The Mental Floss History Of The World Part 10

PAPER WORK.

Han-era Chinese weren't all politicians, bureaucrats, and artists. There were also a lot of busy scientists and inventors, coming up with, or improving on, things such as s.h.i.+ps' rudders, accurate maps, and the wheelbarrow.Even the bureaucrats came up with good ideas from time to time. In 105 CE, an imperial Court administrator named Cai Lun is credited with taking sc.r.a.ps of bark, bamboo, and hemp, chopping them up, and boiling them with wood ash. The result was paper. (Of course, being a eunuch, the guy had a lot of free time.)The invention of paper helped officials compile voluminous records and solidify the use of a single written language in an empire with myriad spoken languages. By the end of the second century, the Han were using wooden blocks of type to print entire books.And castrated bureaucrats could immerse themselves in paperwork.

Along with bureaucrats, the arts and sciences flourished in the Han Dynasty. Han Chinese were great workers in bronze, and Han porcelain and lacquer ware were not only beautiful, but were durable enough to survive centuries in leaky tombs.

The Han army was endowed with crossbows, the bronze trigger mechanisms of which could not be duplicated by their foes. When it came to armies, the dynasty's military leaders ran a pretty tight s.h.i.+p. And unlike earlier Chinese leaders, the Han emphasized offense rather than defense, invading the territory of their chief adversaries, the Mongols, in 91 CE.

Han China was far less dependent on trade than the Roman Empire, although the Chinese did trade widely, and sent diplomatic and trade commissions to both Rome and Parthia. Its economy was based not on slavery, but on a system sort of like sharecropping. Land was the chief object of taxation. Big landowners, in turn, exacted taxes and shares of crops from the peasant population.

HAN, INTERRUPTED.

In 9 CE, Han rule was interrupted by a reform-minded usurper named w.a.n.g Ming. Over a fourteen-year run, he inst.i.tuted a series of changes that ranged from offering low-cost loans to peasants for funerals, to outlawing slave trading. The reforms, however, angered the upper cla.s.ses and confused the lower. w.a.n.g Ming ended up having his head chopped off by rebel members of the army in 23 CE, and the Han dynasty was restored for another two hundred years.

Like the Roman Empire, Han China was increasingly plagued by government corruption, internal struggles for power and the complexities of running a vast governmental ent.i.ty. Unlike Rome, however, the Han Dynasty sank quickly. In 220 CE, it collapsed, to be replaced at first by three kingdoms: the Wei, Shu, and Wu. The empire was briefly unified by the Jin Dynasty, but in the main, for the next three hundred years China was to be dominated by warlords and torn apart by civil war.

The Middle East:

Empire to the Left, Empire to the Right

Sandwiched in between the Roman and Han empires during the Late Cla.s.sical Period were a couple of descendants of the ancient Persian dynasties.

The first of these were the Parthians, Iranian nomads who rebelled against the rule of the Seleucid Empire in 240 BCE. They really came into their own about a century later, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Mithradates II, also known as "Mithradates the Great." Under the rule of Mithradates and his successors, the Parthians conquered a total of eighteen separate small kingdoms, centered on what is now known as Iran, and stretching from Syria to what is now Afghanistan. Parthian rulers thus became known as "the kings of kings."

The Parthians were skilled hors.e.m.e.n who relied on spiffy cavalry tactics in battle. After conquering a territory, they tended to leave local rulers and administrators in charge, and thus lacked the central governmental core that marked the Han and Roman empires. They also did not keep the same meticulous records as did their two rivals, so relatively little is known about the Parthians' internal affairs.

Parthia and Rome had traded victories in battles over Middle Eastern territory in the half century before 1 CE, and the fights continued well into the new millennium.

In addition to invading Roman armies to the west and marauding Huns to the north, Parthia was subject to a hefty amount of immigration of Arabs from the south. Jews, who had been dispersed after Rome sacked Jerusalem, joined the Arabs after 70 CE.

MAKING THEIR POINT.

One of the tricks used by the Parthian armies was to send mounted archers into the enemy's ranks, fire a fusillade, and then retreat. But pursuers often got a nasty surprise: The Parthians would turn in their saddles, reload, and fire off another volley. Then it was "a Parthian shot." Today we call it "a parting shot."

Besieged on all sides, the Parthians were defeated and supplanted in the area around 224 CE by the Sa.s.sanians, under a guy named Aradas.h.i.+r I. Unlike the Parthians, the Sa.s.sanians used a more centralized, four-tiered governmental system and put their own administrators and tax collectors in place.

