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World History 1

<OpenstaxParagraph>
	The <OpenstaxTerm>Phoenicians</OpenstaxTerm> were descended from the Bronze Age Canaanites and lived in cities like <OpenstaxTerm>Sidon</OpenstaxTerm> and <OpenstaxTerm>Tyre</OpenstaxTerm> (in today’s Lebanon), each ruled by a king. They were great sailors, explorers, and traders who established trading posts in Cyprus, North Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain. They sailed along the west coast of Africa and to the British Isles in search of new markets and goods such as tin (See <a href="#fig-00004">Figure 6.7</a>).
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxFigure id="fig-00004" src="https://openstax.org/apps/archive/20240226.174525/resources/76e05df83f89622abf2b0510fef9d9b8e45d91a4" alt="A map is shown with land highlighted beige and water highlighted with blue. A blue area is located in the middle with an oval section in the northeast of the map as well as in the northwest. A small, long thin area of blue is located in the southeast of the map. Black dots litter the coast of the land surrounding the middle body of water indicating “Phoenician colonies.” The cities labelled on these black dots, from west to east are: Gades, Carthage, Utica, Panormus, Leptis Magna, and Kition. Red stars are located on the eastern coast of the middle body of water and are labelled: Arvad, Gebal, Sydon, and Tyre indicating “Phoenician cities.”" mediaType="image/jpg" width="1201" height="589" />
<OpenstaxFigureText width="1201">
	<strong>Figure 6.7</strong> The Phoenicians were great mariners and explorers. This map shows the many cities and colonies they founded across the Mediterranean Sea. (credit: modification of work “Mediterranean at 218 BC” by “Megistias”/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)
</OpenstaxFigureText>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Around 1100 BCE, the Phoenicians also invented the world’s first known <OpenstaxTerm>alphabet</OpenstaxTerm>, using symbols that represented consonant sounds. Strung together, these consonants created words in which vowel sounds were interpreted by the order of the consonants. Because the Phoenician alphabet simplified the earlier script of the Canaanites, more people could now become literate, not just a small, specialized group of scribes. The Phoenicians’ commercial success was undoubtedly partly a result of their better, more efficient record-keeping system that a larger population could learn and employ. Other cultures like the Aramaean peoples and the Israelites quickly adapted the new script to their own languages. By the eighth century BCE, the Greeks had also adopted and later adapted the Phoenician alphabet to write their language.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Beginning with the Assyrian Empire’s expansion in the eighth century BCE, the Phoenician kingdoms became subjects of the successive Iron Age empires of western Asia: the <OpenstaxTerm>Assyrians</OpenstaxTerm>, the <OpenstaxTerm>Chaldeans</OpenstaxTerm> (Neo-Babylonian), and the <OpenstaxTerm>Persians</OpenstaxTerm>. The Phoenicians continued to flourish, however. The Assyrians valued Phoenician artists, and finely crafted Phoenician wares such as jewelry and furniture became popular among the ruling elites. The Persians relied largely on Phoenician sailors and ships to serve as the naval forces, especially in their campaigns to conquer Greece in the early fifth century BCE. When Phoenician city-states such as Sidon and Tyre became subject to foreign rule, many Phoenicians immigrated to the city of <OpenstaxTerm>Carthage</OpenstaxTerm> (in modern-day Tunisia), founded by Phoenician merchants around 700 BCE as a stopping place on the long but profitable voyage to Spain. Given this influx of immigrants, Carthage grew large and wealthy, and by the fifth century BCE the southern Italian peninsula was the dominant power in the western Mediterranean.