ancient civilizations

History

2022

We explain to you what were the ancient civilizations in China, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Phenicia and Asia.

Many aspects of ancient civilizations are still valid today.

What were the ancient civilizations?

When we talk about ancient civilizations, we mean different communities human arisen in the Old age. This period extends from the invention of writing, until the fall of the Western Roman Empire (6,000 BC - AD 476, approximately).

However, we should note that the very concept of "Ancient Age" has diffuse temporal boundaries, depending on where in the world. geography global focus. For this reason, deadlines should be taken at best as a convention or just an approximation.

In any case, ancient civilizations all preceded the Middle Ages Europe and the era of massification of Christianity. They are a constant source of surprises and knowledge. They were so numerous that even today some are still being discovered from time to time.

Many met their end in great wars Y conflicts, absorbed by other stronger civilizations leaving little evidence of their passing. Others grew, developed and reached important cultural, technological or military peaks at the time, before declining and becoming something totally different and unrecognizable over the centuries.

However, some aspects are still valid. It is surprising how many elements our teaching school or our current ways of thinking that come directly from the Ancient Ages and its early philosophers, naturalists, and mathematicians. Even many of the religions that we practice today have their birth at this time.

While a complete list of ancient civilizations would be endless and cumbersome, here is a list of some of the best known.

Ancient China

One of the cradles of the humanity It arose in the Yellow River basin, in the center-east of present-day China, some 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, with the rise of the first local dynasties, the Xia, Shang and Zhou. According to their myths, This civilization was the work of three original emperors: Fuxi, Shennong and Huang, of whom there is not much historical record.

Otherwise the history of this region Because documents from 3,500 years ago still survive, which is understandable if we consider that the Chinese were among the first to invent writing. In addition, their millennial exchanges with the peoples of the region spread their pictographic alphabet (as in Japan).

This civilization based on the cultivation of rice was the first to learn about ceramics and was the inventor of gunpowder. It ruled itself through a dynastic system that lasted for thousands of years.

Ancient Mesopotamia

Different empires followed one another in Mesopotamia.

Another of the regions in which humanity emerged during the prehistory It was known as Mesopotamia, equivalent to our current Middle East, located between the fluvial cradles of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

This territory was populated by different civilizations that followed one another in the weather and that, although they had different ethnic origins, they formed a culture common and came to dominate the region in their successive empires. These civilizations were:

  • The Sumerians. They were the first to populate southern Mesopotamia, developing a powerful farming and founding the mythical cities of Uruk, Eridú, Ur and Kish, many of which appear in biblical texts, since they were the powers of the region at the time. There a cuneiform writing of pictographic and ideographic characters was born, which differentiated the Sumerians from their neighbors and ethnic relatives, the Semites. In addition, the Sumerians were famous for their ziggurats, ascending circular temples, almost in the shape of a pyramid, where they carried out their rituals, and because they were the authors of the myth of the universal flood, present in the first epic of history: The Epic of Gilgamesh.
  • The Akkadians. They were a Semitic people arisen in the bosom of Sumeria that, from 2350 a. C., they happen to control the entire kingdom, under the command of Sargon I of Acadia. This would be a short and unstable period, of firm political centralism, in which the Mesopotamians established trade networks with the Indus Valley civilization, with Egypt, and with Anatolia.
  • The Babylonians. They arrived later, coming from the Persian Gulf, around 1800 a. C., and they founded what we know today as the Pale Babylonian Empire, which lasted until 1590 BC. C., renaming the entire region as Babylon. They were peoples of Semitic origin and their famous king was Hammurabi, author of the Hammurabi Code, a kind of code of laws composed of 282 royal decrees. The Babylonians founded a society from social classes, dependent on slaves for cultivation. They were the authors of the Enuma Elish, the second epic best known of ancient Mesopotamia.
  • The Assyrians. For their part, they were a Mesopotamian people whose name comes from the deity Asur, and who present enormous syncretisms with Akkadians and Sumerians, since they lived under their kingdoms for millennia. After the fall of the last dynasty of Ur (Sumeria) the Assyrians had the chance to create their independent kingdom, Assyria, from which they emerged around 1000 BC. C. to conquer the rest of the region. Thus they created the Neo-Assyrian Empire (1000-605 BC), of a religious-military nature, which fell before the resurgence of the Babylonians (the Neo-Babylonian Empire, 612-539 BC) and its new and famous king, Nabopoassar, father of Nebuchadnezzar II.

