Features

• Addresses a hunger among students to understand the historical roots of the world around them as well as their own individual and collective heritage.
• Invites students to see the world around them not as the “end of history” but as part of an unguided, ongoing global human experience.
• Challenges students to investigate the flow of people, things, and ideas between societies.
• Each part revolves around a global inquiry investigated and debated by world historians, defined partly by chronology but also by topic.
• Each chapter highlights an issue or an approach and is comprised of both primary and secondary sources, matched to each other in an opposing, supporting, and/or evidentiary relationship.
• Part introductions and conclusions, chapter introductions, and reading introductions--all written for this reader by the editors--provide crucial background on the issues discussed, allowing students to gain the most from each of the readings.
• Mastering the Material questions at the end of each chapter help students analyze, evaluate, and compare the sources.
• Making Connections questions at the end of each chapter ask students to connect sources both across chapters and across parts.
• Further Readings at the conclusion of each part offer students commentary on additional resources for further exploration of the topics addressed in the part.

Table of Contents

 

Introduction

1

What Is World History?: An Introduction for Students of

the Premodern World 1

Questions and Connections: The World before c. 1500 C.E. 2

Geography and Periodization 2

Sources 5

Themes in Premodern World History 7

Civilization: A Student’s Introduction 10

The Evolution of the Term Civilization 11

>> 1. FERDNAND BRAUDEL , A History of Civilizations 11

The “Clash of Civilizations” 12

>> 2. SAMUEL P. HUNTINGTON , “The Clash of Civilizations?” 13

An Afrocentric Critique of Civilization 13

>> 3. CHEIKH ANTA DIOP , The African Origin of Civilization:

Myth or Reality 13

A Transnational Critique of Civilization Theory 16

>> 4. ANDRE GUNDER FRANK , Toward Humano- and Eco-centrism:

Unity in Diversity, Not Clash in Civilizations 17

Part 1

Interrogating the Origins and Development

of Civilization and City-State Societies

(c. 8000—600 B.C.E.) 19

Chapter 1 The Natural Environment and Human

Beings: Constraints and Advantages 24

The Importance of Geography in History 26

>> 5. FERNAND BRAUDEL , A History of Civilizations 26

The Physical Environment of Early Mesopotamia 27

>> 6. J. N. POSTGATE , Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy

at the Dawn of History 28

Gilgamesh and the Great Flood 29

>> 7. The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by N. K. Sandars 30

Hymn to Hapy 31

>> 8. Hymn to Hapy 32

iii

The Physical Environment of Mesoamerica 34

>> 9. Popol Vuh, translated by Dennis Tedlock 35

Chapter 2 The Origins of Agriculture and Civilization 38

The First Farmers 40

>> 10. JARED DIAMOND , Location, Location, Location:

The First Farmers 41

The Eloquent Peasant 43

>> 11. The Eloquent Peasant 44

Agriculture 45

>> 12. FRANCESCA BRAY , Agriculture 45

Complex Food Systems in Mesoamerica 47

>> 13. JOHN S. HENDERSON , The World of the Ancient Maya 47

Complex Food Systems in Africa 49

>> 14. DAVID L. SCHOENBRUN , We Are What We Eat: Ancient Agriculture

between the Great Lakes 50

Conversations with Ogotemêlli 52

>> 15. MARCEL GRIAULE , Conversations with Ogotemmêli:

An Introduction to Dogon Religious Ideas 52

Cultural Heroes and the Origins of Agriculture 53

>> 16. Han Shu 24, translated by Nancy Lee Swann 54

Chapter 3 The City: Its Origins and Nature 56

Early Mesopotamian Cities 58

>> 17. J. N. POSTGATE , Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy

at the Dawn of History 59

Uruk, a Mesopotamian City 60

>> 18. The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by N. K. Sandars 61

Cities in Mesoamerica 62

>> 19. OCTAVIO PAZ , Food of the Gods 63

>> 20. RICHARD M. LEVENTHAL AND CHARLES H. HOWARTH, JR., “Copan:

Ancient City of the Maya” 64

The Origins of the Polis 66

>> 21. ANTHONY SNODGRASS , Archaic Greece: The Age of Experiment 66

The Polis of Athens 68

>> 22. THUCYDIDES , History of the Peloponnesian War, translated