Similarities – Christianity and Buddhism

  • The development and spread of Christianity and Buddhism before 600 C.E. had many common characteristics
  • Both Christianity and Buddhism were outgrowths of other religions – Christianity evolved from Judaism and Buddhism evolved from Hinduism
  • Both were aided in their spread by existing trade networks – whether Mediterranean trade routes or Silk Road trade routes – trade helped spread ideas
  • And both developed monastic orders open to women – yes, both Christianity and Buddhism provided alternatives to marriage for women – for women could become nuns
  • However, they did NOT share the belief that the founders of both presented themselves as divine – Buddha always claimed to be a man, although an enlightened man

Christianity in Ethiopia and Egypt

  • Christianity had an early presence in Ethiopia and Egypt
  • King Ezana of Axum [present-day Ethiopia] converted to Christianity in the 300s C.E. [around the same time as Emperor Constantine]
  • Even with the arrival of Islam, a Christian presence can still be found in these lands
  • Yes, after the expansion of Islam into Africa, an organized Christian presence remained in Egypt and Ethiopia
  • Christianity first arrived in North Africa, in the 1st or early 2nd century C.E.
  • The Christian communities in North Africa were among the earliest in the world
  • Legend has it that Christianity was brought from Jerusalem to Alexandria on the Egyptian coast by Mark, one of the four evangelists, in 60 C.E.
  • This was around the same time or possibly before Christianity spread to Northern Europe
  • In the 7th century Christianity retreated under the advance of Islam but it remained the chosen religion of the Ethiopian Empire and persisted in pockets in North Africa

Similarities – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

  • These Abrahamic faiths are monotheistic
  • The share a belief in monotheism and ethical and moral conduct
  • Jews, Christians, and Muslimsrecognize Jewish Prophets such as Abraham and Moses
  • Yes, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share the following belief: these religions all recognize the existence of Adam and of Moses
  • Three of the world’s major religions – the monotheist traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – were all born in the Middle East (Southwest Asia) and are all inextricably linked to one another
  • Christianity was born from within the Jewish tradition, and Islam developed from both Christianity and Judaism

A Major Feature of the Neolithic Revolution

  • People learned to farm and domesticate animals during the Neolithic Revolution
  • As a result of farming and domesticated animals, people settled in villages
  • Sedentary village communities were established
  • A reliable food source developed
  • Population increased
  • Class and gender divisions emerged
  • Epidemic diseases occurred due to proximity to animals
  • Yes, a major feature of the Neolithic Revolution in the Middle East was the establishment of sedentary village communities

Point of View in History

  • History is a record of the past but the recording of the past is influenced by the person recording it
  • In other words, historians recount stories from the past from certain points of view
  • The African proverb, “Until the lions have their historians, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter,” conveys this idea and suggests that history usually reflects the viewpoint of the victors
  • Students of history must take into account the “recorder” of history
  • For example, a peasant might view the Communist victory in China in 1949 differently than a landowning aristocrat
  • Historical records do not always include all points of view [i.e. conquerors often write history from the perspective of the victors as opposed to the vanquished]
  • It is important to examine the historian writing the history to discover the historian’s point of view and what the historian has emphasized and possibly ignored in the recounting of history

Beliefs of Judaism

  • Judaism is the world’s first lasting monotheistic religion
  • Judaism is based on the belief in a covenant between God and the Hebrew people
  • The Jewish people believe that the one God has chosen them to live moral and ethical lives according to God’s Commandments
  • According to the covenant, if the Jews obey God’s Commandments, they will be blessed by God but if they forsake God’s Commandments, they will be punished
  • The Jews, according to Judaism, are to be an ethical and righteous people

Similarity – Christianity and Islam

  • From the founding of each religion, Christians and Muslims shared a belief in a single omnipotent deity
  • Deity is another word for God and omnipotent means all-powerful
  • Christians and Muslims are monotheists and believe in one, all-powerful God
  • “Islam” means submission to the will of God and a Muslim is an individual who submits to the will of God
  • Muslims and Christians believe in a single omnipotent deity

Significant Beliefs of Buddhism

  • Buddhism developed in the Indian subcontinent, South Asia
  • Its founder was a Hindu prince, Siddhartha Gautama, who went in search of the cause of suffering and the end of suffering
  • Upon achieving enlightenment, according to Buddhists, he formulated the Four Noble Truths
  • The Four Noble Truths are

1- Life has suffering

2- Desire causes suffering

3- Suffering can end (nirvana)

4- Follow the Noble Eightfold Path or eight actions to end suffering (Right Speech, Right Concentration, etc.)

