Origin of Civilization

by Scott MacEachern

Streaming video, 2009

Status

Available

Call number

909

Publication

The Great Courses (2009), 24 hours, 48 lectures

Description

What defines a civilization? How did the first states emerge? How were the world's ancient states similar and different? Answer these and other dramatic questions with this grand 48-lecture course that reveals how human beings around the world transitioned from small farming communities to the impressive cultural and political systems that would alter the course of history. Taking a gripping archaeological and historical approach to formative states such as the ancient Egyptians, the Chinese, and the Maya, Professor MacEachern completes your understanding of the history of civilization by exploring it at its earliest stages. Unlike traditional surveys of ancient civilizations, which tend to focus only on the glorious achievements of these cultures, you'll look at those first all-important steps that the world's first civilizations would take on the road to glory. You'll investigate places such as Mesopotamia, where agriculture laid the foundation for groundbreaking experiments in social and political development in places like Uruk and Sumer;?the eastern Mediterranean, where expanding maritime trade during the Bronze Age increasingly knit the different societies of these islands into a web of political and economic relationships; and Mesoamerica, where the indigenous states in and around what are now Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua reveal the full flowering of Olmec and Maya civilization. You'll also take an engaging look at what archaeologists have learned from some of the world's oldest and most intriguing sites. In the end, these lectures will leave you awestruck at the diverse ways that ancient people crafted complex systems - systems whose broad strokes remain with us even today.… (more)

Language

English

Original language

English

Local notes

[1] Ancient states and civilizations [2] The history of archaeological research [3] Studying the origins of states [4] Archaeological interpretation: Catalhoyuk [5] Stepping stones to civilization [6] Trajectories of Cultural Development [7] When is a state a state? [8] A complex neolithic: Halafian and Samarran [9] Hierarchy and urbanism: 'Ubaid Mesopotamia [10] The Uruk world system [11] Sumer and afterward [12] Civilization and Pastoralism in Mesopotamia [13] The development of writing in Mesopotamia [14] The gift of the Nile [15] The Egyptian Predynastic Period [16] The unification of upper and lower Egypt [17] Divinity and display in Dynastic Egypt [18] why so different? Mesopotamia and the Nile [19] Borders and territories of Ancient States [20] The Levantine Copper and Early Bronze Ages [21] Hierarchy and society in the Aegean [22] Early Minoan and Mycenaean Civilizations [23] Palace and Countryside on Crete [24] How things fall apart: The greek Dark Ages [25] First Farmers in the Indus Valley [26] Cities along the Indus [27] Seeing what we expect: Power and display [28] Sedentism and agriculture in early China [29] State formation in Ancient China [30] Origins of the Chinese writing system [31] From human sacrifice to the Tao of Politics [32] Spread of States in Mainland Southeast Asia [33] Axumite Civilization in Ethiopia [34] Inland Niger Delta: Hierarchy and heterarchy [35] Lake Chad Basin: Settlement and complexity [36] Great Zimbabwe and its successors [37] Sedentism and agriculture in MesoamericaI [38] The Olmec of lowland Mexico [39] Teotihuacan: The first American city [40] Beginnings of states in lowland Mesoamerica [41] The Great May City: States [42] Epigraphy: Changing views of the Maya [43] Was there a Maya collapse? [44] Adaptations in Pacific South America [45] Pyramids and Precocity in coastal Peru [46] Andean Civilization: Chavin to Chimu [47] The Florescence of the Inka Empire [48] Ancient States: Unity and Diversity?