Western Civilization

rendered his judgment: “Give the living baby to the

first woman. Do not kill him; she is his mother.”

According to the biblical account, “When all Israel

heard the verdict the king had given, they held the

king in awe, because they saw that he had wisdom

from God to administer justice.” After Solomon’s

death, Israel began to disintegrate. But how had such a

small nation been able to survive as long as it did in a

Near East dominated by mighty empires?

The weakening of Egypt around 1200B.C.E. left no

dominant powers in the Near East, allowing a

patchwork of petty kingdoms and city-states to

emerge, especially in Syria and Canaan. One of these

small states, the Hebrew nation known as Israel, has

played a role in Western civilization completely

disproportionate to its size. The Hebrews played a

minor part in the politics of the ancient Near East,

but their spiritual heritage, in the form of Judeo-

Christian values, is one of the basic pillars of

Western civilization.

The small states did not last, however. Ever since

the first city-states had arisen in the Near East

around 3000B.C.E., there had been a movement

toward the creation of larger territorial states with

more sophisticated systems of control. This process

reached a high point in the first millenniumB.C.E.

with the assembling of vast empires. Between 1000

and 500B.C.E., the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, and

the Persians all established empires that

encompassed large areas of the ancient Near East.

Each had impressive and grandiose capital cities

that emphasized the power and wealth of its rulers.

Each brought peace and order for a time by

employing new administrative techniques. Each

eventually fell to other conquerors. In the long run,

these large empires had less impact on Western

civilization than the Hebrew people. In human

history, the power of ideas is often more significant

than the power of empires.

On the Fringes of Civilization

Q FOCUSQUESTION: What is the significance of the

Indo-European-speaking peoples?

Western civilization took root in Mesopotamia and

Egypt, but significant developments were also taking

place on the fringes of these cultures. Farming

had spread into the Balkan Peninsula of Europe by

6500 B.C.E., and by 4000B.C.E. it was well established

in southern France, central Europe, and the coastal

regions of the Mediterranean. Although migrating

farmers from the Near East may have brought some

farming techniques into Europe, historians now believe

that the Neolithic peoples of Europe domesticated ani-

mals and began to farm largely on their own.

One outstanding feature of late Neolithic Europe was

the building of megalithic structures.Megalithis Greek

for “large stone.” Radiocarbon dating, a technique that

allows scientists to determine the age of objects, shows

that the first megalithic structures were built around

4000 B.C.E., more than a thousand years before the

great pyramids were built in Egypt. Between 3200 and

1500 B.C.E., standing stones that were placed in circles

or lined up in rows were erected throughout the British

Isles and northwestern France. Other megalithic con-

structions have been found as far north as Scandinavia

and as far south as the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, and

Malta. Some archaeologists have demonstrated that

the stone circles were used as observatories to detect

not only such simple astronomical phenomena as the

midwinter and midsummer sunrises but also such com-

plex phenomena as the major and minor standstills of

the moon.

By far the most famous of these megalithic con-

structions is Stonehenge in England. Stonehenge con-

sists of a series of concentric rings of standing stones.

Its construction sometime between 2100 and 1900

B.C.E. was no small accomplishment. The eighty blue-

stones used at Stonehenge weigh four tons each and

were transported to the site from their original source

135 miles away. Like other megalithic structures,

Stonehenge indicates a remarkable awareness of as-

tronomy on the part of its builders, as well as an

impressive coordination of workers.

The Impact of the Indo-Europeans

For many historians, both the details of construc-

tion and the purpose of the megalithic structures

of Europe remain a mystery. Also puzzling is the

role of the Indo-European people. The nameIndo-

Europeanrefers to people who used a language derived

from a single parent tongue. Indo-European languages

include Greek, Latin, Persian, Sanskrit, and the Ger-

manic languages (see Table 2.1). It has been suggested

that the original Indo-European-speaking peoples

were based somewhere in the steppe region north of

the Black Sea or in southwestern Asia, in modern

Iran or Afghanistan. Although there had been earlier

28 Chapter 2 The Ancient Near East: Peoples and Empires

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