TRADE AND CULTURAL EXCHANGES
From the beginning humans have migrated and mixed with one another. The first migration took place out of Africa to the Near East some 100,000 years ago, when humans spread across Europe and Asia. The ice ages provided land bridges for travel to parts of Oceania (60,000 b.c.e.) and North America (14,000 b.c.e.). DNA tests indicate that every human living in the far corners of the world can be traced back to a common ancestor in Africa. This prehistoric wanderlust continued after the beginning of civilization, enriching the civilization’s heritage. Archaeological records shows that the “cradles of civilization” were not so isolated.
Even the most advanced of empires had contacts with lands and peoples that they considered outsiders and inferiors. For example, Mesopotamia (3000 b.c.e.) could produce food for its burgeoning population and cities along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, but where would it obtain copper and tin for bronze making, except in far-off Cyprus? Ancient Egypt (2600 b.c.e.) acted as though it had everything it needed because of the Nile, but where would it get its wood and ivory, not to mention its slaves, except from Semitic peoples in Phoenicia and Syria? These interactions are confirmed by physical remains found by archaeologists in each of these respective sites. As history progressed and wealth and resources became more concentrated around cities, trade and cultural exchanges become more deliberate. In fact, a reliable barometer of the health of a civilization can be found in the level of trade and exchange it maintains with others.
Along with the movement of goods among the ancient cities in the river valleys of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China, there were movements of peoples and tribes that affected the balance of power and development. One of the most significant migrations for later language and cultural development involved the expansion of Indo-European peoples around 1600 b.c.e. from their homeland between the Black and Caspian Seas. For reasons unknown they moved in several directions: toward present-day Iran and India, toward the Mediterranean Sea into Europe, and toward the Middle East into Mesopotamia. Those who moved into Iran gave their land its name. By 500
b.c.e. the descendants of these Aryans, under Cyrus the Great, had conquered the largest empire the world had yet seen. In India these hierarchical foreigners replaced the Indus River valley city-states. The new society had an Indo-European language, known as Sanskrit, and its religion based on the Vedic scriptures replaced the religion of the natives.
Cultural Penetration and Subversion. Indo-Europeans met with stiff cultural resistance from the Dravidian people of southern India. Their harsher views moderated, and eventually the hybridization of their Vedic religion and local cultures emerged. All of these profound changes were the results of the Indo-European encounter with the peoples of India and resulted in the development of several great religions. The Indo-Europeans also moved to the south and west of their original homeland. They marched into Mesopotamia around 1600 b.c.e. and formed the Hittite Empire but could not keep control of the ever-shifting puzzle of native city-states. All that remained of the Hittite legacy was the war-making technology of chariots, war horses, and iron weapons. In the West they made an impact on the Mediterranean world, replacing the dominant Minoan civilization of Crete with their Mycenaean culture. Greek language, literature, and ethnic identity resulted with the mixing of the Mycenaeans and later immigrants called Dorians and Ionians.
The Indo-European Greek culture formed the underpinnings of modern Western civilization. Greek culture captivated the Romans, who conquered the Greeks and were in turn conquered by the higher Greek civilization. Eventually, Roman patricians insisted on their sons being educated by Greek tutors, or on sending their sons to Athens for schooling. Most important, modern Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese) came from the same Latin-Greek- Indo-European family.
Another people who profoundly influenced other civilizations through their travels were the Phoenicians, a seafaring and adventurous people from modern Lebanon who settled as far away as Britain and even navigated around the Horn of Africa. Their greatest contribution to world progress was the invention of the alphabet. With an alphabet of 24 letters, simplifying earlier writing systems of Egyptian hieroglyphics and Sumerian cuneiform, the Phoenician script was adopted by the Greeks, who incorporated vowels, and subsequently by many other cultures.
Religious Exchanges. Three exchanges did not involve goods or people but, rather, religions: Christian influence on Rome, Jewish influence on Islam, and Islamic influence on Europe. Christianity began in the highlands of Galilee and Judaea. It showed these roots profoundly, especially when it directly clashed with the Roman emperor cult, because of its Semitic respect for monotheism and its interpretation of a Jewish doctrine called the “kingdom of God.” Such differences led to periodic persecution and martyrdom of Christians under Roman rule. Marginalization only increased the appeal of the new religion. By 310 c.e. the Christian message had reached even the ruler Constantine, who converted to Christianity, resulting in an era of Christian expansion. The early enthusiasm of the Christian preachers had already pushed beyond the traditional territories of Diaspora Jews: India claims to have had contact with the apostle Thomas by 50 c.e., Armenia by 325 c.e., Axum in Africa by 350 c.e., Persia by 488 c.e., and western Europe by 600 c.e.
