World History in a Year (Week 8) - 2999-2500 BC
The most famous event during this period is, of course, the building of the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt. They were the culmination of a series of early pyramids starting in the 2600s BC: the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara; the Bent Pyramid of Sneferu at Dahshur (an early failure at a flat-sided pyramid, where the slope had to be adjusted partway up); the Red Pyramid of Sneferu at Dahshur; and finally the Pyramids of Giza in the 2500s BC. No later pyramids built rival the Pyramids of Giza in size, possibly because of the immense cost. The mid-2000s BC, around the 2700s BC or 2600s BC, are also when Egyptian hieroglyphics were developed into a full system of writing, and the first Egyptian mummies are from the late 3000s BC or early 2000s BC. So this is when Ancient Egypt as we know it really takes shape, and the Old Kingdom of Egypt begins early in this period.
A lot of promotional material for Stonehenge will claim that it is “older than the Pyramids of Giza”, which is only true by the most generous definition: as of around 2950 BC there was a large circular ditch surrounding a circle of pits that probably held wooden pillars, but the stones were not yet in place. However, the stone circle at Avebury in England was made around 2550 BC, as the centre of a large sacred landscape incorporating earthworks and burial mounds. In the Orkney Islands of Scotland, the megalithic monument of Maes Howe, the Standing Stones of Stenness, and the village of Skara Brae also date from the first half of the 2000s BC.
Egypt’s pyramids were not the first ones in the world. As mentioned last week, the Caral-Supe civilization on the Peruvian coast had pyramids starting in the 3000s BC. The principal city of Caral was established at some point before 2600 BC and had 6 pyramids in its town centre, surrounded by sunken courts. Unlike those of Egypt, the pyramids of Caral were not made of cut stone blocks, but were built by stacking bags filled with smaller rocks. The largest one was wider at its base (152m x 137m) than the Pyramid of Menkaure (the smallest of the three Pyramids of Giza; 108m x 108m), but not nearly as tall (18m to the Pyramid of Menkaure’s 65m). There were numerous towns or cities in the Caral-Supe region – some sources give 17, others 25. Not all of these were necessarily a unitary state, and there has been considerable debate about whether the coastal fishing regions or the interior cotton-growing ones were the economically dominant ones. At one site, Upaca, there are the remains of stone warehouses that have been theorized as a place for storing large amounts of textiles.
Mesopotamia in this period remained ruled by city-states, and there was a shift from rule by priestly hierarchies to rule by kings. Kings began as military leaders chosen for a temporary period, in response to increasing border conflicts between cities due to population growth and need for agricultural land. These military leaders became hereditary, and then consolidated the powers of both priests and kings by taking on religious roles. If Gilgamesh was a historical figure, he was probably king of the city-state of Uruk at some point during this period.
A fourth state-level society emerged during this period in South Asia, known as Harappa or the Indus Valley Civilization. Descriptions of Harappa vary widely, and there are claims presenting it as a society out of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” with no ruling class, no warfare, and no religion. This is probably exaggerated. Archaeology shows pre-Harappan cities in the region being burned and then rebuilt with Harappan style architecture, which suggests conquest. Harappan cities were divided into areas with larger homes and substantial public buildings (the “upper town”), including possibly palaces and temples, and lower towns with smaller buildings. And there was significant religious art, including ‘mother goddess’ figurines and fire altars. However, it is true that at present archaeology shows no massive monuments like the pyramids, no tombs indicating vast accumulation of riches by rulers (nor anything identifying specific rulers), no weapons, and no indications of the level of endemic warfare that we see in Mesopotamia in the same era.
And this comparatively greater level of peace and economic equality was combined with a strikingly high level of organization. There was urban planning: cities across the Indus Valley civilization had streets with the same widths, and used bricks with the same dimensions. There were also impressively complete water and sewer systems in the cities, including indoor toilets. There was bronze, as in Egypt and Mesopotamia, though due to a shortage of tin, copper was more commonly used and bronze tended to have relatively low tin content. And, also like Egypt and Mesopotamia, there was writing. Thousands of seals show images of animals along with short pieces of what is definitely text, but the shortness of the inscriptions means that archaeologists have not yet been able to decipher what the text is saying.
The size of the Indus Valley civilization was far more extensive than that of Sumerian city-states; its core was on the Indus River in what is now Pakistan, but it stretched to parts of Afghanistan and to the Indian states of Rajasthan and Gujarat. Mehrgarh, discussed last week, was within this region and reached a high point during this period: among other things, it had large kilns and produced ceramics on a scale archaeologists describe as “semi-industrialized mass production”.
In China, the Longshan society of the middle Yellow River valley, dating from around 2700 BC, included conflicts between elites from different areas, indicated by the scale of rammed earth walls that were built around the main settlements. It also produced high-quality wheel-made pottery, fired at high temperatures and often glazed black.
Technology transfer was significant in many regions. The date when the plow was invented is not clear – it might have been developed during this time or earlier – but during this period its use spread through Europe as well as to the Ethiopian highlands. People in the Ethiopian highlands (who had already been farming the local grains t’ef and finger millet) also adopted wheat and barley – the climate and type of soils in the highlands made them suited to plowing, wheat, and barley in ways that other areas of Africa largely weren’t. Bronze spread across Europe at the same time, as well as reaching the Majiayao culture of western China. Cattle and sheep also reached China from western Asia not long after 3000 BC; so did wheat, but it remained a fairly minor crop. In eastern Asia, rice farming had become well established in Vietnam’s Red River valley by this time, likely reaching there from China.
