西方文明史01

22 The West is an idea. It is not visible from space. An astro- naut viewing the blue-and-white terrestrial sphere can make out the forms of Africa, bounded by the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean. Australia, the Americas, and even Antarctica are distinct patches of blue-green in the darker waters that surround them. But nothing comparable separates Asia from Europe, East from West. Viewed from 100 miles up, the West itself is invisible. Although astronauts can see the great Eurasian landmass curving around the Northern Hemisphere, the Ural Mountains—the theoretical boundary between East and West—appear faint from space. Certainly they are less impressive than the towering Himalayas, the Alps, or even the Caucasus. People, not geology, determined that the Urals should be the arbitrary boundary between Europe and Asia. Even this determination took centuries. Originally, Europe was a name that referred only to central Greece. Gradually, Greeks extended it to include the whole Greek mainland and then the landmass to the north. Later, Roman explorers and soldiers carried Europe north and west to its modern bound- aries. Asia too grew with time. Initially, Asia was only that small portion of what is today Turkey inland from the Aegean Sea. Gradually, as Greek explorers came to know of lands far- ther east, north, and south, they expanded their understand- ing of Asia to include everything east of the Don River to the north and of the Red Sea to the south. Western civilization is as much an idea as the West itself. Under the right conditions, astronauts can see the Great Wall of China snaking its way from the edge of the Himalayas to the Yellow Sea. No comparable physical legacy of the West is so mas- sive that its details can be discerned from space. Nor are Western achievements rooted forever in one corner of the world. What we call Western civilization belongs to no particular place. Its lo- cation has changed since the origins of civilization, that is, the cultural and social traditions characteristic of the civitas, or city. “Western” cities appeared first outside the “West,” in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins in present-day Iraq and Iran, a region that we today call the Middle East. These areas have never lost their urban traditions, but in time, other cities in North Africa, Greece, and Italy adapted and expanded this heritage. Until the sixteenth century C.E., the western end of the Eurasian landmass was the crucible in which disparate cul- tural and intellectual traditions of the Near East, the Mediterranean, and northern and western Europe were smelted into a new and powerful alloy. Then “the West” ex- panded by establishing colonies overseas and by giving rise to the “settler societies” of the Americas, Australia and New Zealand, and South Africa. Western technology for harnessing nature, Western forms of economic and political organization, Western styles of art and music are—for good or ill—dominant influences in world civilization. Japan is a leading power in the Western tra- ditions of capitalist commerce and technology. China, the most populous country in the world, adheres to Marxist so- cialist principles—a European political tradition. Millions of people in Africa, Asia, and the Americas follow the religions of Islam and Christianity, both of which developed from Judaism in the cradle of Western civilization. Many of today’s most pressing problems are also part of the legacy of the Western tradition. The remnants of European colo- nialism have left deep hostilities throughout the world. The inte- gration of developing nations into the world economy keeps much of humanity in a seemingly hopeless cycle of poverty as �INTRODUCTION THE IDEA OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION KISH.1049.cp01.p002-023.vpdf 8/1/06 3:55 PM Page 2 3 the wealth of poor countries goes to pay interest on loans from Europe and America. Hatred of Western civilization is a central, ideological tenet that inspired terrorist attacks on symbols of American economic and military strength on September 11, 2001, and that fuels anti-Western terrorism around the world. The West itself faces a crisis. Impoverished citizens of former colonies flock to Europe and North America seeking a better life but often finding poverty, hostility, and racism instead. Finally, the advances of Western civilization endanger our very existence. Technology pollutes the world’s air, water, and soil, and nuclear weapons threaten the destruction of all civilization. Yet these are the same advances that allow us to lengthen life expectancy, har- ness the forces of nature, and conquer disease. It is the same tech- nology that allows us to view our world from outer space. How did we get here? In this book we attempt to answer that question. The history of Western civilization is not simply the triumphal story of progress, the creation of a bet- ter world. Even in