The Hellenistic World

It is astonishing that the two most influential cradles of the Western tradition - Greece and Israel - were so small even in comparison to some of their neighbours. There were two reasons for the ability of their messages – classical civilization and thought, and Christianity – to spread: The Greek and Roman Empires. Alexander the Great’s conquests built behind his advance, a lasting fortress of Hellenistic culture in the Middle East, whose marks are seen still today. At first, the Roman Empire received the baton of Hellenism, but in its later years, Christianity became the Emperor’s, and thus the Empire’s religion. It was the Jewish diaspora and much later the Empire’s Christianization that led to these remarkable processes of cultural transplantation.

The First Religious Revolution

There are times, rare though they are, when different societies and civilizations achieve a comparable level of development, independently of one another. This is very much what happened during the middle of the first millennium BC, in China, Greece, Persia, India and China. It is indeed curious that the various philosophies and religions for which these societies are famous today, seem to have arisen simultaneously, yet with no connected origins. Yet their longevity and continued relevance says much about their enduring appeal.

One of the reasons they were so successful was that they took root in empires, and were regarded with favour by emperors who, once converted, sought to convert their own societies. Confucianism took in China, in part because of its acceptance by the Han dynasty; Buddhism in India with the blessing of King Ashoka, and Greek belief and philosophy travelled with Alexander the Great on his conquests.

History would show, and continues to show, that the most long lasting beliefs, are those which support or are supported by those who wield the most power.

The Age of Empires

The concept of Empire has its roots in the limited means of production in the agricultural society: land and trade, in that order, were the basis of power and indeed survival. Tribute sustained and greatly stimulated economies with relatively little effort on the part of the conquerors (this factor, due to complacency, tends to ultimately lead to their fall). For that reason, the idea of Empire through conquest has had an almost primitive hold on political activity for the last 3000 years, only really dying – or perhaps evolving – in the 20^th AD. Empires die for a great many reasons, chiefly that they became politically, militarily, economically and even culturally unsustainable. Their deaths are more frequently the result of implosion than shrinkage. But their growth is a large part of what occupies us in the study of history, and tends to frame much of the content we find of most interesting in history. The ancient empires will be explored in this section

Early Civilization

The achievements of the Urban Revolution in the Middle East, and the later invention of writing and metallurgy slowly spread throughout Europe and Asia. The period after 5000BC saw a gradual, full transition to agriculture in Western Europe. Forest clearing made room for farming on a larger scale than was managed before, and a subsequent rise in populations, beginning first in fertile river valleys such as the Indus and the Nile regions. We know that the Wheel was in use in Northern Europe by about 4000 years ago, and the horse was being used in Ireland by 2500BC. The third millennium BC saw the widespread use of bronze to make tools and weapons.

Agriculture first came to Africa (mainly north of the Equator) through Egypt from 5000BC onwards. As the Sahara dried out, farmers were forced south. There is an interesting reason why farming spread more slowly to sub-equatorial Africa. The natural abundance of food made farming an unnecessary evolution. It remained for a long time, far less laborious to hunt for food. The same was the case in North America and with the aboriginies in Australia, who never developed agriculture. Europe and Asia for several reasons were optimally “designed” for agriculture, where in other parts of the world it would have been too difficult, or unnecessary.

But it wasn’t a zero-sum game: agriculture or gathering only. In the Steppes of Russia and Eastern Europe, animal domestication appeared first (in 4500 BC) and agriculture came after. Also, the Scythians of the Steppes during the first millennium BC, had a hybrid normadic-agricultural lifestyle. Bronze was in use in the Urals from around 1500 BC. Eastern Europe’s unique position in the Eurasian geography makes it something of a cultural bridge between East and West and this was reflected in how civlization developed there. Initially, most of the influence came from the West (ultimately, the Middle East), but from 1200 BC onwards, we start to see increasing Chinese influence.

Ultimately, the Middle East was the cradle and messenger of Civilization: it did not spring up independently in Europe and Asia, but rather, through conquest and trade, spread outwards from one centre – the Middle East. It took route firmly first in India in the third millennium BC, followed by Crete in the second, and then China a few hundred years after. It was only in the first millennium BC that these civilizations reached a stage of comparable development to those of the Middle East. The process is explored on these pages.

And there was plenty: The Urban Revolution

The walls of Jericho today

By about 10,000BC, the last Ice Age came to an end. Ice sheets which had covered most of the northern hemisphere were melting by this time and the water that had been locked up in them was released with the effect of raising ocean levels by over 400 feet, severing land-bridges between Britain and Europe, as well as those that connected Siberia and North America, Indonesia and Malaya. As rainfall increased, deserts receded too. Conditions for human existence were extremely favourable at this time, allowing for what historians have called an Urban Revolution.

