Chapter 7: Classical Era Variations

Beginning of the Common Era, the total world population was 250 million people.
- 80 % of the world's population lived in Eurasia, Africa 11%, and America 5 to 7%
-The uneveness of the population in the world was the reason why historians focused more on Eurasia than Africa or the Americas.
- The absence of most animals that were capable of domestication meant no pastoral socieites in the Americas, and no draft animals to plow and carry heavy loads long distances.
- Africa lacked sheep, goat, chicken, goats, horses, and camels, but these animals were close to them in Eurasia so once domesticated, it would be widely available to the Africas.

Meroe:
Nubian civilization
- traded and fought with Egypt
- Meroe was governed by an all-powerful and sacred monarch
-Rulers were buried accoeding to ancient traditions, along with a number of human sacrificial victims.
- It was surrounded by a population who practiced herding, farming, and paid periodic tribute to the ruler.
Axum:
- It lay the Horn of Africa, what is now Eritrea and northern Ethiopia.
- It economic foundation was based on agriculture production that used a plow-based farming system, unlike most of the rest of Africa, which used hoes or a digging stick.
- Their agriculture production mainly consisted of wheat, barley, millet, and teff.
- Many merchants sought after the products of Africa's interior, animal hides, rhinoceros, horn, ivory, obsidian, tortoiseshells, slaves.
- Taxes on this trade provided a major source of revenue for the Axumite state.
- Axum was the capital city.

Bantu Africa:
- 400 distinct languages, known collectively as Bantu.
These people had  various advantages:
- Numerical- as agriculture generated a more productive economy, enabling larger numbers to live in a smaller area than was possible with  a gathering and hunting way of life.
- Disease- farmers brought parasitic and infectious diseases, which foraging people had little immunity.
- Iron- useful for tools and weapons
Relgion for them focused more on nature and ancestoral spirits than on a High or Creator God, who was viwed as remote and largely uninvolved in ordinary life.
- the power of dead ancestors can be accessed through rituals of sacrfice, especially that of cattle
- Belief in witches were widespread.

Mayans:
A Mesoamerican civilization
- 2000 B.C.E.
-classical phase of Maya civilization, between 250 and 900 C.E.  that their most notable cultural achievements emerged.
- Priests developed mathematical system
- Observed the night skies to plot the cycles of planets, to predict eclipses of the sun and moon, to constrcut calendars, and calculate accurately the length of the solar year.
-Writing Sysetem- phonetic and pictographic
historical events, masses of astronimical date, and religious and mythological texts.

Andes:
-Incas
Coastal region of Peru generated one of the first civilizations known as Norte Chico.
-Chavin de Huantar- high in the Andes.
-small town of 2000-3000 people