 Mountains – Hindu Kush, Karakorum, Himalayas  Creates subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh)  Indus and Ganges Rivers  Indus Ganges Plain (Around rivers)  Deccan – narrow border of lush tropical land in southern India  Monsoons

 Unpredictable floods and change of river course  Monsoons brought wet/dry seasons

 Writing has not been deciphered  Area larger than Mesopotamia and Egypt  Not sure where people came from  Arrived by sea from Africa?  Passed through Khyber Pass in Hindu Kush mountains?  Built pyramids in their cities  Sophisticated city planning (buildings/streets)  Precise grid system, fortified Citadels, residential areas  Plumbing and sewage systems  Strong central government

 No major social divisions  Prosperous society (clay/wooden toys)  Nonessential items  Little warfare  Shiva (major Indian God)  Mother goddess, fertility images, worship of cattle  Long distance trade  Traded with the Sumerian civilization

 Quality of building decreased  Cities began to fall  Indus River changed course?  Overused the land  Major catastrophe?  Unburied bodies (attack, natural disaster?)  Aryans?

 Natural barriers  Pacific Ocean (East)  Taklimakan Desert + Plateau of Tibet (West)  Himalaya Mountains (Southwest)  Gobi Desert + Mongolian Plateau (North)  2 Rivers run through this area  Huang He + Yangtze  Mountain ranges + deserts = 2/3 of China’s land  90% of remaining farmable land is between Huang He + Yangtze Rivers  Chinese thought people living elsewhere were “barbarians”  Thought China was center of civilized world

 Huang He provided yellowish silt (loess)  Good and bad  Earned nickname “China’s Sorrow” (Killed 1 Mil + people)  Flooding of whole villages  Isolation caused less dependence on trade  Did not completely protect them from invasion

 No written records from this time = unknown events (educated guess)  China’s first dynasty = Xia Dynasty  Led by Yu -> developed flood-control and irrigation projects  Shang Dynasty = 1 st family to leave written records  Built elaborate palaces and tombs

 Anyang = one of oldest and most important  Built mainly of wood  Upper class lived within city walls / lower did not  Constantly at war  Chariot becomes major war time tool  Dynasty ruled by warrior-nobles  Peasants = lowest class  Had limited farming tools  Bronze was too “precious” for tools

 Group > Individual  Lives based to serve family + king/emperor  Respect for one’s parents = most important virtue  Men controlled property and decision making  Women seen as inferior  Girls (13 – 16) had arranged marriage  Improved status by bearing children

 Believed spirits of family had the power to bring good fortune or disaster  Made sacrifices to honor dead relatives  Conversed with Gods through dead relatives  Made contact through oracle bones  Inscribed questions in bones  Cracked the bone and interpreted what they saw

 Each character in the language stands for an idea not a sound  No connection between written and spoken language  Chinese unified under one system of writing  Disadvantage = had to memorize a lot of symbols  10k + to be true scholar

 Overthrew Shang dynasty around 1027 B.C.  Adopted much of Shang culture  Mandate of Heaven  Ruler of Shang dynasty was so terrible, Gods had taken it away and given it to the Zhou People

 Political system in which nobles, or lords, are granted the use of lands that legally belong to the king  In return nobles owed loyalty and military service to the king and protection to the people who lived on their estates

 Zhou built roads and canals to supply the large growing cities  Introduced coin money  Civil servant class emerged = ran daily operations of city  Use of iron for weapons and agricultural tools