Encyclopedia of Society and Culture in the Ancient World

Teotihuacán is the clearest example of a city in both functional and demographic terms. It was a large, densely populated urban ...

medicinal herbs. Th e infl uence of Teotihuacán at Tikal was secure by 360 c.e. thanks to a ruler referred to as Curl-Nose in hi ...

John Collis, Oppida: Earliest Towns North of the Alps (Sheffi eld, U.K.: Department of Prehistory and Archaeology, University of ...

Temperature was also a critical environmental factor, but ancient peoples discovered that they were highly adaptable to temperat ...

Mount Kenya at 17,058 feet and Mount Kilimanjaro at 19,340 feet, both in East Africa. Th e main reason that Africa has a relativ ...

ern Hemisphere summer. About 10,000 years ago the amount of solar radiation during the summer was approximately 8 percent higher ...

Th e evidence paints an overall picture of increased warming and wetness across Africa over time, but the picture is fragmented ...

EGYPT BY KELLY-ANNE DIAMOND REED Egypt is located in the northeast corner of the African con- tinent, its nearest modern neighbo ...

of enormous mud-brick fortresses to control the gold extrac- tion and drive back the Nubians. Th e Second Intermediate Period (c ...

With the invention of the Nilometer the Egyptians could record the river levels and attempt to predict their crop yields. A Nilo ...

marshy and quite diff erent in appearance from the Nile Valley. Th ere are also many lakes and patches of low, salty ground. Th ...

Th e proximity of the Near East to Egypt’s northeastern border also played a primary role in the development and evolution of Eg ...

ern desert. Aside from gold, Nubia also supplied Egypt’s hard stone: pink and black granite, diorite, and porphyry, all of which ...

Tigris and Euphrates overfl owed their banks every spring, fed by melting snow in the Anatolian highlands. Th ese an- nual fl oo ...

Persia’s climate was and is characterized by extremes of temperature. Some of the world’s highest modern tem- peratures have bee ...

Th e most fertile parts of Anatolia are the Mediterra- nean coastal plain and the area south of the Sea of Marma- ra. Th ese reg ...

CENTRAL ASIA Th e region west of Persia (modern Iran) and the Caspian Sea encompasses a variety of terrains. Th e southern coast ...

forests. Several glaciers run through the upper Himalayas; these glaciers periodically drop chunks of ice, which can cre- ate ex ...

Hokkaidō is the northernmost island of the chain and has the coldest climate. Th e Sea of Okhotsk lies off its north- east coast ...

though geologists are not sure this happened. Krakatoa seems more likely to have erupted in 535 c.e., disrupting the global clim ...