Chapter 5: Worlds Turned Inside Out, 1000–350 bce
Chapter Summary
General:
Amidst the violent conflicts of the first millennium BCE, a new breed of teachers and thinkers emerged who sought to instruct rulers on how to govern and who promoted an ethical life for all people. They sought to provide new ways of viewing the world in societies in which warfare and social turmoil turned the world inside out.
Alterative Pathways and Ideas:
In the first millennium BCE, the societies beyond the regional empires—such as the river valleys of East and South Asia, the Caribbean coast of Mexico, and the coast of the Mediterranean—developed new, radical cultural and political ideas. These "second-generation" societies relied on their own innovations rather than on patterns borrowed from older societies, expanding the social, political, and cultural options available to men and women. A competitive environment of warfare and battles encouraged an intellectual curiosity as to who human beings were, how human behavior was to be explained and to what end it was directed. And the answers to these questions themselves resulted in intellectual disputes.
Eastern Zhou China (770-221 BCE):
In China, new leaders and thinkers did not challenge cultural orthodoxy, but rather looked to the past as a golden age that would show them how to govern complex states. While the Eastern Zhou dynasty (770-481 BCE), also called the Spring and Autumn period, saw fierce fighting among territorial states, the Warring States period (403-221 BCE) saw a multistate system that produced revolutionary developments in agriculture, politics, and society.
The Spring and Autumn Period:The New Worlds of South Asia:
The Spring and Autumn period experienced constant warfare among the 148 tributary states that recognized the Zhou dynasty. In response to the anarchic violence, major transformations occurred in politics and society: interstate conferences brought together regional leaders; new administrative units were established; and rulers were advised by ministers selected based on merit. Technological breakthroughs in smelting techniques allowed the production of iron to expand, creating cheaper, more lethal weaponry, which further accelerated the shift of power to local authorities. Regional states undertook large public works projects permitting the commercial integration of all the regional states.
The Warring States Period:
As seven large territorial states came to dominance, huge armies were mobilized and diplomatic alliances developed, furthering the practices of statecraft. Although the states sought to maintain a balance of power amongst themselves, the Qin state ultimately replaced the Zhou dynasty in 221 BCE. Despite the warfare, scholars and merchants thrived in the midst of an expanding agrarian economy, and new ideas soon to become foundational were formulated.
Innovations in State Administration:
During the entire Eastern Zhou era, states reorganized administrative structures to concentrate central power in the hands of the ruler and to oversee conquered territories. Administrative districts were established a registration system created for peasant households. Record keeping permitted officials to monitor rural populations. Official themselves gained status as "gentlemen" who served as partners of the rulers. Shang Yang of the Qin dynasty was the most successful minister in enhancing the power and size of the central government.
Innovations in Warfare:
Reforms in military recruitment and warfare result in large million-man armies. Massed infantries bearing iron lances became central to warfare, as large forces allowed states to fight several battles simultaneously. In addition, elite professional troops formed with advanced weaponry such as the crossbow as did the technology for siege warfare. In implement these new technologies successfully, the new professional office corps developed more sophisticated strategies and forms of military action.
Economic, Social, and Cultural Changes:
The incessant warfare of the Spring and Autumn period spurred economic growth. Agricultural productivity increased as rulers gave peasants the right to their land in exchange for taxes and military service. In addition, crop rotation and use of the iron plowshares improved productivity. Larger harvests promoted the emergence of a market economy. Rulers applied the skills gained in organizing the military to devising public works projects. Various project related to water control opened more acreage for cultivation. Expanding wealth created a society with more fluid social relations. Peasant soldiers could advance with military success. In contrast, gender relations became less flexible as male dominance within the family increased. Heavy moral and legal sanctions appeared against any threat to the purity of authoritarian male lineages.
New Ideas and the "Hundred Masters":
The warfare of the Eastern Zhou dynasty promoted intellectual creativity as the nobility whose power suffered sought new types of status through social and intellectual accomplishments. The most important of the "hundred masters" of the era was Confucius. The Analects—complied by his students after his death—collects Confucius's ethical teachings and cultural ideals. Confucius set forth a new moral framework stressing rituals, responsibility and loyalty to the family, and the perfection of moral character to become a "superior man"—a status available to a man of any background. Government should be directed by such men, in which case coercive laws and punishments would not be needed to sustain order. He support social hierarchy, but now a hierarchy based on education and moral cultivation rather than birth.
