Classical Studies 2700B

 

Introductory Lectures

 

Basic definitions:

 

“Culture”:  “All the historically created designs for living, explicit and implicit, rational, irrational and non-rational, which exist at any given time as guides for human behaviour.”

Note: culture is learned.

 

“Technology”: “The sum total of all the techniques possessed by the members of a society; that is, the totality of their ways of behaving in respect to collecting raw materials from the environment and processing these to make tools, containers, foods, clothing, shelters, means of transportation and many other necessities.”

 

 

A.   Prehistoric Period (pre-civilization)

 

            I  Paleolithic (Old Stone) Age  (Food Gathering)

 

              Emergence of genus Homo from Hominids (human types) late in Pliocene Epoch: AUSTRALOPITHECUS > Homo habilis c. 2.5 million years ago.

              

  Lower Paleolithic Age – Chellean and Acheulean cultures : core tools; various exotically-named examples (including Sinanthropus Pekinensis [Peking Man]); all now considered HOMO ERECTUS  c. 1.6 million years ago.

 

  Middle Paleolithic Age – Mousterian culture: flake tools; Homo Neandertalensis (probably not form of Homo Sapiens) c.200,000 years ago until c. 36,000 BC.

 

  Upper Paleolithic Age – Aurignacian, Solutrean and Magdalenian cultures: blade tools; Cro-Magnon people = wholly modern humans; i.e., HOMO SAPIENS, which may have originated c. 100,000 years ago in Africa; but not in Europe until c. 40,000 BC (great cultural leap forward then?).

 

 

II  Neolithic (New Stone) Age  (Food Production)

 

  Starts with “Mesolithic” (Middle stone)  period—a transitional phase (from c. 14,000 to c. 8,000 BC), which ended early in the Middle East, but lasted much longer in other areas (e.g., c. 4,000 BC in W. Europe).

 

  Neolithic proper runs from c. 8,000 to c. 3,000 BC: development of agriculture and animal husbandry.

 

B.    Ancient Near East  (earliest civilizations)

 

Mesopotamia

 

c. 5,000  Earliest cultures

c. 3,500   Uruk culture—SUMERIANS:

key people until c. 2000 (city states,

then early empires.)

After this Semitic-speaking peoples come

to the fore.

c. 2,000 to 1595: Old Babylonian period,

including empire of Hammurabi.

1365: Rise of Assyria, but no Assyrian

Empire until 745 (lasts until 612); followed

by Neo-Babylonian Empire, which falls to the Persians in 539.

 

 

Egypt

 

c. 4500  Prehistoric cultures

c. 3200  Archaic period: unification;

c. 2660  Old Kingdom: pyramids

c. 2180 1st Intermediate Period

c. 2080  Middle Kingdom

c. 1785  2nd Intermediate period: Hyksos

1570  New Kingdom:

1570-1304 XVIII dynasty: Empire

1304-1181 XIX dynasty: Rameses II

1181-1075 XX dynasty: Sea Peoples

1075  Late period