Ancient Civilizations of the World (MOOC)

www.saylor.org  150,000 years of "modern humans". millennia as hunter-gatherers in groups of 20-30 ppl ... then:

• 10,000 BC humans settle in sedentary communities.domesticate plants & amms
•  10,000 BC began dom of amms.  dom'd wolves for hunting & defense:  dogs
•   8,500-7,000 dom'd sheep, goats, pigs and by 6500 horned cattle
•   8,000 - 5,000 begins the agricultural rev  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdbnW-9c27U
•   7,000 pottery - allowed storage of food and transport of it.
•   6,000-4,000 pottery wheel (mass-production) + craftsmen
•   8,500:  Jerico.  Wall.  shows organization  - abandoned - then Catal Huyuk (turkey) w 5-8K pop'l.  No streets!  used roofs as streets!  Ladders.  Honeycomb.  No dom by men:  egalitarian.  craftspeople. fed by agric., others cld devote to art, sci, relig.  Veneration of women & bulls; as societies became > complex, creation of un= classes. loss of pwr by women.  Priviledged classes emerge & military classes ... deadly war
•  7,000 pop'l explosion.  cities.  kingdoms.  Mesopotamia had sumeria, Babylon, Assyria.  Nile had Egyptians.  Persians.  then Chinese civ.   Wake of Ice Age:  Fertile Valley
•  9,000 got colder.  devel of agric not linear:  fits and starts.  agric = NEOLYLTHIC.  Happened 3 places:  fertile valley, china, central amer.  diff times, diff places. it always spread, but slowly.  by 5K bc was most common.  didn't spread as rapidly as we might expect.  spread slowly.  agric increases work expectations.  Hunting and gatherers worked abt 3 hrs per day.  agric totally chged the relations of men and women.  women became "systematically inferior".  Patriarchial began to dominate:  sex and age.  Why?  agric permitted and required expanded birth rate!  produced more predictable food supply.  H&G fed infants  3-5 years this limited birth rate.  Chg in birth rate w agric (could feed) - changed rels between sexes.  Women couldn't act as providers:  men were principle providers.  Children in agric soc worked!  obedience!  
• LOOOOONg period:  agric to industrial revolution .... (300 yrs ago)