areas in which we can see development, such as technology, communications, and social complexity, change is not always for the better. However, it would be equally inaccurate to view Western civilization as a progres- sive decline from a mythical golden age of the human race. The roughly 300 generations since the origins of civilization have bequeathed a rich and contradictory legacy to the present. Inherited political and social institutions, cultural forms, and religious and philosophical traditions form the framework within which the future must be created. The past does not determine the future, but it is the raw material from which the future will be made. To use this legacy properly, we must first understand it, not because the past is the key to the future, but because understanding yesterday frees us to create tomorrow. KISH.1049.cp01.p002-023.vpdf 8/1/06 3:55 PM Page 3 4 � 4 Chapter 1 THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS CHAPTER OUTLINE THE VISUAL RECORD: ÖTZI’S LAST MEAL BEFORE CIVILIZATION MESOPOTAMIA: BETWEEN THE TWO RIVERS THE GIFT OF THE NILE BETWEEN TWO WORLDS NINEVEH AND BABYLON THE NEW BABYLONIAN EMPIRE The Visual Record ÖTZI’S LAST MEAL The idea that we can visit with an ancestor from three hundred generations past seems in- credible. And yet a discovery in the Italian Alps a decade ago has brought us face to face with Ötzi (so-named for the valley where he was found), an ordinary man who faced a cruel death more than five thousand years ago. Ötzi’s perfectly preserved body, clothing, tools, and weapons allow us to know how people lived and died in Western Europe before it was Europe—before indeed it was the West. Ötzi was small by modern European standards: he stood at just 5 feet 4 inches. Around 40 years old, he was already suffering from arthritis, and his several tattoos were likely a kind of therapy. He probably lived in a village below the mountain whose inhab- itants survived by hunting, simple agriculture, and goat herding. One spring day around 3000 B.C.E., Ötzi enjoyed what would be his last meal of meat, some vegetables, and flat bread made of einkorn wheat. He dressed warmly but simply in a leather breechcloth with a calfskin belt covered by a leather upper garment of goatskin sewn together with animal sinews. Below, he wore leather leggings and sturdy shoes made of bearskin soles and deerhide tops, lined with soft grasslike socks. On his head was a warm bearskin cap. Ötzi carried an ax with a blade of almost pure copper and a flint knife in a fiber scab- bard. He secured his leather backpack on a pack-frame made of a long hazel rod bent into a U-shape and reinforced with two narrow wooden slats. Among other things it held birch bark containers, one filled with materials to start a fire, which he could ignite with a flint he carried in his pouch. He also equipped himself with a multipurpose mat made from long stalks of Alpine grass and a simple first-aid kit consisting of inner bark from the birch tree—a substance with antibiotic and styptic properties. For so small a man, Ötzi carried an imposing weapon: a yew-wood bow almost six feet long and a quiver of arrows. He must have been working on the weapon shortly be- fore he died; the bow and most of the arrows were unfinished. For ten years after the discovery of Ötzi’s body, scholars and scientists studied his re- mains and speculated on why and how he died. Was he caught by a sudden storm or did he perhaps injure himself and die of exposure? And what was he doing so high in the KISH.1049.cp01.p002-023.vpdf 8/1/06 3:55 PM Page 4 5 mountains—six hours from the valley where he had his last meal, without adequate food or water? Finally, another X-ray of his frozen corpse revealed a clue: the shadow of a stone point lodged in his back. Apparently, Ötzi left the lower villages that fateful spring day frightened and in a great hurry. Alone at an altitude of over 10,000 feet, desperately trying to finish his bow and ar- rows, he was fleeing for his life, but his luck ran out. Ötzi was shot in the back with an arrow. It pierced his shoulder be- tween his shoulder blade and ribs, paralyzing his arm and causing extensive bleeding. Exhausted, he lay down in a shal- low cleft in the snowy rocks. In a matter of hours he was dead, and the snows of centuries quietly buried him. What does Ötzi’s life and death tell us about the story of Western civilization? Although during his lifetime radically new urban societies and cultures were appearing just east of the Mediterranean, Ötzi still belonged to the Stone Age. None of his clothing was woven, although such basic tech- nology was common in western Asia. The only metal was his ax head of soft copper, not the much harder bronze favored in the eastern Mediterranean. And yet, something vital con- nected Ötzi’s world and that distant cradle of civilization: his last meal. Einkorn wheat is not native to western Europe but originated in the region of the Tigris