This revolution first took place in what we now call the Middle East: Syria, Iraq, Israel and Turkey. Up until this point, man had subsisted largely by hunting for meat, and gathering plants. Though hunter-gatherers had harvested wild cereals before, they now started to actively grow them themselves. Wheat seemed to be the first of the farming crops, and barley, lentils and beans came after. By selecting the best strains the small wild plants were developed into bigger domesticated ones.

The second facet of this Urban Revolution lay in the domestication of animals. It is likely that dogs were the first animals to be trained and kept domestically, mainly for the purpose of hunting and later for herding and guarding livestock. Next came sheep, goats, cattle and pigs. The great advantage of domestication of animals was their provision of "living larders", which provided easy access to milk, meat and later, wool.

With these developments it was no longer necessary to roam for food, as much of what was needed could be found within a limited locality. There was also greater incentive to remain in fixed locations, as livestock had to be tended, and crops tended to. Man started to settle down, at first in small fairly isolated communities, and later into bigger ones. The first proper "town" (that being a self-sufficient, enclosed, permanent community) that is known of is the biblical city of Jericho, founded in 900BC. It was surrounded by a 3 m thick stone wall, strengthened by a 9 m high circular stone tower. Jericho's basis was agricultural, cultivating wheat and barley, and raising herds of sheep and goats. A local shrine has been uncovered, and traces of religious activity have been found there, dating to at least 7000BC.

This Urban Revolution spread quickly, first along the Jordan rift and along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and later, around 7000BC, also Mesopotamia and Anatolia. Smallish urban sites have been discovered in all these areas. The largest such site found so far is Catal Hujuk, founded in Anatolia, covering 13 hectares. It was built closely packed together and raised above the ground, so that access could only be gained by ladders. It had a curious source of wealth: the black obsidian to be found in the nearby mountains appears to have been traded. Catal too shows traces of religion and ritual. Human skulls have been found lined up on benches, beneath reliefs of bulls' and rams' heads; and in some of the buildings figurines of goddesses were found, shown pregnant or giving birth, perhaps mementos of a fertility cult. These artefacts, gruesome though some are, were harbingers of the birth of Civilization. That most humanising of all human traditions.

The achievements of the Neolithic Revolution spread from the Middle East in all directions, to the Balkans and to Europe, Eastern Asia and Africa. A similar process occurred independently in America a few millennia later. The result over all was the development of denser human populations around particularly fertile areas. Indeed, the earth may well have supported some 10 million people by the middle of the Neolithic period.

Further new inventions followed: textile weaving, pottery, and, by the seventh millennium BC, casting of gold and copper were discovered. Bronze was first cast in three thousand years later in the fourth millennium, and was used mainly for tools and weapons. From this new diversity of skills, long distance trade started to develop, laying the foundations for the communication that allowed a more global "history" of humankind, to flourish.

Go forth and multiply

A Neanderthal Child

Homo habilis seems to have lived in groups from an early period, as indicated by camp sites found in Tanzania, dating to 2 million years ago. Remains of roughly the same age have also shown strong evidence that Homo habilis constructed shelter, even huts. Not soon after – perhaps 1.7 million years ago, a more robust form of man appeared: Homo erectus – upright man.

Homo erectus had two great advantages over his predecessors. Firstly, his tools were rather more sophisticated than the rough implements that Homo habilis used. He was able thus to hunt, rather than scavenge, as his ancestors had done. Even so, remains of burnt berries found in China, suggest that mankind still made greater use of fruits and plants than he did for meant, to supply his nutritional needs. But even greater was the invention of fire. Fire, Prometheus’ gift to humankind, discovered about 1 million years ago was seminal in that it gave man the ability to protect himself from other animals, to shape the landscape, to warm himself at will, and of course, to cook. This was a definite nod of approval for the continued and ever more confident development of humanity.

All these advantages enabled Homo erectus to leave Africa, and move now throughout the world, passing the Middle East, and swerving to Europe and Asia. Early man settled throughout Asia fairly quickly. Archaeological evidence of human settlement in Asia ranges from 1.3 million years old in Java, to about 500,000 years old in Northern China. What has been found of early tools in Europe suggest that man laid foot there first, about 1 million years ago, although later tools have been found ranging from 700,000 to 400,000 years old. Wooden hut remains discovered in France are indicators of the fact that by this period (roughly 400,000 BC) man was building more sophisticated accommodation than the rough habitations that Homo habilis had managed. But in spite of such advantages, human skulls some of them half a million years old are a bleak reminder of the difficulties our ancestor must have faced daily in their struggle to survive: nasty fractures are a giveaway of the daily hazard that hunting (mainly with wooden spears) presented. Elephants, deer, horses, wild cattle and even rhinoceroses formed part of Europe’s early human inhabitants.

