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World History in a Year (Week 19): 1000s BC

One of the major historical developments of this century was, potentially, the beginnings of political theory. At this stage, that meant the idea of what gave a king the authority to rule, and how he could lose that authority. Saying that the king was good because he ruled well and justly was not a new idea; but to my understanding, saying that he could lose the authority to rule if he ruled badly was new.

It began in China. In the 1050s to 1040s BC the Zhou Dynasty, with its heartland a little to the west of the Shang, overthrew the Shang Dynasty. They claimed to have done so because the last Shang king (whose name does not occur in any oracle bones and was probably a Zhou invention) engaged in such extreme misrule that the Shang lost Heaven’s Mandate to rule and authority passed to the Zhou. A lot of the sources describing this theory are from much later (the 600s BC and onwards), so the question is whether the theory was developed at that time or whether those sources are working from oral histories or earlier written texts that have since been lost. An inscribed bronze vessel from the start of the Zhou Dynasty indicates that the essentials of the Mandate of Heaven concept existed at this time: it states that the Zhou king received the Mandate of Heaven, and that the Shang [Yin] had lost the Mandate due to excessive drinking by the king and his courtiers. The inscription urges the official to whom it was addressed to “energetically enter the court to advise me [the king] at any point in the day”, suggesting the connection between the Mandate and conscientious rule.

The inscribed bronze vessel is significant, because such vessels are our main written source from Zhou Dynasty China. The Zhou seem to have mostly stopped using oracle bones and shifted to a more perishable divination source based on yarrow stalks; such minor changes as that are what determine the archaeological record we're working with. Fortunately, at the same time, the Zhou started making bronze ritual vessels, often as gifts to government officials, that had long inscriptions regarding the ruling king, Zhou history, the achievements of the official, or royal gifts granted to the official. This gives us some textual sources to work with, ones that are more detailed than the oracle bones were. They also suggest that literacy was becoming somewhat more common, if the officials they were gifted to could read them – in the Shang era literacy may have been the sole domain of ritual specialists, and it’s unclear if even the Shang kings could read or write. Literacy would continue to increase throughout the Zhou era.

The Zhou controlled a much larger territory than the Xia or the Shang, extending north to the end of Manchuria, east to the coast, and south as far as the Yangtze River. They achieved this via indirect rule of the outlying regions, absorbing smaller states and granting their territory to noble families who were responsible for imposing military and economic control.

In Mesoamerica, the power and reach of the Olmecs of San Lorenzo was also increasing. From their Gulf Coast heartland they established colonies and influence northwards to the Basin of Mexico, westwards to Zapotec areas (Oaxaca) and the Pacific coast, and southwards into Mayan regions. Olmec trade goods were present in the villages of Tlatilco in the Basin of Mexico and San José Mogote in Oaxaca. San José Mogote also made polished magnetite mirrors that it exported to the Olmecs as luxury goods. Olmec stone monuments are found all along the south Pacific coast of Mexico, and the settlement of Cantón Corralito there appears to have been an Olmec colony: all of its pottery is in Olmec styles, some imported from San Lorenzo and some made locally. There are also rock paintings in the Olmec style as far afield as present-day Guatemala City. While the extent of Olmec political influence is unclear, their economic and cultural influence was extensive.

In contrast to China and Mesoamerica, Western Asia and the eastern Mediterranean saw further decreases in economic activity and international trade, and cities shrunk in size. The former great powers, weakened in the previous century, declined even further. Babylonia had already ceased to be a unified state; now its agricultural infrastructure collapsed. Egypt was the next to fall.

A vivid illustration of Egypt’s loss of influence even early in the century is seen in an account by an Egyptian official by Wen-Amun. In 1075 he travelled to the Levant, trying to contract with city-states in the area that is now Lebanon for a large volume of timber. He was first robbed and then, upon arrival in the Levant, treated disdainfully by rulers of the city-state of Byblos. This was a far cry from the late bronze age, when the small Levantine states were vassals of alternately Egypt and the Hittites: the old Great Powers were no longer calling the shots. Egypt’s power was spent; the New Kingdom ended in 1069 BC, splitting into multiple successor states. One beneficiary of Egypt’s fall was Nubia (northern Sudan and southern Egypt), which regained its independence.

