All about World History

Written texts are the primary sources that most historians are taught to use and are most familiar with. However, we must acknowledge that written language is a relatively recent development (approximately 5,000 years old), thus much of what we know about humanity’s beginnings must be taken from colleagues in other fields such as geology, botany, and archaeology. Archaeologists have excavated and evaluated physical evidence pertaining to our prehistoric forebears in all of the areas listed below.

However, without a technique to establish the age of anything from a human skull to a cutting tool, it was difficult to grasp migration patterns and chronology until recently. In the 1930s and 1940s, archaeologists employed vague phrases like “stone bowl cultures,” which referred to the specifics of the artefacts uncovered rather than their historical context. This began to change in the 1940s with the introduction of radiocarbon dating, sometimes known as C14 dating.

Early Middle Eastern and Northeast African Civilizations

Civilizations arose in the lush river valleys of Mesopotamia and Northeast Africa between 4000 and 3000 BCE. Food surpluses, larger population densities, social stratification, taxation systems, labour specialisation, regular trade, and written scripts were all common features of these civilizations. By 3500 BCE, Mesopotamians had established city-states along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Other cities arose and perfected their own institutions and beliefs, while Sumerian traditions affected developments throughout the region.

The importance of the temple complex and religious leaders in Mesopotamia is demonstrated by archaeological artefacts and ancient writings. Kingship was an important political innovation in the region, with hereditary monarchs claiming power over numerous city-states and special links with the gods. Sargon of Akkad is credited with building Mesopotamia’s first empire. Following then, a series of empires came and fell, reflecting Mesopotamian society’ dynamic nature.

Ancient and Early Medieval India 

A century of archaeological investigation in India, which began in 1920, showed not only a lost civilization, but also one that was vast, dwarfing other important early Afro-Eurasia riverine civilizations like Ancient Egypt and the Mesopotamian states in size. Archaeologists have discovered thousands of communities throughout a half-million-square-mile area. These can be categorised according to their size and sophistication.

Five main cities, each covering about 250 acres, make up the summit. Harappa is one of them, and the entire civilisation was called after it because it was excavated first. Between the top and bottom of the hierarchy are two tiers of towns ranging in size from 15 to 150 acres, with fifteen thousand smaller agricultural and craft communities of around 2.5 acres each. This civilisation is also known as the Indus Valley Civilization since the most of these towns were located near the Indus River in the northern portion of the subcontinent.

China and East Asia to the Ming Dynasty

Since China’s early historical development predates that of Japan and Korea, a chapter on East Asian history should naturally begin with China’s first dynasty in the second millennium BCE. China today is, nevertheless, a far larger country than it was in ancient times. The majority of the Chinese population used to dwell in China proper, which we define as the historical heartland of ancient China. The Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea border China proper to the east. It is surrounded to the south by Southeast Asia’s hilly rainforests.

China is bounded on the west and north by a transitional frontier zone, where agricultural land gives way to mountains and plateaus, or enormous swaths of steppe grasslands and desert. The Chinese dynasties became actively involved in all of these bordering areas at periods, either directly absorbing them into their expanding empires or indirectly as subordinate, tribute-paying nations.

The Greek World from the Bronze Age to the Roman Conquest

In the late first century BCE, the Roman poet Horace famously said, “Captive Greece has conquered her rude conqueror.” Even when the Roman conquest of Greece was complete, this observation about the significant effect of Greek culture on the Roman world persisted long after Horace’s time. The impact of Alexander’s conquests on the Hellenization of the Mediterranean and Middle East lasted far beyond the Hellenistic kingdoms, as the Greek language remained the official language of the Eastern Roman Empire and, later, the Byzantine Empire until the Ottomans conquered that territory in 1453 CE.

In some ways, the extension of the Greeks and their civilization altered what it meant to be Greek–or, more accurately, it established a more universal Greek identity that largely supplanted the polis-specific notion of citizenship and identity that existed before to Philip’s conquest of Greece. Nonetheless, some cultural constants remained.

The Roman World from 753 BCE to 500 CE

Faced with a military onslaught by the two neighbouring tribes of the Aequi and the Sabines in 458 BCE, the Roman Senate took a drastic step that was only saved for the most grave of circumstances: they installed a dictator to run the state on his own. Cincinnatus, the senator who was appointed dictator, received the news while working on his farm, according to Roman historian Livy. He quickly abandoned the plough and joined the army, which he then led to a speedy and glorious victory. Then something incredible happened: Cincinnatus gave up his supernatural abilities and returned to his farm.

Cincinnatus became the prototypical Roman cultural hero and example of virtue throughout the rest of the Roman Republic and far into the Imperial Period: an aristocratic man who was a talented soldier, general, and politician who put the interests of Rome first, above his own. While no other Roman politician possessed Cincinnatus’ level of self-sacrificial humility, the Republic and Empire’s other heroes were all male, primarily aristocratic, and famous for military and political exploits.

Western Europe and Byzantium circa 500 – 1000 CE

By the early 500s, the Germanic peoples who had conquered the Roman Empire during the fifth century had established a group of kingdoms in what had been the Western Empire. For nearly eighty years, the Vandals ruled North Africa in a monarchy centred on Carthage, a nation whose pirates threatened the Mediterranean. In a realm that kept many aspects of Roman civilization, the Visigoths dominated Spain.

In Italy, the Roman general Odavacar founded his own kingdom in 476 before being assassinated by the Ostrogoth monarch Theodoric, who established a kingdom for his people in Italy and controlled it from 493 to 526. The Vandals, Visigoths, and Ostrogoths all had cultures significantly affected by Rome over decades or perhaps centuries of contact.

The majority of them were Christians, but not Catholic Christians, who believed in the theology of the Trinity, which holds that God is one God with three distinct persons: Father, Son (Jesus Christ), and Holy Spirit. They were Arians, who thought Jesus was a lower being than God the Father. However, the majority of their subjects were Catholics.

Conclusion

When ancestors of modern humans began to walk upright six to eight million years ago, the saga of world civilizations began. Homo sapiens is the result of millions of years of evolutionary responses to shifting temperatures and environments. Homo sapiens evolved into modern humans over the previous 50,000 years or so by increasing their hunting, building techniques, community living, and food gathering and storage. The Neolithic Era began some 10,000 years ago. Humans began to live in larger, more permanent settlements where a constant food supply was required.