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The origin of civilization [compact disc] / Scott MacEachern.

by MacEachern, Scott.

Chantilly, Va. : Teaching Co., [2010]

Civilization -- History.

9781598036282 (container)

1598036289 (container)

9781598036244 (course guide)

1598036246 (course guide)

Great courses (Compact disc)

24 sound discs (ca. 24 hr.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in. + 1 course guidebook (19 cm.)

pt. 1 -- Ancient states and civilizations -- History of archaeological research -- Studying the origins of states -- Archaeological interpretation-- Çatalhöyük -- Stepping stones to civilization -- Trajectories of cultural development -- When is a state a state? -- A complex neolithic-- Halafian and Samarran -- Hierarchy and urbanism-- 'Ubaid Mesopotamia -- Uruk world system -- Sumer and afterward -- Civilization and pastoralism in Mesopotamia

pt. 2 -- Development of writing in mesopotamia -- Gift of the Nile -- Egyptian predynastic period -- Unification of upper and lower Egypt -- Divinity and display in dynastic Egypt -- Why so different?-- Mesopotamia and the Nile -- Borders and territories of ancient states -- Levantine copper and early bronze ages -- Hierarchy and society in the Aegean -- Early Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations -- Palace and countryside on Crete -- How things fall apart-- the Greek dark ages

pt. 3 -- First farmers in the Indus Valley -- Cities along the Indus -- Seeing what we expect-- power and display -- Sedentism and agriculture in early China -- State formation in ancient China -- Origins of the Chinese writing system -- From human sacrifice to the Tao of politics -- Spread of the states in mainland southeast Asia -- Axumite civilization in Ethiopia -- Inland Niger delta-- hierarchy and heterarchy -- Lake Chad basin-- settlement and complexity -- Great Zimbabwe and its successors

pt. 4 -- Sedentism and agriculture in Mesoamerica -- Olmec of lowland Mexico -- Teotihuacán-- first American city -- Beginnings of states in lowland Mesoamerica -- Great Maya city-states -- Epigraphy-- changing views of the Maya -- Was there a Maya collapse? -- Adaptations in Pacific South America -- Pyramids and precocity in coastal Peru -- Andean civilization - Chavín to Chimú -- Florescence of the Inka empire -- Ancient states-- unity and diversity?

Around 10,000 years ago, the small group of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers that had walked the earth for millennia gave way to increasingly complex Neolithic villages of agricultural producers. Around 4,000-5,000 years later, people had gathered in urban settings, established laws, and developed cultural and political systems. This remarkable change took place in Mesopotamia, on the North China plain, in the Indus Valley, in the Nile Valley, on Aegean islands, in Africa, and in America. What motivated these new forms of culture and social and political complexity? Why did they appear where they did? This course brings together findings from both archaeological and anthropological scholarship to answer these questions and to deepen our understanding of the first human states and civilizations.

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