  • Like Hinduism, Buddhists accept the concepts of reincarnation (Samsara) and karma
  • Buddhists, however, reject the Hindu caste system
  • And Buddhists allow monastic opportunities for men and women (monks and nuns)
  • Yes, the founder of Buddhism developed a religion centered on the elimination of desire and suffering

Effects of Bantu Migration

  • The Bantu originally lived in West Africa but as they learned to farm, they began to migrate throughout sub-Saharan Africa
  • As farmers, the Bantu needed more land as population increased
  • As the Bantu migrated, they spread agriculture, iron-making and their language to the lands and peoples of sub-Sahara
  • The spread of Bantu-speaking peoples over southern African can be best explained by their knowledge of agriculture
  • It was agriculture that led to the Bantu migration
  • The Bantu migration is dated from approximately 1000 B.C.E. to 1000 C.E.

Beliefs of Daoism

  • Daoism is a Chinese philosophy that developed during the “Age of Warring States” period of the Zhou dynasty
  • During this time of warfare and disorder, Chinese philosophers sought for ways to restore peace and harmony to China and the great Chinese philosophies of Confucianism, Daoism and Legalism were created
  • The Daoist solution to creating peace and harmony in society was to live naturally and to live close to nature
  • Daoists believed that people who lived naturally would be happy people and happy people would live in harmony with one another
  • A key philosophical and religious element of Daoism is an emphasis on harmony between humanity and nature
  • When people live naturally and in harmony with nature, peace results
  • Daoists also believe that the government that governs least and allows individuals the freedom to live naturally governs best
  • Daoists love nature and the Daoist influence is clearly seen in Chinese painting as it emphasizes mountains, rivers and nature

Similarities – Judaism and Hinduism

  • At first glance, Judaism and Hinduism seem quite different
  • Jews worship one God while Hindus worship many gods – yet believe that the many gods are all aspects of the cosmic spirit called Brahman
  • Hindus believe in reincarnation (samsara) and Jews do not believe in reincarnation
  • Hinduism has a caste system and Jews believe that all Jews are equal in the eyes of God
  • Yet both religions have sacred texts and rules for living a good and moral life
  • Yes, before 500 C.E. Judaism and Hinduism were similar in that bothhad written scriptures and an ethical code to live by
  • The Torah or the first five books of the Jewish Bible are the most important of the sacred scriptures for Jews and the Ten Commandments establish moral and ethical rules for living
  • The Vedas, Upanishads, and the Bhagavad-Gita are Hindu sacred texts and karma (the belief that all actions have consequences) and dharma (the rules of caste) encourage Hindus to act in moral and ethical ways

Examination System under the T’ang Dynasty

  • China under the Tang government filled positions in the bureaucracy by means of merit examinations
  • A bureaucracy is a large group of people who are involved in running a government but who are not elected
  • In China, the examination system was created by the Han Dynasty as a means of selecting men for government service
  • All men theoretically could take the examination and therefore the examination system provided a measure of social mobility – in that a man from a peasant family could pass the exam for government service and become a scholar-gentry, landowner and government employee – but of course, it was difficult for peasant families to pay the money necessary for proper educational training yet a talented peasant might gain the financial support of his village
  • The examination system was adopted by most Chinese dynasties after the Han and thus, the examination system was a continuity in much of the Chinese dynastic period

Chinese Concept of the Mandate of Heaven

  • The Zhou Dynasty established a belief in the Mandate of Heaven or the idea that the gods selected the emperor to rule and gave the ruler the mandate or right to rule as long as the ruler ruled righteously and well
  • In the event of famine, floods, epidemics or too much war and conflict, however, the gods signified that the ruler had lost the mandate or right to rule and that the people could rebel
  • Thus, the Mandate of Heaven justified rebellion and led to the dynastic cycle in which dynasties claimed the mandate, ruled for a period of time, lost the mandate, rebellion occurred, and a new dynasty was established
  • The Mandate of Heaven was not permanently granted to a dynasty
  • So, yes, the Chinese concept of “Mandate of Heaven” was sometimes used to justify rebellion

Extent of the Mongol Empire

  • The Mongol Empire stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Black Sea
  • But the Mongols never conquered Japan
  • The Mongols conquered China, Russia and Persia
  • The Mongols conquered lands that encompassed the entire length and breadth of the Silk Roads
  • Yet it is best to look at a map of the Mongol Empire at its height – a map will clearly reveal how impressive the Mongol Empire was
  • At its height, the Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous empire in history – contiguous means connected throughout in an unbroken sequence