Assyria was the one major state in Western Asia to survive the late bronze age collapse. It even temporarily expanded its territory under king Tiglath-Pileser I (1114-1076), but could not hold onto these gains, and after around 1050 BC was substantially reduced in power to a small territory around its main cities in northern Mesopotamia.

This was a time of many migrations and movements of people, and many new cultural groups in Western Asia following the Late Bronze Age collapse: Phrygians in central Antatolia, Arameans in Syria, and Arameans, Chaldeans and Arabs in Mesopotamia as well. The movements of Arabs were facilitated by a major new innovation in transportation: the use of the dromedary camel for riding. Dromedaries had been previously domesticated for their meat and milk, but had not been used for transportation. In future this development would be of great significance for trade in Western Asia and Northern Africa.

There were two other major migrations of great importance around this time, in Oceania and in Africa.

In Oceania, the Lapita people, having already expanded in earlier times from Taiwan to the Philippines, other areas of southeast Asia, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Bismarck Archipelago north of Papua New Guinea, continued their voyages of discovery. Over the course of the 1100s and 1000s BC they reached first the Solomon Islands (which had been inhabited for tens of thousands of years), and then discovered and were the first people to settle Vanuatu and Fiji. They brought with them their distinctive shell-stamped and red-glazed pottery, as well as numerous agricultural crops ranging from yams to coconut palms, and domestic animals such as pigs and chickens.

In Africa, the Bantu people, who over many centuries had expanded from the Niger River area in West Africa to the Congo rainforest, and from there throughout the rainforest as well as the savannahs to its north and south, at last reached eastern Africa. They made contact with farming and herding people living in Kenya and Tanzania, combining farming systems from far different regions of the continent. The East African farmers had mainly farmed the savannah, but the Bantu brought crops such as yams that would grow in forested areas. This information is from Christopher Ehret’s The Civilizations of Africa, and appears to be mainly based on linguistic analysis; the archaeological record for ancient sub-Saharan Africa is thin. Linguistics are of great importance in tracking both the Lapita and Bantu expansions; and these migrations are why the Austronesian and Niger-Congo language families are, along with Indo-European languages, some of the most geographically widespread language families in the world.

The end of this century was also the starting point of a half-millennium of migration in the Amazon, by speakers of Tupiguarani and Arawak languages (I think the former more in the south, the latter more in the north). The small size of settlements suggests this was not druven by numerical population pressures, though it may have been aided by advances in agriculture; both groups had long-established manioc farming. It may have been due to increases in social inequality and hierarchy and the introduction of hereditary rank, with ambitious people continously splitting off to found their own villages where they could be leaders. This is also a commonly-theorized explanation for the Austronesian expansions.

#world history in a year #world history #ancient history #zhou dynasty #mandate of heaven #olmecs #ancient egypt #bantu #lapita #late bronze age collapse

my Lapita doesn't enjoy Ragatha's company that much

i wonder why

meanwhile:

#squished!#wob art #artists on tumblr #wob waifu #su #steven universe #ragatha #tadc #tadc ragatha #the amazing digital circus #lapita #lapita chiquita

Women in Mahabharata - Lapita

She is the second wife of the sage Mandapala. He moves in with her after leaving his first wife Jarita and unborn children. When Mandapala expresses his desire to reunite with his other family, she becomes angry, and implores him to leave her to fend for herself jsut as he had done Jarita. She also tries to stop him from checking if his sons are alive after the burning of the Khandava forest.

When Mandapala goes back to his first wife and tells her to introduce to his sons (since they had never met), she becomes angry, "Kim te jyeshthe sute kaaryam kim anantarajena vaa, kim cha te madhyame kaaryam kim kanishthe tapasvini?! Yas tvam maam sarvasho heenaam utsrijyaasi gatah puraa, taam eva lapitaam gaccha taruneem chaaruhaasineem!" [What job do you have with the eldest child? Or the youngest one? What job do you have with the middle child, sage? Go again, how you had gone, leaving my unfortunate self, to Lapita, with the nice smile!]