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	The <OpenstaxTerm>Phoenicians</OpenstaxTerm> were not the only people establishing colonial outposts around the wider Mediterranean world. Beginning in the eighth century, <OpenstaxTerm>Greeks</OpenstaxTerm> began founding colonies in North Africa, in coastal Spain and France, on the shores of the Black Sea, and on the Italian peninsula. Many of these colonies were built in resource-rich areas and commonly produced grain, tin, or timber for export back to Greece. Others served more mercantile interests, trading with major and minor powers across the Mediterranean. It was through these colonial ventures that Greeks and Phoenicians came into contact with the <OpenstaxTerm>Etruscans</OpenstaxTerm> of the northern Italian peninsula.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	The Etruscans were organized into independent <OpenstaxTerm>city-state</OpenstaxTerm>s such as <OpenstaxTerm>Veii</OpenstaxTerm> and <OpenstaxTerm>Vulci</OpenstaxTerm>, much like the Greeks were, and each city was ruled by its own king and council of elders. In their art and architecture, the Etruscans followed Greek models (<a href="#fig-00005">Figure 6.8</a>). They modified the alphabet the Greeks had acquired from the Phoenicians to write their language, which scholars have not yet fully deciphered. By 600 BCE, they had expanded beyond their base in modern <OpenstaxTerm>Tuscany</OpenstaxTerm> and colonized <OpenstaxTerm>Rome</OpenstaxTerm>, which became an Etruscan city. They also founded new colonies in northern and southern Italy. The Etruscan states remained the dominant power in the Italian peninsula until 474 BCE. In that year, at the <OpenstaxTerm>Battle of Cumae</OpenstaxTerm> off the coast of southern Italy, the naval forces of the Greek city-state of <OpenstaxTerm>Syracuse</OpenstaxTerm> won a decisive victory over the Etruscan fleet and emerged as the chief power in the region, along with <OpenstaxTerm>Carthage</OpenstaxTerm>.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxFigure id="fig-00005" src="https://openstax.org/apps/archive/20240226.174525/resources/9b00667c31811d4e307db90fdb7d43709bdc2573" alt="An image of a beige stoneware shell sitting upright is shown with red, black, and orange colors inside, with raised decorations. Inside the middle bottom of the shell is a carving of a head with almond shaped eyes, a large nose, and full lips. Wavy hair is seen at the forehead under a domed hat with etchings on the front. Large earrings depicted as a bunch of grapes show at the sides of the head. A reddish collar is seen around the neck. The background is light blue and the shell casts a shadow to the right." mediaType="image/jpg" width="700" height="582" />
<OpenstaxFigureText width="700">
	<strong>Figure 6.8</strong> This Etruscan antefix (roof tile) was created in the fourth century BCE and found in the Italian city of Cerveteri, northwest of Rome. The almost twenty-inch-tall piece of terracotta art depicts a maenad, a Greek mythological figure associated with the Greek god Dionysus. In its style and symbolism, it reflects the cultural exchange between the Etruscans and the Greeks. (credit: “Terracotta antefix (roof tile) with head of a maenad” by Purchase by subscription, 1896/Metropolitan Museum of Art, Public Domain)
</OpenstaxFigureText>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Since ancient Rome began as an Etruscan city-state, the Etruscans strongly influenced the development of Roman culture. For example, Roman priests divined the will of the gods by examining a sacrificed animal’s entrails, a custom adopted from the Etruscans. The Etruscans honored their dead with elaborate tombs, and the Romans did the same, maintaining that the spirits of their ancestors watched over them. Gladiatorial contests in Rome had origins among the Etruscans, who at funerals forced prisoners of war to fight to the death as human sacrifices to their dead. The <OpenstaxEm>fasces</OpenstaxEm>, a bundle of rods and an ax that symbolized the authority of Roman magistrates, originally denoted the authority of Etruscan kings. Finally, the Roman alphabet, still used in western and central Europe today, was based on Etruscan modifications to the Greek alphabet.
</OpenstaxParagraph>