and Euphrates. From there, both the grain itself and the technology of its cultivation spread slowly, ultimately reaching Ötzi’s Alpine village. Other components of civilization would follow: weaving, metal working, urbanization, writing, and ways to kill men and women like Ötzi with greater efficiency. �Looking AheadThis first chapter begins before Ötzi with the origins of hu- mankind and chronicles the great discoveries that led to the first urban-based civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. It examines as well the seminomadic herding societies that lived on their margins and developed the first great monotheistic religious tradition. KISH.1049.cp01.p002-023.vpdf 8/1/06 3:55 PM Page 5 6 Chapter 1 The First Civilizations BEFORE CIVILIZATION The human race was already ancient by the time that Ötzi died, and civilization first appeared around 3,500 years before the Common Era, the period following the traditional date of the birth of Jesus. (Such dates are abbreviated B.C. for “before Christ” or B.C.E. for “before the Common Era”; A.D., the abbre- viation of the Latin for “in the year of the Lord,” is used to re- fer to dates after the birth of Jesus. Today, scholars use simply C.E. to mean the Common Era. To indicate an approximate date for an event that cannot be dated precisely, the abbrevia- tion ca., or circa, “approximately,” is used.) The first human- like creatures whose remains have been discovered date from as long as five million years ago. One of the best-known finds, nicknamed “Lucy” by the scientist who discovered her skele- ton in 1974, stood only about four feet tall and lived on the edge of a lake in what is now Ethiopia. Lucy and her band did not have brains that were as well developed as those of mod- ern humans. They did, however, use simple tools such as sticks, bone clubs, and chipped rocks. Although small and rel- atively weak compared with other animals, Lucy’s species of creatures—neither fully ape nor human—survived for over four million years. Varieties of the modern species of humans, Homo sapiens (“thinking human”), appeared well over 100,000 years ago and spread across the Eurasian landmass and Africa. The ear- liest Homo sapiens in Europe, the Neanderthal, differed little from us today. They were roughly the same size and had the same cranial capacity as we. They spread throughout much of Africa, Europe, and Asia during the last great ice age. To sur- vive in the harsh tundra landscape, they developed a cultural system that enabled them to modify their environment. Customs such as the burial of their dead with food offerings indicate that Neanderthals may have developed a belief in an afterlife. Although a bit shorter and heavier than most people today, they were clearly our close cousins. Nevertheless, DNA studies suggest that Neanderthals are not directly related to modern humans. Their subspecies appears to have been a dead end. No one knows why or how the Neanderthals were replaced by our subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens (“thinking thinking human”), around 40,000 years ago. Whatever the reason and whatever the process—extinction, evolution, or extermina- tion—this last arrival on the human scene was universally successful. All humans today—whether blond, blue-eyed Scandinavians, Australian aborigines, Africans, Japanese, or Amerindians—belong to this same subspecies. Differences in skin color, type of hair, and build are minor variations on the same theme. The identification of races, while selectively based on some of these physical variations, is, like civilization itself, a fact not of biology but of culture. Early Homo sapiens sapiens lived in small kin groups of 20 or 30, following game and seeking shelter in tents, lean-tos, and caves. People of the Paleolithic era or Old Stone Age (ca. 600,000–10,000 B.C.E.) worked together for hunting and de- fense and apparently formed emotional bonds that were based on more than sex or economic necessity. The skeleton of a man found a few years ago in Iraq, for example, suggests that although he was born with only one arm and was crip- pled further by arthritis, the rest of his community supported him and he lived to adulthood. Clearly, his value to his society lay in something more than his ability to make a material con- tribution to its collective life. The Dominance of Culture During the upper or late Paleolithic era (ca. 35,000–10,000 B.C.E.), culture, meaning everything about humans that is not inherited biologically, was increasingly determinant in human life. Paleolithic people were not on an endless and all-con- suming quest to provide for the necessities of life. They spent less time on such things than we do today. Therefore, they were able to find time to develop speech, religion, and artistic expression. Wall paintings, small clay and stone figurines of female figures (which may reflect concerns about fertility), and finely decorated stone and bone tools