A second surprising cultural contact involved the Diaspora Jews in the Arabian Peninsula. When Jews were expelled from their homeland by Roman invasions, they often went into the Eastern world instead of the West. One place they congregated was Mecca (500 c.e.), a trading and religious center, halfway between Yemen and Egypt and at the crossroads of trade from the Persian Gulf. Here they established synagogues and dialogue with their Arab hosts, one of whom the Qur’an says was Muhammad. Much of the Qur’an presupposes the stories and ideas of the Jewish Bible.
Exchange by Conquest. Cultural exchanges also resulted from military conquests and empire building. Alexander the Great conducted a campaign against the Persians around 330 b.c.e. Alexander, a Macedonian, had been shaped by the Greek worldview due to his being held hostage in Greece, his compliance with Greek customs and lifestyle, his education by the famous Greek philosopher Aristotle, and his own personal mission to spread Hellenism abroad. After his lightning-like world conquest, he began to set up Greek institutions throughout his empire, demanding Greek as the lingua franca and violently repressing certain native religions (such as Zoroastrianism). He began to demand divine homage as king in the manner of the Persians. He diminished the role of Greek city-states and increased a sense of being an “empire citizen.” He caused trade between Asia and the Mediterranean to increase markedly. His military conquest resulted in profound cultural hybridization.
Another form of exchange was caused by conquest. Since the third century b.c.e. a nomadic people called the Xiongnu had raided and warred with the sedentary Chinese. Chinese victories and expansion after c. 100 b.c.e. caused the Xiongnu to migrate westward, creating a snowball effect on the Gothic peoples who had settled on the frontiers of Rome for decades. When the Asian nomads (also known as the Huns) pushed through Hungary into Roman frontier areas in 376 c.e., the Goths fled into the Roman Empire. They first sacked Rome in 410 c.e. In 441 c.e. Attila the Hun launched a devastating attack and advanced all the way to Rome. The whole Roman order came apart, and the ensuing chaos led to the “Dark Ages.”
The Mauryan Empire at the end of the fourth century b.c.e. controlled the Indian subcontinent, but its cultural influence went far beyond it. Indian Buddhist missionaries began proselytizing in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Afghanistan, and Central Asia, bringing a new religion, as well as Indian civilization. Indian trade and cultural identity not only survived the fall of the Mauryan Empire but expanded under the Gupta Empire in the fourth century c.e. The impact of the Indians on Southeast Asia was so strong that the region was called “Indianized Asia.”
China dominated East Asia culturally and politically. Beginning in the second millennium b.c.e. Chinese civilization expanded from the Yellow River valley, assimilating various groups of peoples. Successive rulers of the Han dynasty incorporated present-day Korea and Vietnam into the Chinese empire. They also conquered areas deep in Central Asia, expelling or subjugating nomadic tribes including the Xiongnu. By the first century b.c.e. the two great empires, the Roman and Chinese, had extended dominion over much of the Eurasian world, imposing the Pax Romana and the Pax Sinica. The resultant trade and cultural interactions along the Silk Road that linked Chang’an (Ch’ang-an, the Chinese capital) and Rome by land and sea and that included Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, Persia, and the Middle East would survive the fall of both the Roman and Han and Gupta Empires. Trade exchanges between Asia and Europe picked up markedly after 500 b.c.e. due to several factors, among them improved roads and navigational techniques. New religions also encouraged missionaries to go abroad to spread their faiths.
Throughout Central and South America, from as early as 2000–1500 b.c.e., there are physical remains of artifacts that were made in far-away areas of the New World, thus, proof of exchange. There was by 1000 b.c.e. a network of pan-Mesoamerican communication that connected central and southern Mexico as far south as Nicaragua. These contacts spread farming innovations into new adjacent areas. It is possible that the same sharing of information occurred between the Andes urban areas and Mesoamerica. The great city of Teotihuacán (450 c.e.) in central Mexico was a hub of travel and trade. Its road network connected the city to the North American Southwest, the Mayan highlands, and west to the Pacific.
African connections to the outside world began during the reigns of several Upper Nile pharaohs, expanded under the Persian Empire and Ptolemaic dynasty, and reached a high point under the Romans, who utilized North Africa as a breadbasket region. Romanized Africa also became a base for Christian missionary activity. In fact, the church’s leading early thinker, Augustine, came from modern-day Tunisia. Ancient Egypt and later the kingdom of Axum in present-day Sudan acted as important links in trade and in the transmission of ideas and technologies between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.
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