First things first:
How exactly do we define a civilization?
We’re going to source National Geographic for this one.
According to them, civilizations share the following characteristics:
They have large population centers
They have monumental architecture and unique art styles
They have shared communication strategies
They have systems put in place for administering territories
They have a complex division of labor
and they have social and economic class divisions
You’ll also notice that most, if not all,
civilizations flourished around bodies of water,
that’s just because water equals natural irrigation,
source of drinkable water,
natural plumbing… you get the gist.
You’re watching Explore Mode and today
we are diving into four of the oldest civilizations in the world.
Let’s start with the oldest civilization ever, the Mesopotamian Civilization.
This civilization emerged between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the Middle East,
more specifically, in modern-day Iraq and Kuwait.
It lasted from 3500 BC to 500 BC
and it’s known as the cradle of civilizations due to the many early societies and empires that
arose from it, which include the Sumerians, Akkadians, Persians, Babylonians and Assyrians.
Human settlements in Mesopotamia date all the way back to the Paleolithic era,
known as the period of early human cultural development.
And boy, did the Mesopotamian people develop.
In the year 3500 BC, the Mesopotamian city of Uruk had a population of around 80,000 people,
making it the largest city of its time.
Mesopotamians had other things going on too.
They were dabbling in metalwork, literature, textile weaving, irrigation, agriculture,
the wheel, sailboats, cuneiform texts (which, is one of the earliest writing systems in human history)
the sexagesimal math system (which we continue to use today to define time,
astrological measurements and even geographical coordinates.)
This is the perfect time to shout out to our previous video on the history of timekeeping!
We cover how the Sumerians used the sexagesimal system,
early timekeeping methods, modern timekeeping devices etcetera, etcetera.
Click on the card or check out the description box below if you want to learn more!
They also created the Code of Hammurabi, one of the earliest and best-preserved written
legal codes created by King Hammurabi who reigned from 1792 to 1750 BC
during the Babylonian dynasty.
Actually, let’s get into an Explore Fact.
You know the old saying? An eye for an eye?
Yeah, that was an actual law in the Code of Hammurabi. Law number 196 stated,
“If a man destroys the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye.”
This kind of law is known as “lex talionis” or law of retaliation, essentially, the punishment
of an unlawful act needs to be equivalent somehow to the offense committed.
The Code of Hammurabi didn’t just cover eye destruction either.
There are 282 laws carved onto the diorite stela covering,
agriculture, property damage, murder, marital affairs, extra-marital affairs,
women’s rights (whatever that meant at that time), slave rights, wages, slander,
trade and many more.
Speaking of trade, the first long-distance trade took place between
Mesopotamia and the Indus River Valley Civilization, the next civilization up in our list.
This civilization is named after the river system it was located
around which is now modern-day Northeast Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwest India.
Its existence spanned from the year 3300 BC to 1300 BC.
Like the Mesopotamians, the Indus River Valley Civilization also had a writing system,
called the Indus script.
There is one problem though, no one has been able to decipher their script,
therefore, the knowledge we have today on
this civilization is heavily reliant on archeological evidence.
Luckily for us, this civilization left a lot behind,
including two of its major cities: Mohenjo-daro and Harappa.
The remains of these two cities show extraordinary organization, engineering,
urban planning, and architecture for their time.
Both cities were built on a grid-based design and their buildings were
made of bricks, clay bricks in Harappa and fired and mortared brick in Mohenjo Daro.
Mohenjo-Daro was the largest of the two cities, covering 500 acres.
In fact, it’s the largest city of this civilization and one of the largest urban centers of the ancient world.
The city is divided into two areas, the Citadel and the Lower City.
The citadel contains one of the most remarkable archaeological remnants of the city,
an 83 square meter bathing pool
fed by the Indus River called The Great Bath, which leads us to the Explore Fact for this civilization.
Sanitation, sewage management, and water systems are three things that the
people of the Indus River Valley Civilization had in check.
Mohenjo-Daro alone had 700 freshwater wells inside its walls.
But the most remarkable development of the Indus River Valley Civilization
was its drainage system.
Most buildings andhomes had their own bathrooms which were in
turn connected to a centralized drainage system connected by several brick-made underground drains.
By the force of good ole trusty gravity, waste would be carried out of the city or
into large cesspits that would be periodically emptied, keeping their homes and city squeaky clean.
