PRE-MEDIEVAL HISTORY AND CULTURES

FROM HUNTER-GATHERING TO SETTLED AGRICULTURAL LIFESTYLES

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HISTORY AND CULTURE TO 1500

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The Adventure of Ibn Battuta

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WHEN CHINA RULED THE SEAS

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The stores of knowledge and skills humans built up over many years are what we now call “culture.”Storing up and building on new skills and new knowledge set societies on the path of continuing cultural changes that led to the world we now live in.

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Monte Alban, Oaxaca, Mexico, 200 BCEMonte Alban, Oaxaca, Mexico, 200 BCEGreat Zimbabwe, Southern Africa, 1300-1500 CEGreat Zimbabwe, Southern Africa, 1300-1500 CE

Towers, Kuwait City, TodayTowers, Kuwait City, Today

Hunter-Gathering Cultures

• By 10,000 BCE Humans were evidently around• Lived on hunting and gathering • Environment determined their settlement

patterns• Unreliability, and unpredictability of hunting

and gathering cultures forced 3 cultural shifts:

Farming along river valleys and animal domestication in arid areas

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Technological shift: River transport; Use of fire; Vessels for carrying necessities; and Projectiles— tools for food procurement and for defense

• We are still Homo Erectus: Pre-historic/pre-agricultural achievements are still basic to human life

• Stone age cultures learned to manipulate physical matter

• Agriculture led to elaborate social and cultural patterns

• Farming not suitable in every environment

• Nature threatened farming communities

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River valley Civilizations emerged out of agricultural foundations 5000—1000 BCE

What characterized centralized and de-centralized cultures?

• Technology—Military, Mobility, and production techniques

• Religion• Trade• Agriculture• Hunter-Gathering

After Religion the second defining force in world Cultures was trade

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Religion became a defining Force of World Cultural groupings

The earliest of them was Zoroastrianism 1000 BCE—https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGLGcnJz7_8

During the 500s BC Hindu and Buddhism rose in India and spread across Eastern and Southern Asia

500-700 AD Islam rose out of the Arabian Peninsula

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ISLAM INSPIRED THE FIRST REAL GLOBAL EMPIRE

The travels of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta took place in the context of the above mentioned world

Organization

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The world during Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta’s generation

• By the 15thC, World conditions were changing rapidly.

• China was withdrawing from naval operations

• Islamic Empires dominated most of World politics

• “Western Europe, although backward in many respects, was beginning to extent its reach towards new and century-long enduring power” (Bentley, 2007)

• The rise of New Imperialism and a global village concept

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