Like the Parthians, however, they also were almost continually at war with Rome. And like the Romans, the Sa.s.sanians eventually got around to embracing an official state religion: Zoroastrianism. Based on the teachings of the prophet Zoroaster, and perhaps the world's first monotheistic religion, Zoroastrianism did not seek converts. That meant the Sa.s.sanians tended to be fairly tolerant of other religions.

That changed, however, when Rome formally adopted Christianity in 391. After that, Christians came to be looked at as potential traitors, and were enthusiastically persecuted.

The Sa.s.sanid Empire eventually stretched from Syria into what is now northern India. Of the Big Three empires of the Late Cla.s.sical Age, it was the only one to last past 500 CE. In fact, it lasted almost 150 more years, before it was done in by Arab forces unified under the banner of a new religion, Islam.

India:

Let the Good Times Roll

If there were a sea of tranquility among the storm-tossed oceans of empires during this period, it might have been in India, where the Gupta Empire dominated from about 320 to 550 CE.

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON.

Legend has it that as Chandra Gupta lay dying in about 330 CE, he told his son Samundra to "rule the whole world."The kid took a pretty good whack at it. After defeating attempts by his older brothers to usurp him, he began a series of wars on rival kingdoms along the Ganges River Plain. Samundra wasn't shy about getting into battle himself: one account says that in old age, he displayed the marks of more than one hundred wounds received in fighting.At the height of his fifty-year run, Samundra's empire, which was centered near what is now the city of Delhi, controlled most of the Ganges River Valley. He is credited with ending the monarchies of nine rival kingdoms and subjugating a dozen others.Samundra was survived by his sons, who expanded the Gupta Empire even further, until its ultimate demise in about 550 CE.

From about 365 BCE to about 180 BCE, the Maurya Empire had dominated much of the Indian subcontinent. With the demise of the Mauryans, however, India became a vast collection of regional powers that periodically s.h.i.+fted alliances and waged war with one another. The biggest of these was the Kushan Empire, which was centered in what is now Afghanistan and which extended over northern India and into Central Asia from about 80 to 180 CE.

The Kushan gave way in about 320 CE to the Gupta, who were led by a succession of five strong rulers, starting with Chandra Gupta I.

The Gupta Empire, which at its height extended over most of the northern and central Indian subcontinent, was run with a laissez-faire att.i.tude: Defeated local rulers could stay in power, provided they behaved themselves and paid proper deference, and taxes, to the empire.

The Gupta Empire period is often referred to as India's "Golden Age." Politically, things were pretty peaceable. Trade with Rome (India provided exotic eastern goods; Rome provided gold) was so good that at least one Roman historian complained that the empire's bullion reserves were drained not by wars but by Indian merchants.

Although Hindus, the Gupta emperors were tolerant, and even supportive of, Buddhism and Jainism. The rules of grammar for the written language of Sanskrit were established, and literature and other arts prospered.

The Gupta Empire's cultural influences, in fact, reached beyond its geopolitical power, and left its imprint on civilizations in Southeast Asia, much as Greece had done in the West.

Unfortunately, a group of Huns called the Hephthalites were unimpressed. After several decades of fighting, the Gupta Empire fell to the Hephthalites about 550 CE, and India returned to a collection of small, and usually squabbling, kingdoms.

Africa:

Where Axum Is the Place to Be

Unlike Europe and Asia, the African continent was relatively devoid of mega-powers during this period. Most of North Africa, including what had been the mighty Egyptian empire, was under Roman control.

But that's not to say there weren't some significant things going on. The cultural influence of the Bantu, who had long used their mastery of iron forging to enhance their agricultural skills, spread both east and west from what is now Nigeria. The Bantu language and customs came to dominate other groups who were more hunters and gatherers than farmers.

At some point, the Berbers of North Africa came up with the idea of using domesticated camels to transport goods such as gold, ostrich feathers, and ivory from areas in West Africa, such as the kingdom of Ghana to ports on the Mediterranean.

But the happening place on the continent was in Northeast Africa, on the site of modern-day Ethiopia. It was Axum, a city-empire right smack on the trade routes between India, Arabia, and Africa. In addition to easy access from the land routes of Africa, Axum also enjoyed the advantage of the Indian Ocean's monsoon winds, which s.h.i.+fted directions with the seasons. That meant a s.h.i.+p could go back and forth within a year and sail downwind all the way.

Also known as Aksum, the city exported gold, ivory, rhinoceros horn, hippopotamus hides, slaves, imported textiles, metal goods, raw metals, and luxury goods.