Western Europe after the Fall of Rome

  • The Roman Empire was highly centralized but the western portion of the Roman Empire collapsed in 476 C.E. – the eastern empire became the Byzantine Empire (at least according to historians) but the western portion entered a period of feudalism and decentralization known as the European Middle Ages
  • By 600 C.E., Western Europe was theworld region that had experienced the most extensive urban decline
  • As waves of Germanic invaders (known to the Romans as barbarians) entered Western Europe, city life decline as people found safety on manors
  • A manor was a lord’s land in the countryside and as the lord had an army, people laboring for the lord were protected on his manor
  • Many peasants became serfs as they agreed to labor for the lord in return for protection – a serf was bound to the lord’s land and could not leave and his children and grandchildren and future descendants were also all bound to the lord

Contribution of the Phoenicians

  • The Phoenicians were a seafaring people from present-day Lebanon
  • The Phoenicians established cities throughout the Mediterranean and were traders in the region
  • But the most important legacy (handed down from the past) of the Phoenicians their development of an alphabetic writing system that was adapted by the Greeks
  • In an alphabetic writing system, each letter represents a sound and thus fewer symbols are needed for writing than when every word has its own character – yes, to this day, when children are taught to read in English (the alphabetic writing system adopted from the Greeks who adopted it from the Phoenicians), they are taught the sounds of the letters – this method for teaching reading is called phonics after the Phoenicians
  • Their major cities were Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, and Arwad – all were fiercely independent, rival cities and, unlike the neighboring inland states, the Phoenicians represented a confederation of maritime traders rather than a defined country
  • The most significant Phoenician contribution was an alphabetic writing system
  • The Phoenician alphabetic writing system became the root of the Western alphabets when the Greeks adopted it
  • The main natural resources of the Phoenician cities in the eastern Mediterranean were the prized cedars of Lebanon and murex shells used to make the purple dye
  • The name Phoenician, used to describe these people in the first millennium B.C.E., is a Greek invention, from the word phoinix, possibly signifying the color purple-red and perhaps an allusion to their production of a highly prized purple dye

Reasons for the Collapse of the Roman and Han Empires

  • Invasions by borderland peoples contributed significantly to the fall of both the western Roman and Han empires
  • The quality of Han emperors began to decline around 88 C.E. – at the same time, conditions for the peasantry deteriorated, as large landowners began to monopolize control over the agricultural system and impose serfdom – peasant unrest transformed into a Daoist revolutionary movement by the Yellow Turbans in 184 C.E. – although Han generals suppressed the rebellion, they set themselves up as regional rulers – nomads from the Asiatic steppes invaded China and established their own regional kingdoms – in this period of political disintegration, Buddhism spread into China
  • The Han Dynasty collapsed in 220 C.E.
  • The Roman Empire also collapsed due to invaders and internal problems
  • The population of the later Roman Empire declined, diminishing the recruitment base for the armies – the economy was less able to support taxation – politically, the quality of emperors also worsened – the onset of decline coincided with the end of imperial expansion around 180 C.E. – with the end of imperial conquest came the end of the ready supply of slaves on which the empire depended – because the empire never established a principle of succession, there wereconstant civil wars over who should be emperor – when theGermanic migrations began in the fifth century C.E., the western half was able to offer almost noresistance

Effects of New Varieties of Rice (i.e. Champa Rice) in East Asia

  • A rapid increase of East Asian populations was an important long-term demographic impact of the spread of new rice varieties in East Asia during the period circa 600 C.E. to 1200 C.E
  • Early maturing varieties of rice with their ability to escape droughts, avoid floods and in some localities open up the opportunity for double cropping increased the amount of rice grown and therefore increased the number of calories people consumed thereby leading to more people living rather than starving
  • During Song times, new developments in rice cultivation — especially the introduction of new strains of rice from what is now Central Vietnam, along with improved methods of water control and irrigation — spectacularly increased rice yields – rice was used primarily as food – so, Champa Rice was really important
  • Demographic means the number of people in a society and Champa rice increased the number of people living in an area because it reduced mortality due to starvation
  • Improved seeds means greater cultivation
  • Thus, better rice – rice that can be grown and survive even in difficult places and times – means more people or a demographic change as population increases

Impact of Islamic Civilization on Medieval Europe

  • The transmittal of Greek and Arab learning is the most important effect of Islamic expansion on the civilization of medieval Europe
  • When Rome fell, learning declined in the early centuries of the Medieval period in Western Europe and many of the classical books written by Greeks and Romans were destroyed during the Germanic invasions
  • Yet the classical ideas of the Greeks and Romans were preserved in the libraries of the Byzantines (formerly Eastern Roman Empire peoples) and the Islamic kingdoms
  • So, when the Crusaders traveled to the Holy Land – they not only encountered Muslim armies but their own books in the libraries of Muslims
  • The introduction to their own ideas eventually transformed the people of Western Europe and by 1350, the Renaissance or “rebirth” of classical ideas in the West occurred

Conversion of Slavs by Byzantine Missionaries