Undeterred, the evolution of humanity continued to produce much more recognisably “human” forms of Neanderthal and, our own progenitor, Homo sapiens sapiens – “wise, knowing man”. His very appellation gives good reason for optimism in the continued development of our species. It is almost certain that modern man originated in Africa, though Neanderthal skulls have been found mainly in Europe, parts of the Middle East, and south-western Asia, mainly dating from the period of the last ice age, 70,000 – 30,000 years ago.

Contrary to common belief, in spite of his rough facial features – a pronounced prow and a large brain casing (with a larger brain than modern man!) – Neanderthal wasn’t the clumsy, hairy buffoon so often caricatured. His hands were much like ours, and a Neanderthal child found in Gibraltar shows a striking similarity to any modern European child today. More striking still, Neanderthal wasn’t driven out, nor was he killed, but it was in fact a process of interbreeding that saw him absorbed by Homo sapiens sapiens. This is evidenced by skulls which show a hybrid of Neanderthal features and those of early modern man. Like more modern forms of man, Neanderthal had religious inclinations. Careful burials, and more gruesomely, evidence of cannibalism are some of the tell-tale signs.

It was to be Homo sapiens sapiens who would rule the earth. DNA evidence suggests that Homo sapiens sapiens, originating from Africa, is the ancestor of all the world’s races today, with phenotypic features evolving as a result of climate and environment rather than fundamental difference in DNA. It is a moving thought that all mankind can be traced to a few dozen human beings, who issued from Africa and traversed the world from there. Cave paintings and every more sophisticated hunting methods, show that Homo sapiens sapiens was indeed a “thinking man”.

First Life

The face of Australopithecus

The first life appeared around 1000 Million years after the formation of the Earth. Early life began in the sea, and consisted mainly of algae, plankton and bacteria. It was only 530 million years ago, during the Cambrian Period that life began to diversify in the sea, with mollusks, corals, vertebrates, amphibians and insects appearing around this time. Some of these creatures developed the ability to live on land at this time, and new forms of life evolved there. reptiles start to appear 200 million years later, with dinosaurs among them. These giants roamed the earth for 120 million years - a remarkable achievement for any animal - but disappeared 65 million years ago. The earth was inherited by the meek thereafter, with birds and mammals replacing their lacertian predecessors. These started off quite small, but gradually grew in size, and split into many of the species we would recognise today. A very familiar species started to appear not long after: 60 Million years ago, the first primates appeared, and slowly, they morphed into monkeys, apes and humans. The human story is the one of most interest from this point.

It was between 8 - 5 million years ago that the first primates distinct from apes appeared. The evidence found suggests that this development took place in Africa; 4 million year old footprints in Tanzania show a decidedly upright gait in whatever primate forms they were that roamed those regions then. But whatever these first hominids were, they walked upright as they adapted from forest to Savannah, as the Ice age climate changed (one theory suggests that because the ice held so much water, it was not moved, rainfall dwindled, and as the forest receded for wan of water, it left Savannah in its shadow). Whatever caused it to happen, these were the conditions which evolution waited for before throwing man onto the chronology of the world.

The first known hominids were the Australopiths - "man apes" - who were very much smaller than modern humans. The most famous of these was "Lucy", Australopithecus afarensis, the name given to a 3.5 million year old skeleton found in Ethiopia. The adults cannot have been imposing, at 3 - 4 feet in height, and not more than 30kg in weight., their brains too small for speech. But it was a start. Australopihticene man grew over time and their brains with them.

About 2.5 million years ago the first properly called "man" appeared: homo habilis, he was called. No longer an ape. His remains have been found in eastern and southern Africa. Homo habilis was roughly 5 foot in height, and weight 110 lb, with a brain of 800 cc to match (only 400 cc smaller than modern man). Importantly he had the first signs of speech.

What then is human? The traditional definition is based on the fact that humans fashion tools. It was around 2.5 million years ago that man began to use the first rudimentary tools, mainly wooded, or from reeds, barks and hides than stones. But it is from now that we speak of the Early Stone age first. His tools were sufficient to defend himself against carnivores, and for hunting, something made easier by his upright stance

Violent beginnings

A map of the world's tectonic plates

The earth is but a small planet among the innumerable galaxies and still yet more star clusters in the universe. It orbits an insignificant star in the outer trails of the Milky Way. Sun, earth, Milky way. We, as a planet, are not terribly important in the grand scheme of things. The earth is believed to be some 4.6 billion years old, but we need not go back quite so far in our story. I am concerned primarily with the human footprint on the planet. Small by the standards of time's expanse, but it is big enough to have a story, and a damned good one too.