The Greeks heavily influenced Axum. Its coins bore inscriptions in both Greek and the Axumite written language, Ge'ez. And starting in about 350 CE, the city was the only Christian state in Africa outside the areas still controlled by Rome.

The Americas:

Doing Their Own Thing

While not as impressive in size and scope as their Old World counterparts, several cultures in the Americas nonetheless had some accomplishments worth noting in the first five hundred years CE.

Chief among them were two groups in what is now Mexico. On the Yucatan Peninsula, the Maya were building a collection of city-states, literally carved out of the jungle. Although they lacked metal tools, plows, or wheels, the Maya developed a written language, an advanced calendar, some pretty solid astronomy, and architecture rivaling that of ancient Egypt.

In 455, they founded Chichen-Itza, a city covering six square miles, which included pyramids, temples, a ball field, and housing. Unlike their European and Asian counterparts, however, the Maya did not form a centralized government, and spent much of their time fighting among themselves.

On the Mexican mainland, a bit north of what is now Mexico City, a group of fierce warriors called the Teotihuacanos established a vast metropolis about 1 CE. By 500 CE the population of the city of Teotihuacan may have reached two hundred thousand. The city's Pyramid of the Sun was the largest structure in the pre-Columbian Americas.

Farther south, in southwest Peru, the Nazca culture was carving 780 miles of lines in the desert floor. With mathematical precision, they created lines forming figures of spiders, killer whales, and geometric shapes that could only be discerned from the air above. The Nazca also developed an efficient subterranean irrigation system and were masters at ceramics.

TEOTIHUACaN, ANYONE?.

If you can name the largest city in the world around 500 CE that had an economy based on a volcanic by-product, well, you could've been an Aztec-even though the city had nothing to do with the Aztecs.In fact, Teotihuacan rose and fell hundreds of years before the Aztecs came along. But they're the ones who gave the metropolis its name, which in English means "City of the G.o.ds." We don't know what the actual inhabitants called it.The city was situated about 30 miles northeast of what is now Mexico City. It covered about eight square miles at its peak, and was laid out along a precise grid, with a 2.5-mile-long main street.The city was dominated by the Pyramid of the Sun. It loomed 216 feet tall, covered 547,000 square feet at its base and required a million cubic yards of building material, mostly volcanic rock.Speaking of which, the economy was based on obsidian, which craftsmen turned into spearheads, knives, sc.r.a.pers, figurines, and masks, as well as incense burners, pottery, and other goods that were traded all over Central Mexico.By the mid-eighth century, however, the place was pretty much a ghost town. A huge fire, possibly sparked by raids from outside cultures such as the Toltecs, destroyed much of the city, and the population dispersed.

In Northern Peru, a people called the Moche used millions of adobe bricks to build huge tiered pyramids. Like the Nazca, they were masters at pottery work.

And in what is now the central United States, the Adena and the Hopewell were building flouris.h.i.+ng trading cultures. They also built elaborate burial mounds, at least one of which stood seventy feet high.

Like most of their European, Asian, and African counterparts, the Teotihuacanos, Nazca, Moche, Adena, and Hopewell were all but dim memories by the end of the sixth century.

But while much of what would be considered "civilization" had yet to occur in the Americas, the rest of the world was approaching the early stages of Middle Age.

Or at least the early Middle Ages.

SLICE OR DICE?.

Judging by the records left behind in the form of various artwork, the Nazca preferred to cut the heads off their captives, while the Moche liked to slit their throats.

WHO'S UP, WHO'S DOWN

The Romans: SLOWLY DOWN SLOWLY DOWN

Unlike many empires whose destruction was often swift and could be attributed to a single cause (drought, plague, fast food), the Roman Empire saw its fall brought about by a number of factors, which actually took a few hundred years to occur.

Chief among the reasons may have been its sheer size. A big empire means long borders to defend, especially in a world full of envious neighboring empires and restless nations of have-nots. The Roman Empire was pressured, often simultaneously, from lots of different directions-the mounted nomadic tribes of the Asian Steppe, the Germanic tribes in what is now Northern and Central Europe, the Berber peoples in North Africa.

That meant having either to pay a big army to keep out invaders, or bribe potential invaders not to invade. Coupled with an economy that relied heavily on imports while producing relatively little in the way of goods themselves, the continual drain of maintaining a ma.s.sive defense system meant high inflation. In 98 CE, the Roman denarius was 93.0 percent silver; in 270 it was 0.02 percent silver.

Now that no one buys our votes, the public has long since cast off its cares; the people that once bestowed commands, consuls.h.i.+ps, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things-bread and circuses.-Juvenal, a second-century Roman satirist writing about Rome's transition from republic to empire.