Trade Classical Period

Networks of Interaction &

Exchange300 BCE – 1100

CE

The Silk Road

• Geography: Outer versus Inner Eurasia

• Three Phases due to Secure Politics (CONSIDER CCOT!)– 100 BCE-200 CE – 7th century – 1000 CE– 13-14th centuries

“I can see clothes of silk (if materials that do not hide the body, nor even one’s decency, can be called clothes)…Wretched flocks of maids labor so that the adultress may be visible through her thin dress, so that her husband has no more acquaintance than any outsider or foreigner with his wife’s body.”

Seneca the Younger, ~60 CE

Kushan Art & Syncretism

The Silk Road

• Dynamic trade– Expensive, luxury items– Syncretism

• Spread of Buddhism (compare with Islam after 600 CE)

Bamiyan (Afghanistan)

Buddha: An EvolutionAlexander the Great, 300s BC

The many images of the Buddha

Leshan Buddha, China

The many images of the Buddha

Thailand

Indian Ocean Trade

• Up to 1500 CE, largest sea-based system of trade (cf. Mediterranean)

• Transportation costs cheaper

The Romans in India

Trans-Saharan Trade

• Use of the camel• Significant especially after 600 CE

Modern Identity & The Past

Notions of Africa

“Perhaps, in the future, there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none, or very little: there is only the history of the Europeans in Africa. The rest is largely darkness, like the history of pre-European, pre-Columbian America….”-- Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Rise of Christian Europe, 1965

Afrocentricism: Controversies in World History

“In my three volumes with the title Black Athena, I argue that the Ancient Egyptian civilization can usefully be seen as African. I also maintain Ancient Egypt and Semitic speaking South West Asia played fundamental roles in the formation of Ancient Greece. I do not claim the Ancient Greeks were Black or that the Ancient Egyptians all looked like stereotypical West Africans.”

(Martin Bernal)

Afrocentricism: Controversies in World History

“There were books in circulation that claimed that Socrates and Cleopatra were of African descent, and that Greek philosophy had actually been stolen from Egypt. Not only were these books being read and widely distributed; some of these ideas were being taught in schools and even in universities…”

Conceptions of Africa Reinforced by Media

Primitive› Failed to develop; non-changing

Wild & Dangerous› Wild animals & wild people

Exotic› Strange & fanciful

Unspoiled› Avoided progress – pure

Broken› Poverty, political sickness

Can we do better?

Recognize diversity – no single image of Africa

Bantu Migration

Classical North Africa, 600 BCE

Classical North Africa, 100 CE

Sub-Saharan Africa: Politics

Stateless societies › = no professional political class › = no one spent all their time telling people

what to do Difficult to produce consistent surplus of

food? No state chaos

› Solution through discussion› Authority through kinship, age, experience

Religions

Hundreds, even thousands of indigenous African religions. Many › believe in one God above a host of lesser

gods or semi-divine figures› believe in ancestral spirits› stress the idea of sacrifice, often involving

the death of a living thing, to ensure divine protection and generosity

› Stress rites of passage to move from childhood to adulthood, from life to death.

Divination headdress of Mbula (Tanzania)

Jews in Africa First

diaspora› Egypt› Axum

(Ethiopia) Beta

Israel

Christianity in Africa

Egypt via pax Romana (Coptic church)

St. Augustine (modern Tunisia)

Kingdom of Axum, King Ezana

Classical North Africa, 600 CE

Visualizing Culture: Sacred Sites

The plan

• What are these cultural systems – how do they create order?

• How did they spread and how did they affect the way people behave?

• How were these cultural systems expressed visually?

Buddha: an evolution

Sacred Sites: Angkor Wat

Sacred sites: the stupa

Sacred sites: the stupa

Sacred sites: the stupa

Sacred sites: the Catholic Church

Santa Sabina Basilica (5th century CE)

Sacred sites: the Catholic Church