Prehistoric Asia Q2 (PDF)

SURVEY IN ASIAN CIVILIZATION CHAPTER 1 A HISTORY OF ASIA BY MURPHEY, RHOADS, STAPLETON, & KRISTIN - Other finds suggest that this species was W1: PREHISTORIC ASIA reasonably wi...

SURVEY IN ASIAN CIVILIZATION CHAPTER 1 A HISTORY OF ASIA BY MURPHEY, RHOADS, STAPLETON, & KRISTIN - Other finds suggest that this species was W1: PREHISTORIC ASIA reasonably widespread in Asia by 1.51million years ago. TOPIC OVERVIEW - have been found in Yunnan in southwest China dated about a million years ago, and A. Early and Paleolithic Cultures near Xi’an in the northwest B. The Neolithic Revolution C. Origins of Civilization in India HOMO NEANDERTHALIS D. The Indus Civilization a. Relations with Sumer - about 150,000 B.C.E, a new species b. The Cities of the Indus c. Decline and Fall - from the Neander River valley in Germany E. The Aryans where one of the first find was made a. Aryan Dominations F. Agricultural Origins in Southeast - the chief successor to Homo erectus Asia G. Peoples and Early Kingdoms of HOMO SAPIENS Southeast Asia Scholarship on Southeast Asia distinguished - has been the only human inhabitant of the H. Prehistoric China globe I. Korea and Japan J. Early Asian Commercial and Cultural - they are most marked in shades of skin and a Networking few other superficial and external features such as hair color and texture, amount of body hair, and facial features A EARLY AND PALEOLITHIC CULTURES HOMO FLORESIENSIS - found on the island of Flores, east of Java and human species seem clearly to have evolved Bali. first in East Africa some three million years ago - half the size of modern people, lived about 13,000 B. C.E Paleolithic period (the Old Stone Age) - Nicknamed the Hobbits, these late Paleolithic million years or perhaps more, these creatures died out by about 6000 B.C.E creature exist : fashioned handheld stone axes with a cutting edge, HOMO ERECTUS probably used for chopping, scraping, and digging, and may have been cannibal - slightly smaller than modern humans but walking erect, using fire, and making crude the hand axes they produced were remarkably stone tools uniform and looked much the same at sites scattered over most of Asia, Africa, and Europe as - had spread to Asia and Europe far as Britain. people who lived or remained in hot, sunny climates - were made in Java ( now in Indonesia ) in retained what was probably the original human skin 1891 and near Beijing in 1921 color - “Java Man” and “Peking Man” ( Peking is dark, as a protection against strong sunlight the old spelling of the Chinese capital, Beijing, near where the find was made ) PAGE 1 HANA MARLEY GUARINO BAH 1-2  SURVEY IN ASIAN CIVILIZATION CHAPTER 1 A HISTORY OF ASIA BY MURPHEY, RHOADS, STAPLETON, & KRISTIN colder or cloudier climates slowly evolved lighter skin in response to the beneficial effects of CHRONOLOGY sunlight on the body, especially as a source of vitamin D. 1 million B.C.E - Homo erectus widespread in Asia the units of the Old World divided only by the narrowest of water barriers (the Bosporus and 40,000 B.C.E. - Homo sapiens widespread in the Gulf of Suez) Asia “the world island”—were largely isolated from each other by deserts and mountains 10,000 B.C.E. - Origins of agriculture in Southwest and Southeast Asia the minor physical differences are now observe between humans of European, African, and Asian 6000–300 B.C.E. - Jōmon culture in Japan origins slowly began to emerge 5000–1000 B.C.E.- Agriculturalist Inuit (Eskimos) and American Indians share some physical characteristics with Asians, since migrations from south China into peninsular their ancestors migrated from eastern Asia Southeast Asia replacing and assimilating thousands of years ago. Malay hunter-gatherers there are few discernible physical differences 4000 B.C.E. - Urbanization in Sumer between contemporary humans and those who lived (Mesopotamia) and in Egypt when recorded history begins 2500–2000 B.C.E. - Longshan and Yangshao Well-preserved bodies from the Egypt of 2500 pottery cultures in China B.C.E 2000 B.C.E. - Urban centers in China for example: Bronze culture in Southeast Asia from Han dynasty China of the first century C.E. are indistinguishable from people today, 1600–1400 B.C.E. - Aryans to India including what evidence remains of skin and hair, tooth and bone structure, vital organs, brain 1600–1050 B.C.E. - Shang dynasty capacity, and so on. Chinese civilization in Korea million years ago, people gradually learned to use 600 B.C.E.—200 C.E. - Dong Son bronze fire, build shelters or make use of caves, and fashion drum culture (northern Vietnam and across garments out of skins or furs; slowly they improved Southeast Asia their stone tools and increased the effectiveness of their hunting, 500 B.C.E. - Iron use in Malay Peninsula and island Southeast Asia however, the pace of change began to quicken, probably hastened by the last phase of glacial ice advance 300 B.C.E.—300 C.E.