It i said that no man is an island unto himself, but it is equally true that all men are on islands. More like giant tectonic plates, to be accurate. Our very existence is mounted on 12, enormous, rigid plates, resting on on a mantle, upon the molten core of the planet. The continents are carried on these plates. Oceans form as these plates move apart. Lava spills into the new sea-bed thus formed, and fills the resulting scars. Most of the plates have been identified and named. There is a Pacific Plate but not an Atlantic one, the reason being all the continents originally formed one landmass. About 180 million years ago, America began to separate from Africa and Europe, slowly opening the Atlantic Ocean in between. The final link-up between the central and southern Atlantic was established some 90 million years ago. This ocean is therefore bisected by a North American and a South American plate, reaching into its western part, and a Eurasian and African Plate reaching into its eastern Part.

Some 160 million years ago Antarctica, Australia, and India started to separate from Africa, tearing the Indian Ocean in their wake. Most of this ocean, and India and Australia are riding on this plate. Australia and Antarctica were cloven roughly 45 million years ago, while, a 35 millions of years earlier, Greenland broke from Canada, and 30 million years later, from Europe as well. Indeed, even today, Arabia is moving away from Africa and India is moving northwards into Asia. The Great Mountains Rockies, Andes, Himalayas, and the Alps are a result of these continental clashes, as the force of collision heaps great hunks of rock together.

While the rock of the earth solidified, new rock has accumulated below. The molten rock may remain deeper in the crust, cooling slowly, or in some cases it erupts as lava, forming volcanoes in the process. This is usually a lengthy and patient process, but the Capelinhos island in the Azores has actually grown since 1957 from sea level to over 3500 feet. Some volcanoes erupt violently. In 1833, Krakatoa in java sent a dust cloud right round the world, causing huge tidal waves and killing some 36,000 people. nearby, the Tambora volcano had erupted in 1815 with even worse casualties. Krakatoa thrust 18 cubic kilometres of material into the atmosphere, while Tambora raised 30 cubic kilometres - enough to mask the sun sufficiently to cool the earth, the following year being "the year without summer" for Europe. A 1783 eruption of volcano in Iceland caused lava to seep out continuously for 8 whole months. The 154 million tonnes of volcanic gases released, killed a fifth of Iceland's population.

As we take the pulse of history, violently throbbing sometimes, as it is pumped by violent events, it would be well to remember that the very drama of our existence is itself played out on these violent, clashing mounds of rock.

Beginnings: Prehistory or history?

Historians used to draw a clear line between history and prehistory. The existence of written records was a touchstone if one was dealing with "history". As writing was invented in around 3300 BC in Mesopotamia, all earlier developments were regarded as prehistory. This differentiation has lost much of its significance in recent times. Archaeology and its auxiliary sciences and techniques have progressed to the point where much can be discovered about an ancient civilisation even without written records. Radiocarbon dating, for instance, is based on the decay of the isotope Carbon 14, at the rate of halving every 5730 years. When burned charcoal or the bones of dead animals are found in an excavation, the age of that level can be ascertained.

At first there was much uncertainty about this method, as some of the results were unreliable. Further investigation showed that the reason for this was the past fluctuation in cosmic ray activity. This can now be overcome with the aid of dendrotechnology (a.k.a tree-ring dating) by a special calibration process. Further, objects made of fired clay, such as pottery, can no be dated using thermoluminescence. This is done by reheating the artifact in order to measure the light emitted by electrons which were freed by radioactivity, but remained trapped in the clay. By these and other methods, incredible results have been obtained in the dating of ancient remains.

As a result, events which took place thousands or even millions of years ago can be dated now. Questions such, "As when did man first appear, and where?" can be answered too. When did people emigrate to Europe, America, Australia. When did they first turn to hunting and to agriculture? can be answered with confidence, just as if we had written evidence of these events. Not only can archaeology give the date of a site or an event in the development of man, bit it can also supply details of the culture, customs, and religion of ancient cities and civilizations. the technology of excavation has been refined very much, both by exact stratigraphy (the relation of objects to the layers of deposits in which they are found) and by typology (the classification of objects according to types and their comparison with one another in order to determine chronological, geographical, and technical relationships).

Such related sciences as underwater archaeology, the analysis of food remains and textiles, the diagnosis of disease, o the interpretation of burial customs, have opened up new avenues for research. Our knowledge of what used to be termed as prehistoric cultures and events has advanced in recent years by leaps and bounds, and it is now possible to give a much fuller account of the development of early man than would have been possible even a few years ago.