Oh, and how do we know they traded with the Mesopotamians? Well, long story short,
archeological evidence shows that Indus jewelry and large seals with nonother than Indus script
on them have been found in Mesopotamian territories, suggesting that these two civilizations were
in fact connected and making business together.
At the same time Mohenjo-Daro was being constructed,
around 5,080 kilometers to the west, pyramids were being raised.
This brings us to our next civilization: The Ancient Egyptian Civilization… you’ve probably heard of it.
A lot can be said about the ancient Egyptians. Much of which has been extensively, yet questionably,
covered by Hollywood. Although we can’t blame them for being obsessed with the Egyptians.
Not only is this civilization arguably one of the most artistically developed,
but it also went through vast transformations over the millennia. There is A LOT to say about
the Ancient Egyptians, so we’ll run you through some basic facts
(there’s still one more civilizations to go, after all).
So, basic facts! The Egyptian Civilization grew
in the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is currently modern-day Egypt.
Its history is divided into three periods:
DISCLAIMER: The dates of these periods vary depending
on who you source, and whether or not they include certain periods. We’re citing the
Ancient History Encyclopedia for this.
The Old Kingdom period spanned from 2613 BC to 2181 BC.
It’s also known as the Age of the Pyramid Builders as it was during this period
that the pyramids of Giza were built.
Specifically, during the fourth dynasty, under the rule
of Pharaohs Sneferu, Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure.
In fact, The Sphinx was built for King Khafre
and the Great Pyramid of Giza for King Khufu himself.
Then came the Middle Kingdom which
lasted from 2040 BC to 1782 BC.
Many reforms took place during these years but this period
mainly stands out for its literary and artistic growth.
Egyptian glyphs became widespread and used to tell stories during this time.
The New Kingdom which spanned 1570 BC to 1069 BC
is probably the most well-documented period of Egyptian Civilization due to the expansion
of the ancient Egyptian written language that took place in the previous period.
The pharaohs who reigned during this period are among the most well known today,
these include Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti,
King Tutankhamun, who became famous after his tomb was discovered
in 1922, and Ramesses the Great.
These larger periods were interrupted three times by smaller Intermediate Periods,
but maybe that’s another Explore Mode on its own.
The ancient Egyptians also had a lot to do with the history of timekeeping.
Sundials, water clocks and the division of days all come from them.
Want to learn more? You know where the card button is!
Next on our list is another civilization with a thing for pyramids: The Mayan Civilization.
One of the most prosperous pre-colonial peoples in the Americas. And no, before you ask,
they did not predict the end of the world. Long story short, their long count calendar stopped
in 2012 because it marked the end of a period.
Did it signify the end of the world and the
beginning of the apocalypse? No. Glad we got that out of the way. Moving on.
Mayan people settled in Southern Mexico and Northern Central America in around 1500 BC.
As this civilization developed, so did its cities and religious buildings.
Its largest urban centers are Tikal,
located in modern northern Guatemala, Copan, located in western Honduras and Palenque,
located in southern Mexico, each of which was ruled by a King.
The Mayans were heavily religious and their art and architecture were deeply connected to their beliefs.
Most of the pyramids at the center of their cities had divine and astronomical purposes.
As a matter of fact, the Maya were exceptional at mathematics and predicting celestial movements.
Let’s jump into an Explore Fact. The Mayan people were pretty darn good at a lot of things.
First off, they built complex cities and temples without modern inventions like the wheel.
They had their own mathematical system and they invented the concept of zero.
Their hieroglyphic writing system is the only writing system developed by a Mesoamerican civilization and
their calendar systems were extremely accurate. They could predict solstices and eclipses
and their calculations of the lunar month were even more accurate than those of Greek
astronomer Ptolemy down to the decimals.
Their preferred method astronomical tool? Their eyes.
No really, they used naked-eye astronomy, which is pretty impressive considering Ptolemy
had access to tools such as armillary spheres and quadrants.
Although the ancient Mayan Empire eventually fell, the Maya people did not.
On the contrary, they have survived colonization and bloody civil wars.
According to the Ancient History Encyclopedia,
there are 6 million of them today, who continue keeping this ancestral civilization alive.
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See you next week, and in the meantime, remember to keep your explore mode: on.