Shortly after Confucius, Mozi promoted a set of ideas called Mohism which emphasized each man's obligation to all other people, and not just his own family. Rather than ritual, Mozi emphasized the practical concerns of good government, opposing wars of conquest that wasted lives and resources. At the same time, Daoism emerged, scorning Confucian emphasis on rituals and hierarchy. Daoism stressed living according to the natural order of things in which spontaneity and passive acceptance of the world. Finally, Legalism emerged during the Warring State period, out of the writings of Xunzi. Legalism saw men and women as innately bad and requiring moral education and authoritarian control. Strict laws and harsh punishments would control the evil nature of people.
As the followers of Confucius became state functionaries, they focused their speculations on the need to maintain order and stability, limiting the range of their deliberations. The active participation in debates over government by high officers holders set China apart from other societies of this era.
In the first millennium BCE, the Vedic peoples of expanded eastward out of the Indus River valley. The warfare and political expansion that accompanied this movement led to political, social, and ideological transformations.
The Rise of New Politics:Common Cultures in the Americas:
Between 1000 and 600 BCE, Vedic peoples migrated eastward into the rice growing regions of the mid-Ganges plain. This movement was led by the Brahmans, an upper class of priests and scholars. Settlements and towns slowly evolved into small territorial states that feuded constantly with one another. Some states were ruled by a hereditary monarchy while others were ruled by a small elected elite, but in either case the Kashatriya aristocracy controlled the land and the resources. Kings or rajas often came from low-status clans that gained authority with their military strength.
Expansion of the Caste System:
As they migrated eastward, the Vedic peoples brought with them elements of the caste system. The larger farms in this region also brought more Shudras into the agricultural economy as jatis or subcastes of laborers. Jatis emerged many different trades and crafts, but shudras remained outside the Brahman-dominated society and invested their own social hierarchy based upon kinship and religious rituals.
New Cities and An Expanding Economy:
Around 500 BCE, cities began to appear on the Ganges with little planning but a particular concern for sanitation. As agricultural production increased, trade grew over longer distances, and groups emerged who financed trade and industry as well as those who produced craftworks. These groups formed into guilds who required members to marry within the organization, a practice by which the guilds were eventually transformed into jatis. Leaders of trade guilds gained financial influence in kingdoms and backed the issuance of silver coinage with specified values. Despite the caste system, cities allowed considerable social mobility, although the possibility of mobility also enhanced individual risk. And the sanitation of cities was maintained by establishing a group of ritually impure outcastes known as "untouchables" who handled the dirtiest jobs of removing garbage and sewage.
Brahmans, Their Challengers, and New Beliefs:
Brahmans found urban life profoundly unsettling as places where castes mixed indiscriminately. Further, the appearance of an alphabetic script around 600 BCE threatened the Brahmans' control over moral teachings as sacred knowledge became more accessible. The Brahmans sought to secure their relationships with the kings (rajas) by establishing the idea of a king endowed with divine power—and royal power would be validated through rituals performed by Brahman priests. Kshatriyas, especially those living in oligarchic republics, resented the Brahmans' claim to moral authority, as did merchants and artisans, and the Brahmans' dominance soon came under challenge.
Dissident Thinkers:
Dissident South Asia thinkers, both Vedic and non-Vedic in background, challenged the religious foundations of the Brahmans' worldview.
Mahavira and Jainism:
Inspired by the teaching of Vardhamana Mahavira, Jainism emphasized interpretations of the Upanishads for everyday life by encouraging asceticism as a means to purity of the soul. Since every living creature had a soul, Jainism adopted an extreme nonviolent tradition which would have a profound influence on South Asia thinking; however, this position also excluded peasants from the Jainist tradition since agriculture could not be performed without killing insects. Thus, Jainism became a religion of traders and city dwellers.
Buddha and Buddhism:
The most direct challenge to Brahman thinking came from Siddhartha Gautama, usually called the Buddha. Appalled at the misery and political carnage of the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, the Buddha objected to Brahman rituals and cosmology and to the preference for kingship that supported the priestly class. Instead, he promoted the Four Truths and the Eightfold Way that would lead individuals to reach a state of nirvana—the final liberations from life's troubles after achieving many merits during the course of many reincarnations of the soul. The simplicity and clarity of the Buddha's doctrine had powerful appeal. The Buddha and his followers preferred cities with large audiences and resources to support the growing community of Buddhist monks (sangha). The Buddhist did not seek to erase the caste hierarchy, but did provide an escape from its oppressive elements.
Lacking beasts of burden, the original inhabitants of the Americas lived in small groups and villages and did not develop substantial communication or trade over long distances. Regional diversity dominated the lifeways of inhabitants of the Americas.
