The origin of civilization
Sound recording - 2010
Around 10,000 years ago, the small group of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers that had walked the earth for millennia gave way to increasingly complex Neolithic villages of agricultural producers. Around 4,000-5,000 years later, people had gathered in urban settings, established laws, and developed cultural and political systems. This remarkable change took place in Mesopotamia, on the North China plain, in the Indus Valley, in the Nile Valley, on Aegean islands, in Africa, and in America. What motivated these new forms of culture and social and political complexity? Why did they appear where they did? This course brings together findings from both archaeological and anthropological scholarship to answer these questions and to deepen our under...standing of the first human states and civilizations.
- Subjects
- Published
-
[Chantilly, Va.] :
Teaching Co
[2010]
- Language
- English
- Main Author
- Edition
- [PDF workbook version]
- Item Description
- "The Great courses, Topic: History ; Subtopic: Ancient history"--Cover.
"Course no. 3130"--Disc labels.
48 lectures lasting 30 minutes each.
Accompanying CD-ROM contains course workbook in PDF format.
Compact discs.
Accompanying PDF contains course workbook in CD-ROM format. - Physical Description
- 24 audio discs (approximately 1440 min.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in. + 1 computer optical disc (4 3/4 in.)
- Format
- PDF requires Adobe Reader or PDF reader.
- ISBN
- 9781490678399
- Disc 1. Ancient states and civilizations
- History of archaeological research
- Disc 2.Studying the origins of states
- Archaeological interpretation-- Çatalhöyük
- Disc 3. Stepping stones to civilization
- Trajectories of cultural development
- Disc 4. When is a state a state?
- A complex neolithic-- Halafian and Samarran
- Disc 5. Hierarchy and urbanism-- 'Ubaid Mesopotamia
- Uruk world system
- Disc 6. Sumer and afterward
- Civilization and pastoralism in Mesopotamia
- Disc 7. Development of writing in mesopotamia
- Gift of the Nile
- Disc 8. Egyptian predynastic period
- Unification of upper and lower Egypt
- Disc 9. Divinity and display in dynastic Egypt
- Why so different?-- Mesopotamia and the Nile
- Disc 10. Borders and territories of ancient states
- Levantine copper and early bronze ages
- Disc 11. Hierarchy and society in the Aegean
- Early Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations
- Disc 12. Palace and countryside on Crete
- How things fall apart-- the Greek dark ages
- Disc 13. First farmers in the Indus Valley
- Cities along the Indus
- Disc 14. Seeing what we expect-- power and display
- Sedentism and agriculture in early China
- Disc 15. State formation in ancient China
- Origins of the Chinese writing system
- Disc 16. From human sacrifice to the Tao of politics
- Spread of the states in mainland southeast Asia
- Disc 17. Axumite civilization in Ethiopia
- Inland Niger delta-- hierarchy and heterarchy
- Disc 18. Lake Chad basin-- settlement and complexity
- Great Zimbabwe and its successors
- Disc 19. Sedentism and agriculture in Mesoamerica
- Olmec of lowland Mexico
- Disc 20. Teotihuacán-- first American city
- Beginnings of states in lowland Mesoamerica
- Disc 21. Great Maya city-states
- Epigraphy-- changing views of the Maya
- Disc 22. Was there a Maya collapse?
- Adaptations in Pacific South America
- Disc 23. Pyramids and precocity in coastal Peru
- Andean civilization-- Chavín to Chimú
- Disc 24. Florescence of the Inka empire
- Ancient states-- unity and diversity?