Who controls what?
What type of government is there? Anything to do with laws or war. / Economical:
What type of economy?
How do people make a living? / Geography:
Where is it?
Is land mountainous?
Desert?
Ocean? / Advances Socially:
Religious, intellectual,
artistic
Ancient Mesopotamia / Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, and Persia
Code of Hammurabi / Traditional economy of trade and farming
Traded with Egypt and Indus Valley --- later with China on the Silk Road / -Fertile Crescent
-Tigris and Euphrates Rivers
- Few natural barriers
-present day: Iraq
-capital: UR / -cuneiform
-ziggurats
-Hanging Gardens
-Tower of Babel
-wheel, plow, sailboat, number system based on 60
-Polytheism
Ancient Egypt / Pharaohs (priest kings)
Most famous pharaoh: King Tut
Divided into the Lower and Upper / Traditional economy based on trade and farming
Traded with Nubia / -Nile River (Blue Nile and White Nile Rivers)
-Deserts – natural barriers
-mountains, rivers, delta, cataracts
-fertile soil / -hieroglyphics
-pyramids --- Great Sphinx
-mummies -> afterlife
-papyrus
-polytheism
Ancient India / Little is known of ancient India because they can’t translate their writing
dynasty / Traditional economy based on trade and farming / -modern day: Pakistan
-Indus River which floods
-monsoons
- mts., deserts, plateau, etc / -brick walls for protection against flooding
-artifacts
-invented 0 and its symbol, Algebra, number system 1-9, iron plow, cow is sacred
-sanskitt – written language
-polytheism
-Hinduism and Buddhism
Ancient China / Dynasties
Overthrow bad rulers / Traditional economy based on trade and farming
Invented silk
Terrace farming / -Yellow River (Huang He)—yellow symbolized “centrality” as China is the center of the world
-mts, deserts -- natural barriers / -achievements: astronomy, bronze work, making silk, created books, developed a complex system of writing
-Great Wall of China
-Chinese language – pictographs/ideographs
-Chinese Thinkers
-polytheism
Social Classes of Ancient Civilizations
Mesopotamia Ancient Egypt
Pharaohs
Priests, nobles
Farmers and Herders
Enslaved people Unskilled workers
Ancient India Ancient China
Vaisyas-common people Peasant farmers
Sudras – unskilled laborers and servants Merchants