Encyclopedia of Society and Culture in the Ancient World

Th e goldsmiths of southwestern Colombia achieved a high level of excellence with lost-wax casting. Th ey were able to take adva ...

for moving could be every bit as personal as the reasons why modern people sometimes leave their homelands to move somewhere els ...

For most of the ancient period, the majority of Africans lived as hunter-gatherers who did not necessarily inhabit permanent hom ...

the Romans, digging tunnels to retrieve underground wa- ter. Another desert center was the city of Aoudaghost, which appeared in ...

but the kingdom also engaged in a great deal of trade with Rome and other Mediterranean powers. EAST AFRICA Although eastern Afr ...

Nigeria developed both agriculture and ironworking during the fi rst millennium b.c.e. Th e Nigerian Bantu were believed to have ...

Egypt fostered a mind-set of superiority to other cultures and nations. Put simply, Egyptians looked down their noses at other c ...

lease, turning them from enemies into loyal peaceful foreign- ers. Other examples of colonization are to be found outside Egypt. ...

Th e region to the south of ancient Egypt is still referred to as Nubia. Th is region was home to people the later Greek histori ...

Th utmose’s words, “Th en this army of His Majesty arrived at wretched Kush.... Th is army of His Majesty overthrew those barbar ...

Sesostris I. Aft er his return and an audience with the king, Sinuhe is reinstated, bathed, and given a house and tomb with a fu ...

MESOPOTAMIA Th e civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia ebbed and fl owed with the water supply and periodic droughts. When the ri ...

out of Egypt and back to Canaan aft er 40 years of wandering the desert in the Sinai region. At the beginning of this jour- ney ...

ANATOLIA Anatolia, modern-day Turkey, was fertile and heavily for- ested. During the seventh and sixth millennia b.c.e. many peo ...

separate languages, the Persians and the Medes. Some of them intermarried with the Elamites. Around the ninth cen- tury b.c.e. t ...

by migrating into areas outside of the sedentary zones, oft en following confl ict over resources with the farmers. And yet othe ...

wave of large-scale migration, this time most probably by pastoral nomads speaking an Indo-Iranian branch. Th ese later migrants ...

MIGRATION OF THE YUEZHI (TOCHARIANS) AND SAKA (SCYTHIANS) Th e most signifi cant Indo-European-speaking group that may have migr ...

MIGRATION AND COLONIZATION OF THE ANCIENT PACIFIC Turning from the Asian continent to the Pacifi c Ocean, the occupation of the ...

cestors who had developed a distinctive fi shing and agrarian culture in the islands of Tonga and Samoa. Th ere is also gen- era ...