The Chavín in the Andes (1400-200 BCE):Common Cultures in Sub-Saharan Africa:
The Chavín people formed in northern Peru, organizing trade up and down mountainsides, from the tropical lands and produce of the valley floors, to the fertile fields with maize and other crops in the mountain foothills, and to the highlands with potatoe cultivation and llamas. Since this ecological diversity allowed them to supply all their needs locally, there was only a limited need for long-distance trade. The Chavín people were united by culture and faith more than any political structure. Drawing on influences from as far away as the Amazon and the Pacific coast, they created devotional cults that focused on wild animals. Priests took hallucinogenic drugs which were believed to enable them to become jaguars.
The Olmecs in Mesoamerica:
Around 1500 BCE, the people of Mesoamerica began to organize themselves into a loose confederation of villages. These Olmec peoples shared a common language, traded with each other, and worshipped the same gods. These decentralized villages contained hundreds of households in which farmers and also produced lightweight products such as ceramics to other communities, especially products intended for religious purposes.
Cities as Sacred Centers:
The primary cities of the Olmecs were religious and secular hubs that bound together surrounding agrarian hamlets. The cities were build around specialized buildings that features palaces, platforms, and plazas with massive stone monuments. Olmecs paid daily homage to their gods and rulers, primarily in the cities. Shamans were believed to have special powers to commune with the dead and to transform themselves wholly or partly into beasts. Olmecs also developed a tradition of sports with large athletic fields. Playballers gained renown and received trophies and rewards, and ball playing rituals were were particularly associate with worship of the powerful rain god. Rainmaking rite included forms of human sacrifice were captives were executed and dismembered.
Man, Nature, and Time:
The Olmec cosmology believed that the supernatural pervaded the natural world, which led them to explore the natural world to learn about the gods and their desires. Olmec particularly focused on astronomical and calendric issues that related to the seasons and rainfall.
A World of Social Distinctions:
Despite their decentralized agricultural society, the Olmecs had an elaborate cultural system with many tiers of social ranking. The priestly elite controlled the exchange of sacred objects, a task that consumed immense resources and sustained their ties to the ruling families. The secular elite included chieftains who supervised agrarian transactions, craft work, and accepted tribute from villages. The Olmecs had a degree of social cohesion unprecedented in the Americas, and their influence radiated beyond the Olmec heartland.
The Loss of Centers:
The breakdown of Olmec culture is shrouded in mystery. Evidence from some cities suggests a dramatic shift while others indicate that religious centers were simply abandoned. The exchange of ritual objects seem to have failed, and the Olmec hierarchies collapsed.
In the first millennium BCE, Africa became divided into four distinct geographical zones: the Sahara Desert, the Sahel, the Sudanic savanna region, and the western and central African rain forests. Only in the Sudanic savanna region did relatively large populations exist. The Sudanic people had domesticated beasts of burden, and although their region of development spread across a vast region of some 4000 miles, they had much in common. Their cosmology was dominated by a high god, and their polities were led by sacred kings.
Meroe: Between Sudanic Africa and Pharaonic Egypt:Warring Ideas in the Mediterranean World:
The kingdom of Meroe developed in the region just south of the Egyptian pharaonic state in southern Nubia and was influenced by this contact northward. The region, however, was also influenced by its contacts with the people of sub-Saharan Africa southwards. A thriving center of production and commerce, the people of Meroe were skilled in iron smelting and the manufacture of textiles.
West African Kingdoms:
Similar sacred kingships emerged in West Africa, most spectacularly the Nok culture which arose in the sixth century BCE in modern-day Nigeria. Iron work was significant to the Nok peoples, which also produced magnificent terra-cotta figurines that were used as altarpieces. Suib-Saharan Africa remained a highly diverse place in which both simple hunter-gathering peoples lived as well as sophisticated farming societies. Advances in metalworking improved agricultural techniques, with the result that agricultural productivity and population increased substantially.
The violent upheavals at the end of the second millennium BCE freed the residents of the Levant, the islands of the Aegean and Mediterranean, and mainland Greece from domination by the large territorial states of Southwest Asia. In response these people absorbed rapidly changing cultural and technical knowledge and devised new ways of organizing their societies. The seaborne people of the Mediterranean Sea basin shared trade goods and new ideas about the virtues of self-sufficient cities in which power was shared. Refinements in maritime technology and better practical knowledge of the winds, currents, and shoreline were central to the expansion of trade and large-scale population movements. The Phoenicians sailed the Mediterranean and even ventured into the Atlantic. The epic story of Homer's Odyssey reflected the new kinds of mobility and transforming encounters with other peoples.
A New World of City-States:Conclusion:
As order returned in the ninth and eighth centuries BCE, populations created independent, self-governing city states. Characterized by intense internal and external competition, these city-states became commercial centers which established colonies throughout the Mediterranean.
