CHAPTER OUTLINE

I. Introduction

II. The First Europeans: The Paleolithic Era

III. The Neolithic Revolution

IV. Mesopotamia: The Social and Economic

Structures of Mesopotamian Life

A. The Sumerians, Akkad, Babylonia,

and Assyria

B. Mesopotamian Culture, Law, and Religion

V. Ancient Egypt

A. The Social and Economic Structures

of Ancient Egypt

B. Egyptian Culture, Science, and Religion

VI. Canaan, Phoenicia, and Philistia

VII. The Historical Development of Ancient Israel
A. The Origins of Judaism
B. The Social and Economic Structures
of Ancient Israel

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W

estern civlization rests upon the

achievements of far more ancient soci-

eties. Long before the Greeks or Ro-

mans, the peoples of the ancient Near

East had learned to domesticate animals, grow crops,

and produce useful articles of pottery and metal. The

ancient Mesoptamians and Egyptians developed writ-

ing, mathematics, and sophisticated methods of engi-

neering while contributing a rich variety of legal,

scientific, and religious ideas to those who would come

after them. The Phoenicians invented the alphabet and

facilitated cultural borrowing by trading throughout

the known world, and ancient Israel gave birth to reli-

gious concepts that form the basis of modern Judaism,

Christianity, and Islam. Chapter 1 will look briefly at

life in the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age before examin-

ing the Neolithic revolution and its material conse-

quences, including its impact on diet, demography,

and the advent of warfare. It will then describe the

development and structure of two great ancient

socieities, the Mesopotamian and the Egyptian, before

concluding with descriptions of the Phoenicians and

of the life and religion of ancient Israel.

The First Europeans: The Paleolithic Era

Few subjects are more controversial than the origins of

the human species. During the long series of ice ages,

the fringes of the European ice pack were inhabited by

a race of tool-making bipeds known conventionally as

Neanderthals. Heavier, stronger, and hairier than mod-

ern Homo sapiens,they hunted the great herding animals

of the day: mammoth, bison, wooly rhinoceros, and

reindeer. They lived in caves, knew how to make flint

tools and weapons, and buried their dead in ways that

suggest some form of religious belief.

1

CHAPTER 1

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST:

MESOPOTAMIA, EGYPT, PHOENICIA, ISRAEL