Honors World History Unit 1 Review: Early Civilizations and Ancient Empires

Mesopotamia means "land between the rivers," the Tigris and Euphrates in what is now mostly Iraq. Farming spread through this Fertile Crescent after the Neolithic Revolution began around 10,000 BCE, but southern Mesopotamia got too little rain for crops. People dug canals, levees and reservoirs, and the surplus from irrigation let others work as priests, scribes, artisans and soldiers.

The first cities appeared in Sumer by about 3500 BCE. Sumerian city-states like Uruk and Ur each had a patron god, a ziggurat temple complex and a ruler, and they often fought over water and farmland. Around 3200 BCE the Sumerians developed cuneiform, wedge-shaped marks pressed into clay, mainly to track grain, taxes and trade. The rivers flooded unpredictably, which may explain why Mesopotamian myths like the Epic of Gilgamesh describe gods as harsh and moody.

Flat land with few natural barriers meant outsiders kept arriving. Sargon of Akkad united the city-states into the first known empire around 2334 BCE. Later, Hammurabi of Babylon, who ruled c. 1792-1750 BCE, had 282 laws inscribed on a stone stele. People often call it the first law code, but the Code of Ur-Nammu is about 300 years older. Hammurabi's code is famous for its detail and for punishments that changed depending on the social class of the people involved.

Egypt was a narrow strip of farmland along the Nile surrounded by desert. Every year, roughly July through October, rain in the Ethiopian highlands made the Nile flood and leave dark, fertile silt behind. Unlike the Tigris and Euphrates, the Nile flooded on a predictable schedule, so Egyptians built their calendar around three seasons of flooding, planting and harvest.

The deserts gave Egypt natural protection, which helps explain why it stayed unified for long stretches. Around 3100 BCE, a king traditionally named Narmer joined Upper Egypt (the south) and Lower Egypt (the north, including the delta) into one kingdom. Historians divide what followed into the Old Kingdom, when pharaohs built the pyramids at Giza (the Great Pyramid dates to about 2560 BCE), the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom, when Hatshepsut promoted trade and building projects, Thutmose III expanded Egyptian control in Nubia and Southwest Asia, and Ramses II later campaigned in both regions.

The pharaoh was seen as a living god whose job was to keep ma'at, the order and balance of the universe. Below the pharaoh came nobles and priests, then scribes who could read hieroglyphs, then artisans, and at the base the farmers who made up most of the population. Egyptians believed in an afterlife, so they mummified bodies and filled tombs with goods. The New Kingdom ended around 1070 BCE, and Egypt was later ruled by outsiders, including Persians, Greeks and Romans.

The Indus Valley, or Harappan, civilization reached its height from about 2600 to 1900 BCE in what is now Pakistan and northwest India. It covered more land than Egypt or Mesopotamia did at the time. Floods from the Indus River and seasonal monsoon rains watered crops like wheat, barley and cotton.

Its cities stand out for planning. Harappa and Mohenjo-daro had streets laid out in grids, houses built from bricks of standard sizes, and covered drains that carried wastewater out of homes. Mohenjo-daro had a large public pool called the Great Bath. Merchants used standardized stone weights, and Indus seals and beads turn up in Mesopotamia, where texts mention trading with a place called Meluhha.

What's missing tells you something too. Archaeologists have found no grand palaces or royal tombs, so nobody knows exactly who governed these cities. The Indus script, found on small carved seals, still has not been deciphered. The cities declined after 1900 BCE. An older theory blamed invading Aryans, but most historians now point to climate change, a weakening monsoon and shifting rivers that disrupted farming and trade.

Mountains split Greece into small valleys, so Greeks formed hundreds of independent city-states called poleis instead of one kingdom. Poor farmland pushed them toward the sea, and from about 750 BCE they founded colonies from Spain to the Black Sea, including Syracuse and Byzantium.

Athens and Sparta took opposite paths. After Cleisthenes' reforms in 508 BCE, Athens became a direct democracy where male citizens voted in the Assembly themselves. Women, enslaved people and foreigners could not vote, so only a minority of residents took part. Sparta was an oligarchy built around its army. Boys began military training at age 7, and a large enslaved population called helots did the farming.

The city-states joined forces against Persia, winning at Marathon in 490 BCE and at Salamis in 480 BCE. Athens then led the Delian League and used its wealth to fund projects such as the Parthenon. The city also became a center of philosophy associated with thinkers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, although Athens executed Socrates in 399 BCE. Rivalry with Sparta led to the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE), which Sparta won and which left Greece weakened. Philip II of Macedon took over, and his son Alexander the Great (ruled 336-323 BCE) conquered an empire reaching Egypt and India. The blending of Greek culture with the cultures of the lands he conquered is called Hellenistic.