Finally, all Mesopotamia was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire, that is, by the Persians.

Ancient Egypt

In the middle and lower channel of the Nile River, at some point in prehistory, various populations humans who learned to cultivate this fertile region, and who gave rise to two separate kingdoms: Upper Egypt (Ta Shemau) and Lower Egypt (Ta Mehu).

Both kingdoms began to unify towards the year 3150 a. C., they joined under the same pharaonic government the powerful cities along the Nile. Thus was forged one of the great powers of antiquity, as was the Egyptian Empire.

Famous for its monumental engineering works, such as the pyramids and sphinxes, tombs for their mummified kings, the Egyptian civilization developed a vast hieroglyphic writing, of which there are abundant archaeological remains, as well as of its polytheistic, complex and rich religion.

The Egyptian Empire controlled much of North Africa, Syria, and the Middle East, eventually declining to become an easy target for Libyan, Assyrian, and Persian invasions. It was conquered by Alexander the Great in 332 BC. C., and soon incorporated to the Roman Empire in 31 a. C., a year before the death of the famous Cleopatra.

Ancient greece

Cities like Corinth are testimony to the greatness of Greek antiquity.

The Greek is the ancient civilization to which we owe the most our Western culture, so much so that it has been dubbed the "Cradle of the West." Its ancient history of greatest interest begins with the end of the Dark Ages of Greece (1200 to 1100 BC) as a result of the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization that flourished in its territory during the Bronze Age.

The ancient customs of the region were then replaced by those of the Dorians, giving rise to Hellenic Greece, which was one of the most fertile, well-known and relevant civilizations in the entire Mediterranean.

The Greeks led a maritime life, with an expansive commercial economy, south of the present Balkan peninsula. During its classical period (500 BC - 323 BC) Greek culture flourished and developed artistically, literarily, linguistically, and architecturally.

He left a gigantic legacy in terms of dramatic and epic works (the latter are the most important in the West, such as the Iliad wave Odyssey), philosophical (especially the legacy of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, among many others), math, scientific, sculptural. The influence of its vast tradition mythological, even today it is palpable in the literature, the movie theater and the Arts Westerners.

The Greek civilization faced militarily great powers such as the Persian Empire and the Egyptian Empire. Eventually it succumbed to the Roman Empire, having been greatly weakened by internal wars.

Its great cities: Athens, Corinth, Sparta, Thebes, etc., still bear witness to its greatness. Its cultural heritage reached as far away as the Middle East, during its Alexandrian period (323 BC-146 BC), named after the conqueror Alexander the Great.

Ancient rome

Much of Greek culture was assimilated by the Romans.

Born in the ancient city of Rome and the Condition founded on it around the 8th century BC. C., was the result of the grouping of the Latin peoples who lived in the current territory of Italy.

Its importance in Western history is gigantic. On the one hand, they were the conquerors of all Europe, northern Africa and part of the Middle East. On the other hand, they were the founders of a robust legal tradition, which today we know as the Roman law.

In addition, its language (Latin) imposed by blood and fire in the colonized territories, gave rise to a whole family of modern languages ​​called Romance languages: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Romanian, Galician, Catalan, among others.

The history of Ancient Rome is diverse and complex. It goes through different periods of order and instability, generally oscillating between the Empire and the Republic (led by the Roman Senate). Its history is divided into four stages: the monarchy, the republic, the principality and the dominated.

A good part of their culture was inherited directly from the Greek civilization, which they conquered in 146 BC. C., after defeating the Aquean League in the Battle of Corinth.

