Rise of Civilization in the Old World

Catalog description

ANTH 9N introduces students to the anthropology of early complex societies in the Old World, with an emphasis on the civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley and China. Course information emphasizes the nature of these societies, analysis and interpretation of their basic institutions, their religions and world views, and their culture histories. Within the context of each segment sociological concepts such as "institution", "household", "stratification", "political economy", "urbanization", and a host of others are used as organizing features. Issues of gender, ethnicity, and class structure are also discussed, and much information is presented in weeks 2 and 3 that is pertinent to an understanding of human biological variation and our cultural attitudes toward it, with obvious implications for issues of race. The course is much broader, however, in that it attempts to place the emergence of these ancient civilizations into the overall perspective of the larger evolutionary career of the human species in the Old World, including human biological and cultural evolution during the later stages of the Paleolithic, the origins and spread of early agriculture, etc. During the first part of the course there is also a series of introductory lectures designed to inform students about what archaeology is and how prehistoric archaeologists carry out scientific research to reconstruct and explain what happened in the past. A great deal of emphasis is placed on ideas, concepts, and theories used by anthropological archaeologists to design and interpret their research and to explore not only what happened in the past, but to develop ideas about why things happened as well. Also included are lectures about archaeological finds or issues that have been particularly well publicized and about which students often express considerable curiosity. The main objectives are a) to expose students to a series of historically significant non-modern, non-Western societies and cultures using overtly evolutionary, behavioral, and sociological perspectives; b) to enlighten students concerning the kinds of extant information that are available for these societies, how research is designed to acquire new data, and how scholar's interpret these data, and c) to stress the nature of the agrarian human condition out of which modern societies so recently emerged, and under which people in many developing societies still live. Central to the latter are issues of subsistence agriculture and human demography. Central to ANTH 9 are comparisons among several great Old World civilizations, comparisons with other world civilizations and cultures, and comparisons with modern society.