World History in a Year (Week 11) - 1800s BC
The 1800s BC see the origin of yet another state-level society, in China, but also the fall of one (Caral-Supe in Peru) and the serious decline of another (Harappa). We’ll start with China.
Chinese histories written in the Han Dynasty (around 200 BC - AD 200) give the Xia Dynasty as the first Chinese dynasty, but for a long time it was considered by archaeologists to be legendary. This shifted after the discovery of the ancient city of Erlitou, near the present-day city of Luoyang on the Yellow River. Excavation of Erlitou showed a planned city, a rectangle of about 4.5 sq km with large rammed-earth walls (about 2m thick, which is actually comparatively small compared with the preceding Longshan period), streets at right angles to each other, and particular neighbourhoods focused on the production of particular goods (e.g., ceramics, bronze). It had palaces, ritual buildings, and royal tombs (containing grave gifts of jade, bronze, and ceramics). On the topic of bronze, it had large-scale bronze production for the first time in China. The most common bronze products were large vessels for holding food and drink used in rituals and served at feasts, while bronze weapons were also produced. Bronze production appears to have been under government control; it was a complex industry, involving mining of both copper and tin followed by an extensive smelting process, and required considerable resources and organization to carry out. All of this evidence points to Erlitou being a state.
Some archaeologists are still hesitant to identify the Erlitou state as the Xia Dynasty given the long period of time between it and the Han Dynasty histories referring to it, but the main Han history (the Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian) accurately identifies some of the emperors of the Shang dynasty, which followed the Xia Dynasty. Names it gives for Shang emperors match those in written evidence from during the Shang period. So we have a reliable ancient secondary source for the existence of the Xia, and the Erlitou state is at the right time, in the right place, and at the right scale to be the Xia. That’s enough for me to consider it the Xia.
While China was rising, Harappa in South Asia was in decline, with cities shrinking and new buildings no longer following the earlier urban planning standards, indicating centralized control by the government was weakening.
Caral-Supe in Peru collapsed entirely: by the end of the 1800s BC its cities, that had existed for over a millennium, were abandoned. One theory of why this happened is that there was an earthquake (some architectural evidence for one exists) which resulted in landslides and large amounts of sediments flowing into the sea, creating sandy offshore ridges that harmed the shellfish beds that were important to the community, and possibly also damaged agriculture.
The other major change in the Americas in this century was the adoption of pottery in southern Mesoamerica (at the start of the century) and Peru (at the end of the century). Pottery wasn’t new to the Americas as a whole (it has existed in Ecuador and the Amazon for millennia, and Peruvian pottery followed designs from those areas), but it was new to these regions.
In both places, early pottery was shaped like gourds, which had been cultivated and used as containers for thousands of years, and in Mesoamerica it was decorated similarly to gourds as well. The reason why both regions replaced gourds with pottery at similar times is unknown. In southern Mesoamerica it happened at the same time as people shifted to living in permanent villages, while in coastal Peru it coincided with the end of Caral-Supe.
In Mesoamerica the main way pottery was initially used was to hold food and drink used in rituals – including drinking chocolate. Traces of theobromine, a chemical found in cacao, have been identified on pieces of pottery from this period.
Here’s a picture of what Mesoamerican pottery from this time may have looked like (from The Maya, 10th ed., by Michael Coe and Stephen Houston, 2022):
Next we’ll move to the Western Asia / Nile Valley / Eastern Mediterranean region, which stands out for having several different state-level societies interacting with each other.
Middle Kingdom Egypt was at a high point. The Middle Kingdom is less famous and has fewer dramatic monuments than either the Old Kingdom (pyramids) or the New Kingdom (tombs and temples at Luxor, Ramses II’s various building projects), but it invested in practical infrastructure. Senusret II had extensive irrigation works built in the Fayoum Oasis (west of the northern Nile) to expand agricultural production. He and his successors seem to have considered that important: Senusret II had a pyramid built for himself in Fayoum, and his grandson Amenemhat III had a pyramid and a temple built there, even though their capital was on the Nile at Thebes (Luxor).
The Middle Kingdom engaged in both warfare against and trade with the neighbouring areas of Kerma in Sudan and the Levant in Western Asia. Kerma was a particularly strong focus: it had valuable gold mines west of the Nile and was the middleman for access to luxuries like ivory from further south. Egypt raided Kerma, expanded fortresses on the Nile River to control trade, and built canals to expand trade. Pharaoh Amenemhat II (1929-1895 BC) also commissioned a trading voyage to Punt (possibly referring to southern areas on both sides of the Red Sea, in Eritrea and Yemen), for luxury goods including ebony, ivory, incense, and gold, as well as for slaves.
Egypt’s involvement with the Levant included receiving a visit from a people called the Hyksos (derived from the words Hikau khasui, “Princes of the Desert Uplands”). They are depicted in Egyptian art as bearded and carrying bows, and would play a major role in the later history of the Middle Kingdom.
The Minoans in Crete remained strong as well: they were the main trading power in the eastern Mediterranean, finished construction on their palaces, and developed hieroglyphic symbols that were the precursor to a written script.
Lastly, some Mesopotamian states were growing in more prominent territorial powers at this time: Eshnunna (in eastern Mesopotamia/western Iran), Mari (in northern Syria) and Larsa, which gained control of much of south and central Mesopotamia at the end of the century.
Both Mari and the city-state of Assyria were heavily involved in long-distance trade. They were well-placed for it, with Mari being located on the upper Euphrates river and Assyria on the upper Tigris, giving them control of access between metal-rich Anatolia, the Mediterranean, and textile-producing southern Mesopotamia (including the newly-founded city-state of Babylon). The Assyrians had a major trading outpost in the Anatolian city of Kanesh, and the Hittites were also traders there. Clay-tablet letters written between Assyrian long-distance traders and their families give an engaging picture of peoples’ daily lives and relationships in a way that is relatively rare from this time period, including the lives of Assyrian businesswomen. Literacy was still a specialized skill, so people probably went to scribes to have these letters written. The book Weavers, Scribes, and Kings by Amanda H. Podany has more on this.
