The Bronze Age is part of the three-age system (Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age) that for some parts of the world describes effectively the early history of civilization. During this era the most fertile areas of the world saw city states and the first civilizations develop. These were concentrated in particular fertile river valleys: The Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia, the Nile in Egypt, the Indus in South Asia, and the Yangtze and Yellow River in China.
Mesopotamia saw the rise of the Sumerian city states. It was in these cities that the earliest known form of writing, cuneiform script, appeared c. 3000 BCE. Cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs. Over time, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract. Cuneiforms were written on clay tablets, on which symbols were drawn with a bluntreed for a stylus. Writing made the administration of a large state far easier. This era also saw new military technologies, such as chariots, that allowed armies to move faster.w
These developments led to the development of empires. The first empire, controlling a large territory and many cities, developed in Egypt with the unification of Lower and Upper Egypt c. 3100 BCE . Over the next millennia the other river valleys would also see monarchical empires rise to power. In the 24th century BCE, the Akkadian Empire arose in Mesopotamia.[43] and in China the Xia Dynasty arose c. 2200 BCE.
Over the next millennia civilizations would develop across the world. Trade would increasingly become a source of power as states with access to important resources or controlling important trade routes would rise to dominance. In c. 2500 BCE the Kingdom of Kermadeveloped in Sudan south of Egypt. In modern Turkey the Hittites controlled a large empire and by 1600 BCE, Mycenaean Greecebegan to develop.[44][45] In India this era was the Vedic period, which laid the foundations of Hinduism and other cultural aspects of early Indian society, and ended in the 6th century BCE. From around 550 BCE, many independent kingdoms and republics known as theMahajanapadas were established across the country. In the Americas, civilizations such as the Maya, Zapotec, Moche, and Nazcaemerged in Mesoamerica and Peru at the end of the 1st millennium BCE.
The millennium from 500 BCE to 500 CE saw a series of empires of unprecedented size develop. Well-trained professional armies, unifying ideologies, and advanced bureaucracies created the possibility for emperors to rule over domains, whose population could attain numbers upwards of tens of millions of subjects.
This period in the history of the world was marked by slow but steady technological advances, with important developments such as the stirrup and moldboard plow arriving every few centuries. There were, however, in some regions, periods of rapid technological progress. Most important, perhaps, was the Mediterranean area during the Hellenistic period, when hundreds of technologies were invented.[56][57][58] Such periods were followed by periods of technological decay, as during the Roman Empire's decline and fall and the ensuing early medieval period.
The great empires depended on military annexation of territory and on the formation of defended settlements to become agricultural centres.[59] The relative peace that the empires brought encouraged international trade, most notably the massive trade routes in the Mediterranean that had been developed by the time of the Hellenistic Age, and the Silk Road.
The empires faced common problems associated with maintaining huge armies and supporting a central bureaucracy. These costs fell most heavily on the peasantry, while land-owning magnates were increasingly able to evade centralised control and its costs. The pressure of barbarians on the frontiers hastened the process of internal dissolution. China'sHan Empire fell into civil war in 220 CE, while its Roman counterpart became increasingly decentralised and divided about the same time.
In the west, the Greeks established a civilization that is the foundational culture of modernwestern civilization. Some centuries later, in the 3rd century BCE, the Romans began expanding their territory through conquest and colonization. By the reign of EmperorAugustus (late 1st century BCE), Rome controlled all the lands surrounding the Mediterranean. By the reign of Emperor Trajan (early 2nd century CE), Rome controlled much of the land from England to Mesopotamia.
In the 3rd century BCE, most of South Asia was united into the Maurya Empire by Chandragupta Maurya and flourished under Ashoka the Great. From the 3rd century CE, the Gupta dynasty oversaw the period referred to as ancient India's Golden Age. Empires in Southern India included those of the Chalukyas,the Rashtrakutas, the Hoysalas, the Cholas and the Vijayanagara Empire. Science,engineering, art, literature, astronomy, and philosophy flourished under the patronage of these kings.
Meanwhile, the Han Dynasty was the classical empire of the East. Across the silk road from the Roman Empire, the Han Dynasty is often considered to be the Rome of China. While the Romans were almost unstoppable in military means, Han China was developing advanced cartography, shipbuilding, and navigation. The East developed blast furnaces, and were capable of creating finely tuned copper instruments. As with other areas during the Classical Period, Han China advanced in strides in areas of government, education, mathematics, astronomy, and technology, among others.
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