- Yayoi (Japan) Magnificent paintings on cave walls in 6000–300 B.C.E. - Jōmon culture in Japan northern Spain and southern France, then near the edge of the glacial ice sheet, the skill and artistic imagination of the people who created them and suggest a highly developed social organization The game, such as the wooly mammoth, that the Paleolithic people had hunted also moved Rock and cave paintings from the latter part of northward or became extinct this same period in North Africa, the Middle East, and monsoon Asia suggest similar developments. Basic changes in the environment required basic human adjustment, as had been necessary when the By this time, Homo sapiens had migrated from the ice sheets were advancing. Old World to the Americas and to Australia PAGE 2 HANA MARLEY GUARINO BAH 1-2  SURVEY IN ASIAN CIVILIZATION CHAPTER 1 A HISTORY OF ASIA BY MURPHEY, RHOADS, STAPLETON, & KRISTIN Some groups developed new techniques, including the bow and arrow, for hunting in the forest; others moved to coastal sites and lived primarily on 1. the uplands of Southwest Asia fish surrounding the Tigris-Euphrates lowland of Mesopotamia significant and rapid changes were beginning to take place in drier areas, centered in the region we 2. the Nile delta call Mesopotamia or Southwest Asia. 3. coastal Peru, where remains of clearly B THE NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION domesticated animals and even grindstones have been found Neolithic is to some degree a misnomer, it means 4. and the coastal or near-coastal areas literally “New Stone Age,” referring to the rapid improvement and new variety in finely made stone of mainland Southeast Asia. tools There is clear evidence of early settlement in the end of the period tools and weapons began to be southern Anatolia (now in modern Turkey), made of metal Palestine and Syria, northern Iraq, and western Iran. revolution is more appropriately applied to the beginnings of agriculture. Early Neolithic stone-toothed sickles dated to about 10,000 B.C.E have been found here and have a a great increase in population, the accumulation of sheen from cutting such grasses with their grain surpluses, the consequent need for writing (in part head to keep records), and the growth of the first cities, from which our word civilization comes,via gathering such grasses or grains in the wild to plant its Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit roots. them, perhaps originally by accident, in fields that then could be prepared and tended until harvest. Early cities in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley had bureaucrats, tax collectors, priests, after 10,000 B.C.E stone mortars appeared, metalworkers, scribes, schools, housing and traffic indicating that the grain was milled (ground into problems, and almost all of the features of our own (our) and that it helped to support a population times. already beginning to grow beyond what could be sustained by hunting and gathering. human society, and their problems have not changed much since the building of the first cities Sheep, goats, and dogs were domesticated instead of five thousand years ago being hunted as prey or used as hunting assistants. The Neolithic revolution in agriculture and town building transformed the lives of everyone involved. thousand years later cattle and pigs had joined the list of domesticate over several thousand years, probably first in Southwest Asia and Egypt and then spreading to other parts of the Old World; similar developments there is a reasonably clear record of this in eastern Asia and muchlater in Mexico and Peru evolution probably began independently. 1. Jericho in southern Palestine Neolithic - stage of development, with its 2. Cayonu and Catal Huyuk in southern Anatolia associated technologies and living patterns. It came 3. Jarmo in northern Iraq later in Western Europe and most of the rest of the 4. Hassuna and Ali Kosh in western Iran world; isolated areas such as Australia or the tropical rain forests By about 7000 B.C.E there were large and numerous storage pits for grain, and early clay pots for the same purpose and for carrying or storing Archaeological evidence suggests four main water. By this time cultivated wheat, barley, and areas as the earliest cradles of settled peas had clearly evolve agriculture: PAGE 3 HANA MARLEY GUARINO BAH 1-2  SURVEY IN ASIAN CIVILIZATION CHAPTER 1 A HISTORY OF ASIA BY MURPHEY, RHOADS, STAPLETON, & KRISTIN world’s first written texts, which have been preserved on clay tablets. The Neolithic revolution was completed with the development of metalworking and the production of bronze tools and weapons. Technological innovations - developed independently in different places and at different times. Copper - the first metal to be worked, in both the Old and New Worlds Some people were able to pursue nonfarm occupations, and there was more leisure time for experimentation artisan techniques, including the smelting and working of metal better tools for farming, clearing trees, and building By about 4000 B.C.E. or slightly earlier, agricultural towns and cities provided further incentives. techniques were far enough advanced and populations large enough to permit an expansion Human settlement - been dated to about 7500 into the different environment of the B.C.Ein South Asia, Tigris-Euphrates lowland, the Nile valley, and somewhat later the Indus Valley in what is agricultural and irrigation techniques spread east now Pakistan. from Mesopotamia and western Iran, and by at least 3500B.C.E both were fully developed at sites in Indus Valley suggests a connection to early eastern Iran, Afghanistan, Balochistan, and the agricultural settlements in eastern Iran and fringes of the Indus Valley. Afghanistan, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus Valley, as well as coastal Peru, irrigated agriculture was fully established on the were desert or near-desert,with a few scattered 'floodplain of the Indus and its major tributaries, oases in Iran, but the river 'floodplains, given where the first true cities of monsoon their fertile alluvial soils and long growing seasons of high temperatures Asia arose, growing out of Neolithic villages and towns The Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, and Indus Rivers are fed by rains and snowmelt in their mountain source Indus crop was wheat, probably derived from areas, with seasonal flooding. Southwest Asia in its later cultivated form rather than its wild form destructive aspects of these floods had to be controlled to permit permanent agriculture problems of drainage to be solved, especially C ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION IN INDIA in the lower course of the Tigris-Euphrates, where the two rivers meet and empty into the Persian Gulf together through what was originally a vast, India’s is the oldest still in continuous existence swampy delta. Techniques of irrigation were developed at about the same time in lower Egypt. Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations came to an end by Roman times and were later villages began to grow into small cities at the superseded by the Arab conquest. conjunction of the Tigris and Euphrates and in the lower Nile. have little or no connection with ancient Sumer or the time of the pharaohs, leaving India as the oldest Mesopotamia, perhaps slightly earlier than in survivor. Egypt, these first true cities included Ur, Nippur, Uruk, and Eridu. Their names are recorded in the PAGE 4 HANA MARLEY GUARINO BAH 1-2  SURVEY IN ASIAN CIVILIZATION CHAPTER 1 A HISTORY OF ASIA BY MURPHEY, RHOADS, STAPLETON, & KRISTIN It was not far from Sumer to India, by ship east Weights and measures at all these sites were along the sheltered coasts of the Persian Gulf and uniform, further emphasizing the unity of Indian Ocean to the mouth of the Indus River. Harappan culture. a vast culture complex, covering by far the largest the route by land across Iran and Baluchistan ran area of any of the ancient civilizations, is called the through desert with few oases, but it was used, too. Indus civilization. Neolithic developments in agriculture and large, had a close relationship to the river and its settled villages or towns emerged at several tributaries, a situation very like that in Sumer and locations along this land route in Egypt. , Agriculture had also appeared on the Indus the Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates rivers, the floodplain by the sixth and fifth millennia Indus is an exotic river, that is, one that originates in a well-watered area about 3000 B.C.E true cities had arisen in the Indus Valley, much as early agriculture in the The Himalayas, the source of snowmelt and the highlands around Mesopotamia later spread onto heavy monsoonal rains of summer, flow across the riverine lowlands lowland Punjab and arid Rajasthan into the desert of Sindh to reach the sea near modern Karachi. new challenges to early agriculturists: All of this lowland area is dry, and the lower half of the Indus Valley is virtually desert, as in Sumer and Egypt, so agriculture is dependent on irrigation 1. how to control river flooding Annual river floods provided both water and highly 2. manipulate irrigation fertile, easily worked alluvium, or silt. 3. drain swampy land Indus and the Saraswati, another river somewhat to the east that no longer exists, where evidence of even more settlements can be agricultural techniques ultimately made it possible found—offered cheap, easy transport for to exploit the potentially rich agricultural resources bulky goods such as grain or building of the lowlands materials Consistent agricultural - surpluses provided the basis for cities characterized by literacy, the D1 RELATIONS WITH SUMER use of metal, the capacity to store surplus food, a division of labor, and great sophistication in the arts, in building, and in town planning. some linguistic evidence that they were ancestors of the present inhabitants of southern India, although some scholars suspect a D THE INDUS CIVILIZATION closer link with the peoples of Iran. Indus script has no resemblance at all to anything from Sumer, and especially not to cuneiform chief urban centers so far discovered are Kalibangan in modern Rajasthan (probably the Indus civilization was not an offshoot of earlier oldest city site yet found in India) Mesopotamian developments but an independent creation Harappa in what is now the Pakistani part of Punjab, and Mohenjo Daro on the lower course Before the beginnings of city-based civilization in of the Indus. India, cuneiform had replaced earlier pictographs in Sumer. Ganges and south to near modern Mumbai, show similar forms of settlements, pottery, seals If the Indus civilization had been an outgrowth of (for marking pieces of property), and artwork. Sumer, it would surely have used cuneiform, or at least shown some connection with earlier Sumerian writing systems. PAGE 5 HANA MARLEY GUARINO BAH 1-2  SURVEY IN ASIAN CIVILIZATION CHAPTER 1 A HISTORY OF ASIA BY MURPHEY, RHOADS, STAPLETON, & KRISTIN art of the Indus people, and their remarkable city planning, are also completely distinctive and show monkeys no relation to Sumerian equivalents. precious stones incense The seals that they used are very similar to spices those of earlier and contemporary “apes, ivory, and peacocks” of the Bible Mesopotamia, and we know that from at least 2500 B.C.E. there was trade between them. Meluha must have been India, but it is not clear Objects from India at this period have been whether people from Sumer went there or whether found in Sumer, and Sumerian objects in the Indus people, or some intermediary, carried India. their cargoes to Dilmun. Because seals were probably used primarily to Indus civilization emerged is difficult to mark property or goods, they were adopted determine, beyond the rough guess of by the Indus people in the course of their trade approximately with Sumer. earliest objects that have been dated cluster around But in all other respects, their civilization was 2500 BCE but they come necessarily from upper distinctively their own. site levels and from a period when the urban culture was already well advanced Trade with Sumer took place both overland and through the port of Lothal on the coast