Much of the tradition, philosophy Y greek mythology they were assimilated by the Romans, who simply proceeded to change the Greek names to Latin names: Zeus became Jupiter, Hermes became Mercury, Heracles became Hercules, Aphrodite became Venus, Odysseus became Odysseus, etc.

As if that were not enough, Christianity was born in the heart of the Roman Empire, a religion that determined the history of the West and that largely contributed to the fall of the Empire, after the Emperor Theodosius instituted it as the official state religion.

However, it was the barbarian invasions of northern Europe and its previous division into two sections (the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire) in 395, the factors that determined its downfall. On the other hand, the eastern section of the Empire survived almost 1000 more years, under the name of the Byzantine Empire.

The Phoenicians

The Phoenician or Phoenician-Punic civilization was a maritime Semitic people, born in the eastern Mediterranean. It developed on the coasts of present-day Israel, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, a region formerly called Canaan, as it appears in biblical texts.

Although they called themselves "Canaanites" (kena’ani), the name by which we know them comes from the one given to them by the Greeks: Phoinikes, that is, "red" or "purple", because they were mainly dedicated to the trade of dyes and wines.

The Phoenicians did not leave much evidence of their passage through the world, perhaps because they were a civilization of merchants Maritime with little roots except for their ships. They founded various outposts along the Mediterranean coast, such as Tangis, Utica, and Lixus. Its commercial might eventually caught the attention or envy of its neighboring Empires.

They served as mediators between the distant populations with which they traded, through a culture pastiche that gathered features of all the others, without being precisely original in itself. However, his alphabet was adopted by the Greeks for themselves, and it served as the basis for the Latin, Arabic, and Cyrillic traditions as well.

The Achaemenid Empire

Persepolis was the main city of the Achaemenid Empire.

The Achaemenid Empire was the largest and most successful of the Persian or Farsi empires, whose borders spanned much of Asia central, the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Since its inception, with the annexation of the Median Kingdom during the reign of Cyrus II (559-530 BC) it proved to be a military power.

Its apogee happened around the year 500 a. C. and its fall took place in front of the troops of Great Alexander in 330 a. C., when king Darío III was defeated. The Greeks were their eternal rivals, and they clashed with them during the Medical wars (490-449 BC).

This empire owed its name to a semi-legendary hero, named Aquemenes, who possibly lived around 700 BC. C. He was a clan chief of the past tribe.

Hailing from the Iranian plateau, the Persians were especially dedicated to the cattle raising. They were vassals of their neighbors, the Medes, until the king of Anshan, Cyrus "the Great" (555-529 BC) built an army and conquered not only their ancient lords, but also Babylon, Syria, Judea. and part of Asia Minor.

Its main city was Persepolis (founded between 518 and 516 BC), and it was connected to the different corners of the Empire by an extensive network of roads called the “royal road”.

The Persians spoke an ancient Persian dialect that initially had no writing, although it coexisted with very different languages ​​in the body of society. After the conquest of Mesopotamia, Aramaic became a lingua franca between the various parts of the territory.

The Khmer Empire

The splendor of the Khmer Empire is still preserved in its temples.

The Khmer Empire or Empire of Angkor developed in Southeast Asia, particularly in the territory of present-day Cambodia, also encompassing Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and part of Burma and Malaysia.

This Empire was born from the separation of the ancient kingdoms of Chenlá and Funán, of which very little is currently known, and having the town Angkor, today Siem Riep, as its capital. The Khmer reached such cultural and architectural splendor that many of their palaces and temples still survive.

Heir to the culture of India, the Khmer Empire practiced Brahmanic Hinduism, although it later also recognized Buddhism. It emerged in the 7th century out of the need to resist the invasion of the Indonesian tribes in the region.

Its founding leader was Jayavarman II (c. 770-835), the Khmer “god-king”, although his age of splendor came under Suryavarman II around 1113. His decline is a reason for speculation, with theories. ranging from plagues or climate change, to the invasion of Chinese Siamese fleeing the Mongols.

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