Lecture 31: Agrarian Civilizations in Other Regions
absence of obvious palaces or royal tombs limits our understanding of the
political system. The Indus Valley civilization collapsed early in the 2nd
millennium. Overpopulation may have caused ecological collapse through
deforestation, erosion, À ooding, and deserti¿ cation.The earliest Agrarian civilizations in China emerged along the Yellow River,
whose fertile “loess” soils formed from dust blown in from Inner Asia.
Agriculture was productive, but À ooding was a perennial problem. Chinese
traditions describe two ancient dynasties, the Xia and Shang. Cities and
states appeared along the eastern Yellow River late in the 3rd millennium.
The Xia dynasty was probably one of several regional kingdoms. Its capital,
at Erlitou, has been recently excavated. The Shang dynasty ruled for much
of the 2nd millennium B.C.E. Bronze metallurgy and horse-drawn chariots,
as well as wheat and barley, may have arrived from the West. The Shang
controlled many cities. They had large armies equipped with mass-produced
weapons and armor, and they built massive royal tombs and palaces. There
may have been other similar kingdoms in other regions of China. Shang
writing, using symbols carved on tortoise shells or other bones, can still be
read today. Here, writing was linked to divination, a skill highly valued in
rulers. Rituals were important, but deities and priests played a smaller role
than in Mesopotamia or Egypt.Agrarian civilizations appeared later, but quite independently, in two regions
in the Americas. We will survey these civilizations in more detail in Lecture
Thirty-Seven. “Mesoamerica” includes southern Mexico and parts of Central
America. The ¿ rst incipient civilizations appeared among the “Olmec”
during the 2nd millennium B.C.E. In the 1st millennium, cities and states also
appeared in the Oaxaca valley, in modern Mexico. By the 1st millennium
C.E., there were cities and states throughout Mesoamerica. Here, great river
valleys played a lesser role than in Afro-Eurasia, though techniques for
increasing agricultural productivity included forest clearance and the creation
of large arti¿ cial swamplands. In the Andes, state systems emerged in the 1st
millennium B.C.E. along the arid coasts of Peru (where they relied largely
on ¿ shing) and in the Andean uplands around Lake Titicaca (which relied
on maize, potato, and quinoa). Exchanges of crops and other goods between
lowland and upland regions laid the foundations for the ¿ rst large empires.