below the We do not know what the builders of these cities mouth of the Indus called themselves or their settlements remains of large stone docks and warehouses THE PLACE NAME USE ARE MODERN have been found. These were associated with a city that was clearly part of Harappan culture (a convenient shorter label for the Indus civilization). Mohenjo Daro means “place of the Bahrain Island, has yielded objects from both dead.” Sumer and India and seems to have supported a major trade center “India” which is derived from Sanskrit Sindhu Sumerian texts speak of a place called Dilmun, was probably Bahrain - greek called the land they encountered in Alexander’s time HIND the Persian and modern Indian name for India - the same root, as is Hindu, Hinduism, Hindustan (stan means “country”), and the province of Sind (or Sindh) in the lower Indus Valley. The first external account of India is by the Persians in the time of Cyrus the Great (r. 550–530 B.C.E), who added the northwest briefly to his empire; they rendered Sind or Sindus as Hind or Hindush, establishing a form that has goods were found from a place they called Meluha persisted. TO THE EAST: D2 THE CITIES OF THE INDUS ivory peacocks PAGE 6 HANA MARLEY GUARINO BAH 1-2  SURVEY IN ASIAN CIVILIZATION CHAPTER 1 A HISTORY OF ASIA BY MURPHEY, RHOADS, STAPLETON, & KRISTIN these cities were the source of their municipal water supply, led by gravity from upstream, a Animal sculpture and bas-relief, including the technique later used by the Mughal emperors figures on many of the seals, were superbly done for their palaces in Delhi and Agra and include very large numbers of bovines, mainly the familiar humpbacked cattle importance attached by the Indus people to personal use of water already suggests the evidence suggests that the reverence for life and the distinctively Indian emphasis both on bathing or quest for nonviolent solutions that mark the washing and on ritual purity consistent Indian stress on the great chain of being and the oneness of creation had emerged already by Harappan times. RELIGIOUS FIGURES FOUND INDUS FOOD CROP THE INDIAN GOD SHIVA wheat- probably derived originally from Creator and Destroyer, god of the harvest, of the areas to the west cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth, and also the barley primal yogi, represented, even then, seated with peas arms folded and gaze fixed on eternity beans oil seeds FIGURE OF A MOTHER GODDESS fruits phallic images, and the worship of cattle are other vegetables elements that provide a link with classical and dairy products- from domesticated cattle modern Indian civilization and sheep HARAPPAN BELIEFS INDUS TOOLS the distinctively Indian idea of reincarnation and the made of bronze endless wheel of life stone wood houses in these cities were remarkably uniform, and later in centuries iron began to appear suggesting an absence of social distinctions, and and was used were arranged along regular streets in a semi grid pattern. Rice- appeared as a minor crop only toward the Most of the cities feature a large public bath and end of the Indus period, imported from other buildings that were probably municipal Southeast Asia as a crop plant via contact with granaries or storehouses. the Ganges Valley. Sugar cane- native to India and was first STYLES CHANGED, AS ANYWHERE ELSE cultivated there, but more is now grown in the IN THE WORLD OVER A THOUSAND better-watered Ganges Valley. YEARS: abstract The remains of successive dikes speak of efforts to realistic protect even the cities themselves against floods and major course changes, not always successfully. idealized and so on. there was no building stone in this flat and semi an enormous number of clay and wooden children’s arid or desert region, and the cities were built of toys have been found, including tiny carts pulled by brick tiny oxen or little monkeys that could be made to climb a string. The ruins of Harappa were first investigated in This suggests a relatively prosperous society that the 1850s by a British military engineer. could afford to devote resources to play—a tribute to the productivity of its irrigated agriculture. noticed the strange dimensions of the bricks and other fragments brought to him by Indian Cotton, indigenous to India, was woven into cloth contractors for railway ballast earlier here than anywhere else. PAGE 7 HANA MARLEY GUARINO BAH 1-2  SURVEY IN ASIAN CIVILIZATION CHAPTER 1 A HISTORY OF ASIA BY MURPHEY, RHOADS, STAPLETON, & KRISTIN These proved to be samples of the Indus script, resulting from earthquakes to which the area is traced back to the site of Harappa. prone—could also deprive a city or an irrigated area of its water. D3 DECLINE AND FALL The agricultural surpluses that had built the cities and nourished their culture shrank and then disappeared, leaving only a remnant population third millennium B.C.E the Indus civilization living on a relatively primitive level in the ruins of began to decline the once-great cities. The port of Lothal was abandoned by about 1900 The people who built it, or their descendants, B.C.E and the other major centers probably probably dispersed eastward into the Ganges supported only a fraction of their earlier Valley and southward into peninsular India, populations, huddled in a small part of the taking their culture and technology with decaying city. them. EVIDENCE OF VIOLENCE AT SOME OF E THE ARYANS THESE SITES Aryan has two meanings ASHES 1. It is a linguistic term referring to a group of languages. UNBURIED OR HEADLESS CORPSES 2. It is the name of a group of people who entered the VICTIMS PERHAPS OF BANDIT historical record in South Asia around four RAIDS ON DEFENSELESS CITIES thousand years ago. in the twentieth century, to refer to an idealized but people encountered some specific problems nonexistent “race.” resulting from their desert or semiarid environment, problems that may quickly have about 1600 B.C.EMa series of migration waves become overwhelming. moved out from South-Central Asia,including what is now Iran Irrigation- leads to the progressive buildup of salts and alkaline left behind by the evaporating the seaborne invaders of Greece, arriving after water and not washed away adequately by rainfall. 