300-1200 BCE. Around 1200 BCE, The Olmec crafted figurines, mask of clays, and made figurines from jade and serpentine.The Olmec heads were carved from 18 ton blocks of basalt that were quarried 70 miles away from San Lorenzo. Brobdingnagian groups of workers shouldered beams from which the basalt blocks, weighing 18 tons on average, hung in slings. They carried these blocks to the coast and shipped them to San Lorenzo on rafts. There, sculptors fashioned the blocks into fierce-looking, helmeted heads, kneeling or sitting figures, and fauna statues (Von Sivers 145). The Lydians are notable for having bring outd in 615 BCE the first minted money in macrocosm history, coins made of silver and gold and used in trade (Von Sivers 199).The Achaemenids created an elaborate system of roads known as the royal roads around 550 BCE for communication and transportation of troops and trade. The Persian Empire in authorityicular(prenominal) covered Brobdingnagian amou nts of land, from Anatolia to Egypt and Mesopotamia, to modern day Afghanistan. The Persian Empire was both centralized and decentralized. One centralized aspect, as revealed by the roads, was the need to represent taxes and tribute to the shahinshah, the emperor. Even more than revealing is the style of the Persian roads, with duration markers at regular intervals, inns and depots indicating the sophistication of the Persian infrastructure.The centralization of the empire is pull ahead revealed by the regulation that local parts of the road had to be retained by the local governors, appointed by the emperor thus flat to the local level the emperor had influe nce (Von Sivers 200). The Achaemenids achieved their conquests with the help of lightly armed exceedingly mobile mounted archers as well as heavily armored, slow cataphracts-horsemen with protective armor consisting of iron scales sewn on leather shirts. Quilts and iron scales protected the horses. The archers fought wi th composite bows and the cataphracts, with 5-foot longsighted, iron-tipped lances for thrusting.Infantry soldiers armed with bows, arrows, shields, and javelins provided support for the cavalry, complementing its tank-like thrust (Von Sivers 200). The Well-Field System was an get down to untangle the more confusing aspects of land arrangement around 500 BCE. The Zhou was the first among more dynasties to attempt to impose a invariant system of land tenure in China. for each one square Li(one li is about one-third of a mile), consisting of 900 mou(each mou is approximately one-sixth of an acre) was divided into a grid of nine plots.Individual families would each work one of the eight out of doors plots while the middle one would be farmed in common for the taxes and rents owed the landowner or local officials (Von Sivers 117). In the 5th Century BCE, sculptors began to explore physiological movement, emotion, and individual character by Greek Painting and Sculpture. Greek va se paintings and sculptures achieved a remarkable wide range, from figures exerting themselves in their chosen sports to serene models of human beauty.Greek sculptors and painters wedded symbolism and kind of, embraced realism as their style of representation in which we call today photographic representation (Von Sivers 229). Craftspeople from the Chavin de Hauntar around 500 BCE made beads, pendants, stone tools and leather goods, but pioneered new techniques combining the wool from llamas with cotton to create a new blended cloth. They decorated it using new methods of discolor and painting. metallicsmiths demised new methods of soldering and alloying gold and silver to make large cosmetic objects.Small objects, such as golden headbands, ear spools, beads, and pins, signified prestige and wealth. Gold artifacts found in the graves of the wealthy attest to the value residents of Chavin dictated on gold (Von Sivers 144). What technical and cultural development allowed the peop le of the Lapita culture to spread throughout the Pacific Islands? 500 BCE-200 BCE- The Polynesian Islands were settled in part due to sail and paddle-driven canoes, which were further improved by the assenting of outriggers or double hulls.These boats improvements allowed the Polynesians to sail further and reach some of the more distant islands. Cultural developments included the ability to retain elaborate, detailed intellectual maps of islands, ability to read wind patterns and currents, and retention of celestial information that allowed for soaring (Von Sivers ). The Silk Road was an overland trade routes that connected eastern and western Eurasia, get down at the end of the fourth century BCE (Von Sivers 286).Mayans developed writing that was a complex combination of glyphic and syllabic script as early as 400-300 BCE. Mayan writing is a glyphic as well as a syllabic script, numbering some 800 signs. It is structurally similar to Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyph ic. The glyphic part consists of pictograms, one-word images of the most essential features of what is to be depicted. Glyphs as syllables consist of one, two, or three of syllabic glyphs, or syllabaries, are pronounced as a series of syllables.Given the mixture of pictograms and syllabaries, which is potentially immense, the complexity of Mayan writing appeared for a long time to be an insuperable obstacle to any effort at deciphering (Von Sivers 182). Around 300 BCE, The Upanishadic writers, or which one hundred are known, thought that the Vedic religion had become too distracted due to the thousands of gods. The Upanishads instead sought a monist, rather that polytheistic approach, and sought for a first principle, a universal truth that did not require the worship of many different gods.The Upanishadic writers were hermits who wanted to reach unity with the universal self, which would remove them from the vibration of rebirth and redeath that characterized earthly life. Salvati on in this system was moksha, escape from reincarnation. This salvation was achieved through meditation and brief aphorisms becoming a vital part of a new evolving tradition (Von Sivers 248). Around 221 BCE, the Qin Shi Huangdi, the first emperor of the Qin, action a significant part of empire and state building.These are several accomplishments of Shi Huangdi to include building the Great Wall of China that was massive ascertain stretching over 1400 miles to safeguard against attacks by nomadic people in the north standardized weights, measures, and coinage building roads, canals, irrigation, water conservancy projects his tomb with life-size warriors use of conscripted labor and the implementation of Legalism as the primary philosophy of the realm. Each of these was designed primarily to increase the centralized power of the Qin leader and his state.Babylonians were great mathematicians, who worked fractions, whole numbers and square roots as well as some of the elementary theo rems of geometry (Lecture). Starting from the foundations of the Sumerians, the Babylonians made advances in arithmetic, geometry, and algebra. Buddhism, the most lowering intellectual influences from India on the surrounding regions was in science and mathematics. During the period from the piece century BCE until the second century CE India was an importer of scientific and mathematical concepts from the Hellenic and Persian spheres.Greek geometry, made its way into northern India during this time. Concepts of Indian health regimens-some involving yoga discipline-along with the vast body of Indian medicine, with its extensive knowledge of herbal remedies, also come out to have moved west. In the area of mathematics and astronomy an grand synthesis of ideas took place in the developing the first Indian calendars, which were establish on the lunar months, through a year consisted of six seasons and an additive period was inserted every 30 months to make up the difference with the solar year.The Indians then adopted the calendar of the eastern Mediterranean and southwest Asia, which had a 7 day week, a 24-hour day, and a 365-day solar year-along with the 12 zodiacal signs of the Greco-Roman world (Von Sivers 264). The earthenware produced during the Tang dynasty 618 CE is among the most coveted in the world today. Perhaps even more impressive, by this time, too, artisans were producing a kind of proto-porcelain that, with increasing refinement, would be know in the succeeding centuries to the outside world as china (Von Sivers 284).Throughout history, humans have adapted their ideas to their environment and learned to overcome obstacles, thus paving the way for new elements of technology. Humans uttered themselves and communicated with one another in sophisticated ways through paintings, sculptures, and the decorative arts as well as writing, construction, and metals. Of more recent, humans invented writing systems that gave birth to many forms of litera ture. Humans have wrestled with ideas and beliefs regarding technology.