indicate not just artistic ability but also abstract and symbolic thought. The end of the glacial era marked the beginning of the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age (ca. 10,000–8000 B.C.E.). This period occurred at different times in different places as the climate grew milder, vast expanses of glaciers melted, and sea levels rose. Mesolithic peoples began the gradual domestica- tion of plants and animals and sometimes formed settled communities. They developed the bow and arrow and pot- tery, and they made use of small flints (microliths) and fish- hooks. Paintings: A Cultural Record. An amazing continuous record of the civilizing of the West is found in the arid wastes of Africa’s Sahara Desert. At the end of the last ice age, around 10,000 B.C.E., much of North Africa enjoyed a mild, damp cli- mate and supported a diverse population of animals and humans. At Tassili-n-Ajjer in modern Algeria, succeeding gen- erations of inhabitants left over 4,000 paintings on cliff and CHRONOLOGY BEFORE CIVILIZATION ca. 100,000 B.C.E. Homo sapiens ca. 40,000 B.C.E. Homo sapiens sapiens ca. 35,000–10,000 B.C.E. Late Paleolithic era (Old Stone Age) ca. 8000–6500 B.C.E. Neolithic era (New Stone Age) ca. 3500 B.C.E. Civilization begins KISH.1049.cp01.p002-023.vpdf 8/1/06 3:55 PM Page 6 Before Civilization 7 cave walls that date from about 6000 B.C.E. until the time of Jesus. Like a pictorial time line, these paintings show the grad- ual transformations of human culture. The earliest cave paintings were produced by people who, like the inhabitants of Europe and the Near East, lived by hunt- ing game and gathering edible plants, nuts, and fruit. Through this long period, humans perfected the making of stone tools; learned to work bone, antler, and ivory into weapons and uten- sils; and organized an increasingly complex society. Sedentarization. Sometime around 5000 B.C.E., the artists at Tassili-n-Ajjer began to include images of domesticated cat- tle and harnesslike equipment in their paintings. Such depic- tions give evidence of the arrival in North Africa of two of the most profound transformations in human history: sedenta- rization, that is, the adoption of a fixed dwelling place, and the agricultural revolution. These fundamental changes in human culture began independently around the world and continued for roughly 5,000 years. They appeared first around 10,000 B.C.E. in the Near East, then elsewhere in Asia around 8000 B.C.E. By 5000 B.C.E. the domestication of plants and animals was under way in Africa and what is today Mexico. Around 10,000 B.C.E., many hunter-gatherers living along the coastal plains of what is today Syria and Israel and in the valleys and the hill country near the Zagros Mountains be- tween modern Iran and Iraq began to develop specialized strategies that led, by accident, to a transformation in human culture. Rather than constantly traveling in search of food, people living near the Mediterranean coast stayed put and ex- ploited the various seasonal sources of food, fish, wild grains, fruits, and game. In communities such as Jericho, people built and rebuilt their mud brick and stone huts over generations rather than moving on as their ancestors had. Such a seden- tary existence was easier on the very young and the very old, and consequently infant mortality dropped and life ex- pectancy rose. In the Zagros region, sedentary communities focused on single, abundant sources of food at specific sea- sons, such as wild sheep and goats in the mountains during summer and pigs and cattle in the lower elevations in winter. These people also harvested the wild forms of wheat and bar- ley that grew in upland valleys. Social Organization, Agriculture, and Religion No one really knows why settlement led to agriculture. As population growth put pressure on the local food supply, gathering activities demanded more formal coordination and organization and led to the development of political leader- ship. This leadership and the perception of safety in numbers may have prevented the traditional breaking away to form other similar communities in the next valley, as had happened when population growth pressured earlier groups. In any case, people no longer simply looked for favored species of plants and animals where they occurred naturally. Now they introduced these species into other locations and favored them at the expense of plant and animal species that were not deemed useful. Agriculture had begun. Control of Nature. The ability to domesticate goats, sheep, pigs, and cattle and to cultivate barley, wheat, and vegetables changed human communities from passive harvesters of nature ■ In this cave painting in northern Africa, animal magic evokes help from the spirit world in ensuring the prosperity of the cattle herd. A similar ceremony is still performed by members of the Fulani tribes in the Sahel, on the southern fringe of the Sahara. KISH.1049.cp01.p002-023.vpdf 8/1