1000 B.C.E Also raises the water table, which may drown crop roots. the Kassites, who invaded and conquered Sumer about 1750 B.C.E salts and alkaline reach levels toxic to plants or when the root zone is flooded, agriculture may the Hittites, who occupied northern Anatolia about rather suddenly come to an end. 1900 B.C.E Both problems have affected many arid irrigated The group moved eastward through passes in the areas in recent centuries, including the drier parts Hindu Kush range into India sometime after of the United States and the region of the Aral about 1800 B.C.E and called themselves Sea in Central Asia. Aryans. Indus Valley- large parts of the areas cultivated in they spoke an early form of Sanskrit but were ancient times appear to have been abandoned illiterate, semi nomadic tenders of cattle, sheep, and goats who also hunted, cultivated wheat and barley, recurrent 'flooding and shifts in river courses not and raided more highly developed agricultural only menaced the cities directly but also indirectly settlements undermined their agricultural base by destroying or choking with silt the irrigation What little we know about them comes from their ritual hymns, the Vedas, and from later epic poems, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, tales of heroic deeds and warfare written down PAGE 8 HANA MARLEY GUARINO BAH 1-2  SURVEY IN ASIAN CIVILIZATION CHAPTER 1 A HISTORY OF ASIA BY MURPHEY, RHOADS, STAPLETON, & KRISTIN many centuries later in Sanskrit, the classical Aryans brought with them their male and warlike language of India. gods and their male-dominated culture, which slowly blended with the female goddesses of early Aryans had acquired literacy, plus the arts of India. agriculture, city building, and other aspects of civilization, presumably from interaction with the These warlike Aryan groups had conquered or more highly developed communities already in absorbed most of India north of the Vindhya india Range, which divides and protects the peninsular south and the Deccan Plateau the society and culture of the Vedic period (c. from the Ganges and Indus Valleys of the 1000–c.500 B.C.E) north. combination of Aryan, Harappan, and other speaks mainly four non-Indo-European languages indigenous Indian elements. Sanskrit is the oldest collectively known as Dravidian written language among the ancestors of modern European languages, and it is also the direct Aryan pressures or influences, but in fact ancestor of the languages of modern northern India. interactions with the “Aryan” north have proceeded on a heavily traveled two-way street for thousands Sir William Jones, who established the clear link of years now, in religion, art, literature, among all the Indo-European tongues—Greek, philosophy, and many other aspects of Latin, Celtic, Persian, and Sanskrit, as well as their culture. modern derivatives great epic poems, the Ramayana and the Research has shown that the common ancestor of Mahabharata, speak of the south and of Ceylon the Indo-European languages was probably in (now Sri Lanka) as inhabited by savages and western Asia about 4000 B.C.E and that the demons with whom the Vedic heroes were at war daughter languages diverged from it as different migrations went both east and west. Aryan control except where coastal plains at the western and eastern ends of the Vindhyas allowed easier access. E1 ARYAN DOMINATION Ceylon was, however, invaded by sea and settled by an Aryan-speaking group in the sixth century B.C.E and, soon thereafter, or possibly earlier, also by Aryans had an advantage over the older Dravidians from southern India. communities in South Asia Aryans glorified war and used it to subdue a more F AGRICULTURAL ORIGINS IN peaceful Indian population SOUTHEAST ASIA Kassites, Hittites, Hyksos invaders of Egypt, and Dorian or Mycenaean Greeks made a similar Asia has an unbroken growing season and ample impact in the Mediterranean world with the same rainfall, and both rice and several tropical root and tactics. tree crops were native in wild form. Vedas and epics tell the story of Aryan victories RICE would become the most important crop, early over “alien” peoples, whose cities they besieged developments in Southeast Asia probably centered and conquered, led often by their warrior god Indra on root crops, easily cultivated in this tropical riding in his chariot with his great war bow. climate by setting cuttings in the ground. Vedas and epics portray the Aryans as godlike TARO AND YAMS are still grown this way all over heroes and the conquered as “irreligious” inferior Southeast Asia and offer plentiful output for people. minimal labor. Arya means “noble” or “pure” in Sanskrit; the RICE CULTIVATION first emerged along the same root word appears in the Greek arios (“good Yangzi River in what is now central China quality”) and in the names of Iran and Eire sometime around 8000–7000 B.C.E (Ireland), illustrating the Indo-European connection. It spread southward to the coastal regions, where wild strains grew around the shores of the Bay of PAGE 9 HANA MARLEY GUARINO BAH 1-2  SURVEY IN ASIAN CIVILIZATION CHAPTER 1 A HISTORY OF ASIA BY MURPHEY, RHOADS, STAPLETON, & KRISTIN Bengal and in the valleys of the great rivers likely relatively egalitarian