Self-Government and Democracy:Economic Innovations and Population Movement:
The city-states that emerged through the Mediterranean were based upon a new principle of rulership in which "citizens" of these cities governed themselves and selected their leaders. Although the form of self-governance varied, the inhabitants of the city-states ran the city's affairs. The city-states included adult male citizens, foreign immigrants, other free persons (such as women, who could not vote or hold office), and large numbers of unfree persons.
Families as the Foundational Units:
The central social unit in the city-states was the household, out of which, Aristotle held, the state grew. Free men were lords over their wives and children and masters of their slaves. Adult women were permanently enclosed within the private world of the family and had no standing in public matters.
Competition and Armed War:
Lacking strong central governments, the city-states became free-wheeling and competitive places with sometimes violent rivalries. Only the unusually city-state of Sparta avoid most internal strife. Competition for honor and prestige found one outlet in athletic competitions, the greatest of which was the Olympic Games. Competition also existed between city-states and warfare remained a frequent feature of the landscape. Protracted wars such as the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE) between Athens and Sparta ate away at the resources of city-states, but did help prepare the city-states to defend themselves against external enemies.
The economic growth of the city-states led them to found colonies throughout the Mediterranean. They easily defeated local resistance to their takeover of lands, and in the northern frontier communities bought or captured slaves, which further contributed to the city-states' wealth and growth.
Free Markets and Money-Based Economies:New Ideas:
The city-states developed open trading markets and a system of money to enable buyers and sellers to know the value of commodities. The marketplace was at the center of the city-state. Money connected producers and buyers with each other, and city-states struck coins of various values.
Trade and Colonization:
By 500 BCE Phoenicians, Greeks, and others had planted new colonies in the Western Mediterranean and on the Black Sea, especially in regions where high-value commodities could be obtained. Once established, these colonies became completely independent entities, and in the coastal world city-based life became common. A Mediterranean-wide urban culture emerged, embraced by wealthy and powerful elites.
Humans for Sale: Slaves and Slavery:
The treatment of humans as property for trade and sale produced a new form of slavery called chattel slavery. Slaves were purchased for use in difficult and dangerous tasks, such as mining, and were essential to all the new city-states for manual and technical labor. The seaborne communication networks facilitated the ability to acquire and transport slaves, which became one of the most profitable businesses of the entire Mediterranean.
Encounters with Frontier Communities:
The network of Mediterranean city-states influenced peoples across the north of western Eurasia. Change occurred slowly in these frontier lands of small villages and nomadic bands. Drawn to the wealth of the city-states and seeking its products—money, wine, and weapons—the tribal often became an armed threat to the core societies of the Mediterranean. Called "barbarians" by the Greeks and considered uncivilized, the Greeks and Phoenicians believed their lands could be seized and colonized and the people captured and sold as chattel slavery.
In the absence of monarchical or priestly rule, ideas were free to arise, circulate, and clash publicly.
Naturalistic Science and Realistic Art:
Inhabitants of the new city-states took a naturalistic view of humans and their place in the universe. Their art depicts human beings constantly adapting to the realities around them. These more objective views of humans and nature were turned into ideals, the highest of which was the nude human figure. The human nude—both in art and in everyday life—signaled a sharp break with the moral codes of older societies of Southwest Asia. Artists and writers claimed credit for their work and explored their own emotions.
New Thinking and Greek Philosophers:
Rather than focusing on the gods, new thinkers looked to nature itself for explanations of the universe. Theories about the universe became ever more radical as thinkers sought to out do one another. Xenophanes doubted the existence of gods as they had been portrayed since various ethnic groups described the gods in their own image. Democritus asserted that everything humans saw were made up of small particles he called atoms. Pythagoras argued that many physical phenomena were based in numbers. The Greeks called this new speculation philosophia and enjoyed the public debates that ensued as they considered humans and their place in society. These debates became more difficult as prolonged military conflicts weakened the services city-states could provide to their inhabitants. As social discontent grew, skepticism emerged about the political viability of independent cities. Socrates asked people questions designed to encourage people to reflect on ethics and morality. Plato described his vision of a perfect city ruled by philosopher-kings and promoted his belief in perfect eternal archetypes as models humans should seek to emulate. Aristotle believed that the patterns would be better identified by studying the world around him so that these patterns could reveal the most successful ways of living.
In the areas peripheral to the regional empires, smaller-scale polities emerged. City-states created great social dynamism, and thinkers came to the fore with new perspective on humans and their role in society. In other, more isolated regions, such as Olmec society and sub-Saharan Africa, distinctive regional cultures emerged defined by shared faith, texts, and teachers and prophets. The world was being carved into culturally distinct regions.
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