Rome began as a small kingdom on the Tiber River, traditionally founded in 753 BCE. In 509 BCE, Romans expelled their last king and set up a republic, a government where citizens elect leaders. Two consuls served one-year terms and could block each other, the Senate advised them and controlled money, and assemblies passed laws. Plebeians (commoners) pushed the patricians (aristocrats) for rights and won tribunes who could veto laws, plus the Twelve Tables (around 450 BCE), Rome's first written laws.

Rome conquered Italy by the 260s BCE and then defeated Carthage in the three Punic Wars (264-146 BCE). Conquest brought wealth but also unrest, as rich landowners used enslaved labor and small farmers lost their land. Generals with loyal armies started fighting civil wars. Julius Caesar became dictator and was assassinated in 44 BCE. His heir Octavian took the title Augustus in 27 BCE, the start of the Roman Empire.

The Pax Romana, about 200 years of relative peace, saw roads, aqueducts and concrete buildings spread across the Mediterranean. Christianity faced periods of Roman persecution. Galerius issued an edict of toleration in 311 CE, and Constantine and Licinius confirmed toleration and restored confiscated Christian property through the Edict of Milan in 313. Overexpansion, economic trouble and invasions weakened the West, which ended in 476 CE. The eastern half continued as the Byzantine Empire until 1453.

Mesoamerica covers southern Mexico and Central America. Its civilizations developed with no contact with Afro-Eurasia, built on farming maize, beans and squash. They had no large draft animals and did not use the wheel for transport, yet they built large cities and created writing and calendars on their own.

The Olmec (c. 1500-400 BCE), along the Gulf Coast, carved colossal stone heads up to about 3 meters tall and shared religious symbols and practices, like jaguar imagery and a ball game, with other Mesoamerican societies. They are often called a "mother culture," but historians debate that label because cultural exchange worked in several directions. The city of Teotihuacan, with its Pyramid of the Sun, may have held over 100,000 people around 500 CE.

The Maya peaked in the Classic period (about 250-900 CE) as rival city-states like Tikal and Palenque, not one empire. They developed the most complete writing system in the Americas, used a symbol for zero, and tracked time with the Long Count calendar. Many southern cities were abandoned around 900 CE, but the Maya people never vanished; millions live in the region today.

The Aztec (Mexica) founded Tenochtitlan on a lake island in 1325 and formed the Triple Alliance in 1428. They grew food on chinampas, raised fields in the lake, and collected tribute from conquered peoples. Hernán Cortés and his Indigenous allies captured Tenochtitlan in 1521.

Early Chinese states such as the Shang developed in the Yellow River basin, whose floods spread fertile loess but could also be deadly, earning the river the name "China's Sorrow." Early farming cultures also grew along the Yangtze. Mountains and deserts shaped travel routes, but trade, migration and warfare still connected China with neighbors, including the Central Asian steppe.

The Shang dynasty (c. 1600-1046 BCE) is the first confirmed by archaeology. Shang kings cast elaborate bronze vessels and asked their ancestors questions by carving them on oracle bones, the earliest Chinese writing. The Zhou overthrew the Shang and justified it with the Mandate of Heaven, the idea that heaven supports a just ruler and withdraws support from a bad one. Floods, famine or revolt signaled that a dynasty had lost the mandate, which led to a pattern called the dynastic cycle.

As Zhou power broke down during the Warring States period (475-221 BCE), thinkers proposed new ways to restore order. Confucius (551-479 BCE) taught respect for family, proper behavior and government by moral example. Daoism emphasized harmony with the Dao, and Legalism called for strict laws and harsh punishments. The Qin used Legalism to unify China in 221 BCE; Shi Huangdi standardized writing, coins and weights. The Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) made Confucian learning central to official education and recruited officials through recommendations, training and some examinations. It also expanded Silk Road trade and produced paper.

The Andes run about 7,000 km along western South America, with deserts on the coast, high cold plateaus and rainforest to the east. Andean peoples farmed at different altitudes, growing potatoes and quinoa up high and maize lower down, and cut terraces into steep slopes to create flat fields. Llamas carried goods, and both llamas and alpacas provided wool.

Caral, on Peru's coast, was a city with pyramid mounds by about 2600 BCE, one of the oldest in the Americas. The Chavín culture (c. 900-200 BCE), centered on the religious site of Chavín de Huántar, developed an art style that spread across much of the region. The Nazca (100 BCE-800 CE) etched giant animal shapes into the desert floor, and the Moche on the north coast made detailed pottery and gold work.

The Inca began expanding from Cusco under Pachacuti in 1438. Within about a century they ruled roughly 10 million people along 4,000 km of mountains. A road network of around 40,000 km with rope bridges tied the empire together. Instead of collecting money, the Inca required the mit'a, a labor tax of work on roads, farms or the army. They had no known writing system, so officials recorded numbers on quipu, knotted cords. Francisco Pizarro captured the emperor Atahualpa in 1532, shortly after Atahualpa's forces had won an Inca civil war. A Eurasian epidemic, often identified as smallpox, had killed the earlier emperor Huayna Capac years before and helped set the succession crisis in motion.