in the earliest of the Indo-Chinese peninsula. communities early cultivation could be supplemented by warfare became common and physical strength fishing and by collecting from fixed shellfish beds more important. Women were probably the pioneer farmers, sowing and tending crops while about 8000 B.C.E. or probably about as early as in the men were out hunting and gathering. Southwest Asia, a late. Neolithic culture that archaeologists call Hoabinhian had evolved in what is now northern Vietnam. G PEOPLE AND EARLY KINGDOMS OF SOUTHEAST ASIA some debate about whether the few identifiable food remains represent wild or cultivated forms. Southeast Asia distinguishes between “insular” and “peninsular” Southeast Asia. This includes rice, which is present as impressions in hardened clay pots in the earliest layers. INSULAR - consists of the many island chains that Remains of chickens and pigs, bronze tools extend between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. and weapons, and the presence of a large cemetery at one of the sites certainly suggest PENINSULAR - the territory on the Eurasian agriculture to support such a large and technically mainland between today’s India and China. advanced population. INSULAR SOUTHEAST ASIA - there is a clear The extremely fertile volcanic soil of the island line of demar- cation, ethnically and culturally, of Java and of parts of nearby Sumatra (both now in between the Philippines and Indonesia west of New Indonesia) may well have supported early Guinea on the one hand, and the Pacifc and agricultural beginnings. Australasian world on the other. Pigs (as opposed to the more widely occurring wild boar) and chickens (originally jungle fowl) G1 THE LATTER are native to mainland Southeast Asia They spread from Southeast Asia westward to India, Mesopotamia, and Europe and New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Australia northward to China, Korea, and Japan, together with the water buffalo, also native to and New Zealand, and the many tiny islands of first domesticated in Southeast Asia. the South Pacific eastward from there—Melanesia, Micronesia, and MILLET was not native, but was introduced from northwest China or from Central Asia, and, hence, Polynesia, the latter reaching as far as the could be grown only on a tended basis Hawaiian Islands millet was better suited to uplands or to elevated In the 1950s Indonesia took over western New sites than to the floodplains Guinea as part of its territory about 1000 B.C.E. with the development of the Philippines, Indonesia, and the Malay controlled irrigation, flood management, and the Peninsula on the mainland were probably rise of rice as the dominant crop, that farmers settled by successive groups of migrants who are began to occupy and increasingly called Malays and who belong to a common culture concentrate in the lower river valleys and and language family deltas Malays of Malaysia and Indonesia speak the taro, a root crop, may have dominated the same language, with regional differences, and the agricultural system, because it is a water-loving many languages of the Philippines are all in that plant probably domesticated !rst in upland areas same group little evidence about gender roles before the start Peninsular Southeast Asia received a series of of written records, but in monsoon Asia, as migrants from the north over a long period who elsewhere, relations between the sexes were PAGE HANA MARLEY GUARINO BAH 1-2 10  SURVEY IN ASIAN CIVILIZATION CHAPTER 1 A HISTORY OF ASIA BY MURPHEY, RHOADS, STAPLETON, & KRISTIN populated the areas that are now Burma, China is most clearly documented archaeologically Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. for the north China plain of the Yellow River (or Huang He) communities in this region all speak languages related to Chinese and Tibetan but Southeast Asia and south China before the rise unrelated to Malay or the languages of India, of the Chinese Empire, developments in although Burmese and Thai are written in an south-central China may have been even earlier Indian-derived script than in the north South China was far more closely linked to Rice, pigs, chickens, water buffalos, and adjacent Southeast Asia than to environmentally bronze would easily have spread northward, very different north China until the first Chinese following tributaries of the Yangzi River. empire united most of the present country into a single state in 221 B.C.E ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE IS MUCH easy access between northern Vietnam and LESS COMPLETE FOR SOUTH CHINA THAN southeast China, by river and across a low FOR NORTH CHINA ( for the same reasons that mountain range, and until about the third century. explain its scarcity for Southeast Asia: ) there was little or no distinction between the two areas in people, language, and culture. Chickens, pigs, and water buffalo moved north from their origins in mainland Southeast Asia to high humidity, ample rainfall and Neolithic south China, high temperatures Rice moved south from the Yangzi region to the which rapidly break down organic remains. But the seacoast. south has also been much less investigated archaeologically than the north, and future &nds Bronze culture flourished from 500 to 300 B.C.E. may well alter the present picture in northern Vietnam during what is called the Dong Son era, and variants of the large ceremonial bronze drums produced there can recently have revealed traces of advanced be found in "thailand and Burma farming, bronze-making, and town-building cultures at several places in south and Burma and THailand were progressively settled central China by somewhat different groups coming originally from mountainous south China Excavated