6.1.2 Phoenicians, Greeks, and Etruscans

1 Understanding the Past

1.1 Developing a Global Perspective

1.1.1 World History as Preparation for Life after College

1.1.2 World History and Global Citizenship

1.1.3 Features of This Textbook

1.2 Primary Sources

1.2.1 Learning to Evaluate Documents and Images

1.2.2 Documentary Sources: Competing Narratives

1.2.3 Textual Sources: The Importance of Language

1.2.4 Hidden in History

1.3 Causation and Interpretation in History

1.3.1 Levels of Causation

1.3.2 Interpretation in History

2 Early Humans

2.1 Early Human Evolution and Migration

2.1.1 Human Evolution

2.1.2 Why Did Humans Move and Where Did They Go?

2.1.3 Early Human Technologies

2.2 People in the Paleolithic Age

2.2.1 Ice, Ice, and More Ice

2.2.2 Life in the Paleolithic Age

2.2.3 Diverse Paleolithic Peoples

2.3 The Neolithic Revolution

2.3.1 The Development of Agriculture

2.3.2 How Farming Changed the Human Experience

2.3.3 Neolithic Peoples

3 Early Civilizations and Urban Societies

3.1 Early Civilizations

3.1.1 Attributes of Early Civilizations

3.1.2 The First Urban Societies

3.2 Ancient Mesopotamia

3.2.1 The Rise and Eclipse of Sumer

3.2.2 The Rise of the World’s First Empire

3.2.3 Later Empires in Mesopotamia

3.2.4 Society and Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia

3.3 Ancient Egypt

3.3.1 The Origins of Ancient Egypt

3.3.2 The Age of Pyramid Building

3.3.3 A Second Age of Egyptian Greatness

3.4 The Indus Valley Civilization

3.4.1 The Origins of the Indus Valley Civilization

3.4.2 Trade, Writing, and Religion

3.4.3 The Era of Decline

4 The Near East

4.1 From Old Babylon to the Medes

4.1.1 Power Politics in the Near East

4.1.2 Foreign Affairs and Trade

4.1.3 Daily Life and the Family in the Near East

4.2 Egypt’s New Kingdom

4.2.1 The Hyksos in Egypt

4.2.2 The Pharaohs of the New Kingdom

4.2.3 Egypt’s Foreign Policy

4.3 The Persian Empire

4.3.1 The Rise of Persia

4.3.2 Darius I and the Reorganization of the Empire

4.3.3 Persian Culture and Daily Life

4.4 The Hebrews

4.4.1 The History of the Hebrews

4.4.2 The Culture of the Hebrews

5 Asia in Ancient Times

5.1 Ancient China

5.1.1 Prehistoric China

5.1.2 Early Dynastic China

5.1.3 The Zhou Dynasty

5.1.4 The Warring States Era and Qin Unification

5.2 The Steppes

5.2.1 The Nomadic Culture of the Steppes

5.2.2 Tribes, Confederations, and Settled Neighbors

5.3 Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia

5.3.1 Ancient Korea

5.3.2 Ancient Japan

5.4 Vedic India to the Fall of the Maurya Empire

5.4.1 Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro

5.4.2 The Aryans and Brahmanism

5.4.3 Buddhism

5.4.4 The Mauryan Empire

5.4.5 The Gupta Dynasty

6 Mediterranean Peoples

6.1 Early Mediterranean Peoples

6.1.1 The Late Bronze Age World

6.2 Ancient Greece

6.2.1 Archaic Greece

6.2.2 Sparta and Athens

6.2.3 Classical Greece

6.3 The Hellenistic Era

6.3.1 The Kingdom of Macedon

6.3.2 Hellenistic Culture

6.4 The Roman Republic

6.4.1 The Foundation and Function of the Roman Republic

6.4.2 The Expansion of the Roman Republic

6.5 The Age of Augustus

6.5.1 The First Triumvirate

6.5.2 From Republic to Principate

7 Experiencing the Roman Empire

7.1 The Daily Life of a Roman Family

7.1.1 The Structure of Roman Families

7.1.2 A Day in the Life of a Roman Family

7.1.3 What Family Meant in Rome

7.2 Slavery in the Roman Empire