World History in a Year (Week 13) - 1600s BC
The big events of this century include a possible dynastic shift in China, a major volcanic eruption in the eastern Mediterranean, the fall of Middle Kingdom Egypt, and the rise of new states in Peru; we’ll also catch up on some developments in Africa beyond Egypt.
My sources are in conflict regarding dynasties in China: some put this century squarely in the Xia Dynasty (or Erlitou Period) while others have the Xia declining or falling to the Shang. It’s possible that this is not a straightforward case of one dynasty succeeding another: the Xia and Shang may have been states that existed simultaneously, but with varying levels of power. In that case, the Shang could have been growing in strength during this period, while the Xia state continued. By the end of the 1600s, the Xia capital of Erlitou was declining in size and power.
Since this is the period where Chinese histories written during the Han Dynasty place the fall of the Xia, it’s a good place to talk about those histories. While I’ve said that the histories are reliable enough for me to conclude that the Xia existed, and that they correctly record the names of some of the Shang emperors, that doesn’t mean they are accurate in all respects. The ideological context of these histories was the idea that dynasties fell due to immorality and misrule - greed, lust, selfishness, neglect of the public good - by their kings. And so multiple dynasties, including the Xia, are listed as having their last kings engaging in such behaviours - in some cases, the same outrageous behaviours, like making a swimming pool filled with wine (thanks, The History of China podcast!). This may not reflect actual historical events.
Another historical event whose timing has been strongly debated by historians is the eruption of the volcano on the Greek island of Santorini, which buried the town of Akrotiri and created the caldera that exists today. Much as in Pompeii, the volcanic eruption preserved art from Akrotiri, particularly some elaborate frescoes.
This eruption was once considered a major factor in the fall of the Minoans and dated to around 1500 BC, but carbon-dating has challenged that time frame and historians are increasingly agreeing that it is more likely to have happened a century earlier, in the late 1600s BC. That means the Minoans successfully weathered the eruption, much as they had the earlier earthquakes. The 1600s were the Minoans’ New Palace period following the post-earthquake rebuilding, and the new palaces were larger, more complex, and filled with painted frescoes. Use of the Linear A script was widespread, and trade was flourishing.
Western Asia was in a period of instability. Babylon’s defeat of its rivals in the 1760s followed by the contraction of its power had left it (much reduced in size) and the northern Syrian state of Yamkhad as the only major states in the region. In the latter half of the century a new state rose in Anatolia, the Hittites, who expanded to conquer Yamkhad and then headed for Babylon.
Egypt likewise was in a time of conflict. The Hyksos had settled in Lower Egypt (the Nile Delta) in large numbers and had been gaining power and influence there through the 1700s BC. They brought new technologies like the horse, body armour, and higher-quality bronze weapons. Midway through the 1600s BC, the Hyksos took control of Lower Egypt, starting Egypt’s Second Intermediate Period – the first time of foreign rule since the origins of the Ancient Egyptian state. The Hyksos appear to have largely adopted Egyptian culture, language, and institutions, and intermarried with Egyptian elites, but Egyptian historical records remembering this period are nometheless strongly negative. Egyptian dynasties remained in control of Upper Egypt (around the capital of Thebes, now Luxor).
Kerma, in contrast to Egypt, reached its high point in the 1700s and 1600s BC, and recaptured Lower Nubia (the part of Egypt south of Aswan). Its large capital city (also called Kerma), located around the Dongola Reach bend in the Nile, included monumental 10m-high walls and two large mud-brick structures termed “deffufa,” whose purpose is unknown (possibly temples?), along with palaces, houses, and workshops for skilled potters and metalworkers. It built large grave mounds for its kings, who had rich grave goods and apparently sacrificed and buried servants alongside them. By this point there’s a good case to be made that Kerma was a state.
Kerma seems to have been on good terms with the Hyksos, and to have maintained trade with them despite Upper Egypt being in between the two. That said, trade with Egypt does not appear to have been the main source of Kerma’s power - if it was, Kerma would have hit its highs and lows at the same time as Egypt, and instead Kerma was strongest when Egypt was weaker (like now) and vice versa. Instead, Kerma’s strength can be attributed to rich farmland in the area around its capital and a large agricultural population who farmed barley and herded cattle, sheep, and goats.
In Africa beyond the Nile Valley, time frames within the second millennium BC are often still vague, but some general developments that were in place from around this time can be described. Cattle-herding had spread throughout the West African Sahara-Sahel area and as far south as Ethiopia and Kenya. Pottery was in use in Kenya, and there are arguments for a variety of crops (including sorghum and millet), initially domesticated in Ethiopia and Sudan, having reached Kenya by this time. In central Africa, the Bantu were expanding through the rainforest along the Congo River and its tributaries that would eventually bring them to eastern and southern Africa.
According to Christopher Ehret, some of Africa’s first large towns outside the Nile Valley developed at this time in the Tichitt area of Mauritania, an area that was also cultivating pearl millet. Over about 200 km, there was strip of towns and larger villages in which different towns specialized in different artisanal products, such as grindstones, arrowheads, and beads. They traded these products with each other, as well as trading them to non-town areas for meat and raw materials. One town was larger than the rest and may have been a capital.
Finally, we’ll turn to developments in South America. By the 1600s BC there was widespread building of major cities and temples in river valleys near the Peruvian coast. Some of the main cultures building these were the Manchay, to the south of where Caral-Supe had been, and Casma-Sechín, to the north. Here’s a map to illustrate (from Michael A. Malpass, Ancient Peoples of the Andes, Cornell University Press, 2016; colours added by me; the Cupisnique will show up in a few centuries).
The main archaeological characteristic of these cultures were large U-shaped temples. These were made up of a main building (sometimes a pyramid) as the base of the U and two less-prominent flanking buildings making the sides,often with all three buildings surrounding a sunken plaza. The scale of these temples and the amount of labour that would have been needed to build them suggests these were made by state-level societies. In contrast to the seafood-oriented Caral-Supe, these societies were mainly agricultural and somewhat further inland. Another major change in Peru was the invention of the loom, enabling faster, easier, and more complex weaving.