sites in the south are too few as yet to demonstrate what may well have been still earlier agriculture and bronze technology developed developments in domesticated root crops, if indeed very early in mainland Southeast Asia and adjacent any evidence remains south China. North of mountain-girt Sichuan Province technology also spread throughout what is now and north of the lower Yangzi Valley, the Indonesia, but we have no evidence of cities in this floodplain of the Yellow River and its tributaries is period. by contrast a semiarid area of precarious and limited rainfall, with a long, cold winter what we call civilization, came to all of Southeast Asia except northern Vietnam from great agricultural advantage of north China India beginning about the second century B.C.E as has always been its highly fertile soil, often found in part of the larger spread of Buddhism, semiarid areas, in this case deep deposits of Hinduism, and other aspects of Indian culture wind-laid dust called loess the first Southeast Asian states or kingdoms, Yellow River plain, open for cultivation and for they already seem thoroughly Indianized or, in transport of surpluses and other goods, offered the northern Vietnam, Sinicized (based on the Chinese same advantages as the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, pattern) and Indus Valleys The Yellow River was less useful for H PREHISTORIC CHINA navigation. Neolithic cultures in north China were probably producing pottery as early as or perhaps earlier than in Southwest Asia PAGE 11 HANA MARLEY GUARINO BAH 1-2  SURVEY IN ASIAN CIVILIZATION CHAPTER 1 A HISTORY OF ASIA BY MURPHEY, RHOADS, STAPLETON, & KRISTIN pottery fragments from Japan have been dated to wide range of sizes and shapes and was baked in a about 8000 B.C.E and it is unlikely that kiln, although it was made without the potter’s development there was earlier than on the wheel. mainland. the culture’s original domain extended from Pottery suggests the need for storing surpluses Gansu in the northwest eastward into and, hence, at least the beginnings of agriculture, Henan, where it overlapped with another late but the emergence of farming Neolithic culture called Black Pottery—or Longshan, from a major site in Shandong Province early crop plant in north China was millet, like wheat a drought-tolerant steppe grass Black Pottery ware was of fine quality and often elegant in design, wheel-made and kiln-fred at millet suggests that agriculture in the north was an temperatures over 1,000 degrees centigrade independent development rather than a diffusion from either South or Southwest Asia Painted Pottery ware shows any connection with Mesopotamian or Indus pottery major early northern site has been excavated at Banpo near modern Xi’an, which was well late Neolithic Chinese cultures still used stone established as a small village by at least 4000 B.C.E tools, including finely worked and polished arrowheads and some smaller bone tools such as people grew millet and kept sheep, goats, needles and fishhooks and pigs, supplementing their diet with river fish and game the Longshan or Black Pottery culture, perhaps by that time merged in part with the Rice and water buffalo probably did not spread Painted Pottery culture, was building larger and widely to the north until about 1500 B.C.E larger villages, now better called towns first form of rice domesticated from its wild the first north China bronze ornaments and ancestor was a warm-climate plant, and as its weapons, probably mainly for ceremonial use cultivation spread northward different varieties since no bronze tools have yet been found from this were developed that were better suited to colder period temperatures and shorter growing seasons Longshan sites included bronze foundries and The varieties later diffused to Korea, and produced fine black pottery whose quality and from there to Japan. shapes closely resemble those of the Shang heavy water demands of rice, rather than the the Shang built one of their early capitals on the cold winter and shorter growing season, that slowed foundations of the late Longshan town at Ao, its spread in north China. near modern Zhengzhou in Henan Banpo and most of the many other early northern about 1600 B.C.E and constructed a political order sites are in the loess uplands well away from the that extended across north China main floodplain of the Yellow River. Excavations in Sichuan Province at Rice could now be irrigated with river water Sanxingdui demonstrated that a large city and from shallow wells. occupied the site around 1200 B.C.E having developed independently of the Shang. Wheat and barley are not native to East Asia and must, therefore, have been introduced from civilization in both north and south China Southwest Asia some time between 4000 and 1000 owed little if anything to early developments in B.C.E. Southwest Asia, Mesopotamia, or the Indus Valley Banpo people belonged to an early stage of what is China does not seem to have been in contact with called the Painted Pottery culture, or those areas or to have received anything from them Yangshao, taking its name from a village in Henan until considerably later, when wheat, barley, Province where the major land was made. alfalfa, donkeys, the horse, and the spoked chariot were diffused to China between about Painted pottery was covered with intricate 1800 and 600 B.C.E the story of the Shang dynasty, geometric designs, in red or black; it included a and the spread of a unifed Chinese state southward, PAGE HANA MARLEY GUARINO BAH 1-2 12  SURVEY IN ASIAN CIVILIZATION CHAPTER 1 A HISTORY OF ASIA BY MURPHEY, RHOADS, STAPLETON, & KRISTIN In the second century, an unsuccessful rebel against the Han dynasty fled to Korea and I