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1 Becoming Human
2 Rivers, Cities and the Rise of Complex Societies, c. 4000-2000 BCE
3 Nomads, Territorial States, and Micro-Societies, 2000-1200 BCE
4 First Empires and Common Cultures, 1200–350 bce
5 Worlds Turned Inside Out, 1000–350 bce
6 Shrinking the Afro-Eurasian World, 350 bce–250 ce
7 Han China and The Roman Empire, 300 BCE –300CE
8 The Rise of Universal Religions, 300–600 CE
9 New Empires, and Common Cultures, 600-900 CE
10 The World Becomes “The World,” 1000-1300 CE
11 Crises and Recovery in Afro-Eurasia, 1300-1500
12 Contact, Commerce, and Colonization, 1450-1600
13 Worlds Entangled, 1600-1750
14 Cultures of Splendor and Power, 1600-1780
15 Reordering the World, 1750–1850
16 Alternative Visions of the Nineteenth Century
17 Nations and Empires, 1850–1914
18 An Unsettled World, 1890–1914
19 Of Masses and Visions of the Modern, 1910-1930
20 The Three-World Order, 1940–1975
21 Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: Globalization 1975-1999
22 Epilogue, 2000–2007

Chapter 2: Rivers, Cities and the Rise of Complex Societies, c. 4000-2000 BCE

Research Topics

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Historical detectives - Deciphering evidence from early riverine societies in Mesopotamia, South Asia, and East Asia.

Early riverine societies of the third millennium achieved different levels of sophistication and complexity, which has both hindered and aided historians´ quest to better understand them. Ample evidence from each society has been discovered, but some evidence is more revealing than others. Historians traditionally have relied on written record or textual information as a preferred source. But textual records from the third millennium are not as readily available as from later periods for a variety of reasons. Historians have thus turned to material culture as a method of inquiry. Examine the following examples of both textual information and material culture from Mesopotamia, the Indus River Valley, and East Asia. What do they reveal about the level of development of each society? Why do historians know more about Mesopotamian society than the other two?

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