Stanley M. Burstein. The World from 1000 BCE to 300 CE
© Oxford University Press 2017
This book provides the first comprehensive history of Afro-Eurasia during the first millennium BCE and the beginning of the first millennium CE. The history of these 1300 plus years can be summed up in one word: connectivity. The growth in connectivity during this period was marked by increasing political, economic, and cultural interaction throughout the region, and the replacement of the numerous political and cultural entities by a handful of great empires at the end of the period. In the process, local cultural traditions were replaced by great traditions rooted in lingua francas and spread by formalized educational systems.
This process began with the collapse of the Bronze Age empires in the east and west, widespread population movements, and almost chronic warfare throughout Afro-Eurasia, while the cavalry revolution transformed the nomads of the central Asian steppes into founders of tribal confederations assembled by charismatic leaders and covering huge territories. At the same time, new artistic and intellectual movements appeared, including the teachings of Socrates, Confucius, the Buddha, and Laozi. Increased literacy also allowed people from a wide range of social classes such as the Greek soldier Xenophon, the Indian Buddhist emperor Ashoka, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, and elite women such as the poetess Sappho, the Christian martyr Perpetua, and the scholar Ban Zhao to create literary works.
When the period ended in 300 CE, conditions had changed dramatically. Temperate Afro-Eurasia from the Atlantic to the Pacific was dominated by a handful of empires - Rome, Sassanid Persia, and Jin Empire-that ruled more than half the world's population, while an extensive network of trade routes bound them to Southeast and Central Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa and made possible the spread of new book based religions including Christianity, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism, thereby setting the stage for the next millennium of Afro-Eurasian history.
Chapter 3
East Meets West: The Rise of Persia
(ca. Sixth-Fifth Centuries BCE)
Sometime in the 670s BCE the Assyrian king Esarhaddon asked a royal astrologer named Bel-ušezib to determine whether the stars were favorable for a campaign in Iran. Being a cautious professional, Bel-ušezib hedged his bets, informing the king that the stars indicated that the campaign would succeed, but only if the Cimmerians, "barbarians who recognize no oath sworn by god and no treaty," kept their word to not intervene. The result of Esarhaddon's campaign is unknown, but his diviner's caution was fully justified.
The inhabitants of western Asia first felt the full effect of these developments in 695 BCE, when a hitherto unknown people from the steppes, the Cimmerians, suddenly defeated the powerful Anatolian kingdom of the Phrygians and sacked their capital of Gordion. For an account of these new enemies and the threat they could pose to the agricultural states bordering the Eurasian steppe, however, we have to wait for the Histories of the fifth-century BCE Greek historian Herodotus, who reported that the Cimmerians' conquerors, the Scythians, "ruled Asia for twenty-eight years, and all of it was devastated because of their violence and contempt, because aside from exacting tribute from everyone, they rode around robbing whatever else people had." Thus, early in the first millennium BCE a military and political revolution took place in central Asia, whose ramifications would be felt throughout Afro-Eurasia for almost three millennia.
An Iranian-speaking people, whose home was in the western Eurasian steppe, the Scythians founded the earliest known nomadic empire. The Scythians, like other nomadic peoples of the steppes, derived their power from the world's first effective light cavalry by combining two innovations: the adoption of "the good riding position," (... ...)
♦ The New Oxford World History
ISBN-13: 978-0199336135
ISBN-10: 019933613X
English | 177 pages | PDF | 10.6 MB
This book provides the first comprehensive history of Afro-Eurasia during the first millennium BCE and the beginning of the first millennium CE. The history of these 1300 plus years can be summed up in one word: connectivity. The growth in connectivity during this period was marked by increasing political, economic, and cultural interaction throughout the region, and the replacement of the numerous political and cultural entities by a handful of great empires at the end of the period. In the process, local cultural traditions were replaced by great traditions rooted in lingua francas and spread by formalized educational systems.
This process began with the collapse of the Bronze Age empires in the east and west, widespread population movements, and almost chronic warfare throughout Afro-Eurasia, while the cavalry revolution transformed the nomads of the central Asian steppes into founders of tribal confederations assembled by charismatic leaders and covering huge territories. At the same time, new artistic and intellectual movements appeared, including the teachings of Socrates, Confucius, the Buddha, and Laozi. Increased literacy also allowed people from a wide range of social classes such as the Greek soldier Xenophon, the Indian Buddhist emperor Ashoka, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, and elite women such as the poetess Sappho, the Christian martyr Perpetua, and the scholar Ban Zhao to create literary works.
When the period ended in 300 CE, conditions had changed dramatically. Temperate Afro-Eurasia from the Atlantic to the Pacific was dominated by a handful of empires - Rome, Sassanid Persia, and Jin Empire-that ruled more than half the world's population, while an extensive network of trade routes bound them to Southeast and Central Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa and made possible the spread of new book based religions including Christianity, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism, thereby setting the stage for the next millennium of Afro-Eurasian history.
Chapter 3
East Meets West: The Rise of Persia
(ca. Sixth-Fifth Centuries BCE)
Sometime in the 670s BCE the Assyrian king Esarhaddon asked a royal astrologer named Bel-ušezib to determine whether the stars were favorable for a campaign in Iran. Being a cautious professional, Bel-ušezib hedged his bets, informing the king that the stars indicated that the campaign would succeed, but only if the Cimmerians, "barbarians who recognize no oath sworn by god and no treaty," kept their word to not intervene. The result of Esarhaddon's campaign is unknown, but his diviner's caution was fully justified.
The inhabitants of western Asia first felt the full effect of these developments in 695 BCE, when a hitherto unknown people from the steppes, the Cimmerians, suddenly defeated the powerful Anatolian kingdom of the Phrygians and sacked their capital of Gordion. For an account of these new enemies and the threat they could pose to the agricultural states bordering the Eurasian steppe, however, we have to wait for the Histories of the fifth-century BCE Greek historian Herodotus, who reported that the Cimmerians' conquerors, the Scythians, "ruled Asia for twenty-eight years, and all of it was devastated because of their violence and contempt, because aside from exacting tribute from everyone, they rode around robbing whatever else people had." Thus, early in the first millennium BCE a military and political revolution took place in central Asia, whose ramifications would be felt throughout Afro-Eurasia for almost three millennia.
An Iranian-speaking people, whose home was in the western Eurasian steppe, the Scythians founded the earliest known nomadic empire. The Scythians, like other nomadic peoples of the steppes, derived their power from the world's first effective light cavalry by combining two innovations: the adoption of "the good riding position," (... ...)
♦ The New Oxford World History
ISBN-13: 978-0199336135
ISBN-10: 019933613X
English | 177 pages | PDF | 10.6 MB