KOREA AND JAPAN established was called Choson, with its capital at Pyongyang, Millet-based agriculture, accompanied by still the capital of North Korea domesticated pigs, sheep, and goats, spread from north China to the Korean peninsula by about 2000 Han emperor Wudi conquered Choson in B.C.E 109–108 B/C/E. and added further territory in central Korea under his control. millet cultivation in the Han River valley near Seoul as early as 5000 B.C.E. Rice and bronze Before the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 B.C.E entered later, via north China, possibly aided by the most of the Chinese garrisons had been withdrawn 'ow of refugees from the fall of the Shang dynasty, or absorbed, and from 220B.C.E. onward Korea about 1100 B.C.E remained an independent state, or states, since it was long divided into rival kingdoms rice varieties adapted to a colder climate continued in Korea by purposeful selection Chinese colonies planted under the Han survived in the north and continued to transmit Chinese Korean people migrated there from the cultural influences north via Manchuria, probably from an original homeland in what is now Siberia and northeastern Korean states explicitly sought to adopt many Russia elements of Chinese culture and continued to admire it as a model while maintaining their Korean spoken language, unrelated to Chinese political independence. Three rival Korean and part of the language family of northeast Asia kingdoms emerged after the end of Han Chinese called Altaic control Koreans were tribal peoples with a fishing, Japan has developed and preserved a separate hunting, and gathering culture identity, and its culture has remained distinctive even as it has accepted innovations from the They produced technically advanced pottery mainland very early, perhaps as early as 6000 B.C.E and later, after the emergence of agriculture, built large above according to present archaeological ground tomb chambers of stone blocks, often evidence, a great variety of early Neolithic cultures mounted over with earth. As their culture began had arisen in Japan, of which the best known is to shi" into farming, permanent villages and called Jomon (“cord-patterned” a)er its towns arose and bronze weapons and distinctively decorated pottery) ornaments appeared The Jomon people themselves were quite diverse Korean tradition dates the founding of a Korean and often in conflict. Some groups may have begun state to 2333 B.C.E by a ruler who was the son of to practice a rudimentary agriculture the divine creator and a female bear in human form — like the origin myths of many Jomon people lived in sunken pit shelters, where societies, including those of Japan and China remains of pottery have been found, and engaged in hunting, gathering, and fishing Another myth has it that a royal refugee from the fall of the Shang founded the state of Choson (an have been as advanced as the Banpo people old name for Korea) of north China and possibly a little earlier in achieving such a level. the third century B.C.E iron technology had also spread from China to Korea The Jomon people were only very indirectly and partially the ancestors of the Japanese. Chinese border kingdom of Yan with its capital near modern Beijing apparently also Japanese people can be traced back to migrants had some control over southern Manchuria and from Northeast Asia or Siberia; these migrants northern Korea spoke an Altaic language related to Korean but not to Chinese. PAGE HANA MARLEY GUARINO BAH 1-2 13  SURVEY IN ASIAN CIVILIZATION CHAPTER 1 A HISTORY OF ASIA BY MURPHEY, RHOADS, STAPLETON, & KRISTIN archaeologists regularly make discoveries that shed Other groups already inhabiting the Japanese more light on this fascinating period islands were absorbed into Altaic-speaking communities, and those few who were not absorbed shall see more clearly that interregional were slowly driven northward. trade and mutual cultural influence within monsoon Asia peaked and dipped over the Some believe that Jomon people displaced in this centuries, depending on political and technological way are the ancestors of the Ainu people of developments, as well as on environmental factors Hokkaido in today’s northern Japan. Migrants from Korea most likely developed the early agricultural Neolithic culture called Yayoi Yayoi used the potter’s wheel, cultivated rice, practiced irrigation, and had begun to use bronze and iron, all of these things diffused from earlier developments in China and entering Japan from Korea few Chinese coins and polished bronze mirrors found at Yayoi sites show that there was trade between the two areas the Longshan, Yayoi bronze objects seem to have been ornamental or ceremonial; the few weapons that have been found are too thin to have been used in combat the third century B.C.E the Yayoi began to construct large earthen mounds over the tombs of prominent men, a practice presumably derived from Korea The fifth century iron swords and iron armor similar to those found at sites in Korea appeared. Jeweled crowns and other ornaments found in some of the tombs also resemble early Korean artifacts containers and stylized clay figures of earlier Yayoi, pottery was fired at higher temperatures for a harder time finish. Now inhabited by people whom we may legitimately call Japanese, Honshu and Kyushu had reached the technological levels achieved by the Shang in China Japan still lacked writing, and we have no evidence of cities or of the emergence of a true state J EARLY ASIAN COMMERCIAL AND CULTURAL NETWORKING the spread of Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures across Asia certainly involved exchange as well as independent parallel developments, and PAGE HANA MARLEY GUARINO BAH 1-2 14