Page 89 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

this fleeting world / acceleration: the agrarian era tfw-29

buoyancy of the entire agrarian era. Our figures are too
For more on these topics, please see the following articles:
vague to allow much precision, but clearly, at least in the
Andean States p. 86 (v1)
long trend, populations grew faster in areas of agriculture
Assyrian Empire p. 200 (v1)
than elsewhere. However, they probably did not grow
Buddhism p. 267 (v1)
much faster than during the early agrarian era. Particu-
Byzantine Empire p. 278 (v1)
larly in the cities, with their appalling sanitary conditions,
Catholicism, Roman p. 310 (v1)
bad air, and filthy water, death rates were extraordinarily
China p. 332 (v1)
high. Although cities offered more opportunities, they
Confucianism p. 426 (v1)
also killed people far more effectively than the villages.
Greece, Ancient p. 858 (v3)
Population growth was also slowed by periodic demo-
Hinduism p. 902 (v3)
graphic collapses. The spread of diseases into regions
Islam p. 1024 (v3)
whose populations lacked immunities may have caused
Judaism p. 1058 (v3)
some of these collapses; overexploitation of the land,
Manichaeism p. 1179 (v3)
which could undermine the productive basis of entire civ-
Mesoamerica p. 1230 (v3)
ilizations, may have caused others. In southern Mesopo-
Mississippian Culture p. 1283 (v3)
tamia toward the end of the second millennia, popula-
Persian Empire p. 1462 (v4)
tions fell sharply, probably as a result of overirrigation,
Roman Empire p. 1624 (v4)
which created soils too salty to be farmed productively.
State,The p. 1776 (v4)
Archaeologists can trace the progress of salinization late
Steppe Confederations p. 1782 (v4)
during the second millennium through the increasing use
Trading Patterns, China Seas p. 1855 (v5)
of barley, a more salt-tolerant grain than wheat.
Trading Patterns, Indian Ocean p. 1864 (v5)
Trading Patterns, Mediterranean p. 1870 (v5)
Agriculture, Cities, and
Trading Patterns, Pacific p. 1879 (v5)
Empires: 500 BCE–1000 CE
Trading Patterns,Trans-Saharan p. 1883 (v5)
Most of the long trends that began after 3000 BCE con-
Turkic Empire p. 1905 (v5)
tinued during the period from 500 BCE to 1000 CE.
Zoroastrianism p. 2120 (v5)
Global populations rose (although they did so slowly
during the middle of this period), the power, size, and a region five times as large as the greatest of its prede-
number of states increased, and so did the extent of cessors. During the next fifteen hundred years empires on
exchange networks. As agriculture spread, cities and this scale became the norm. They included the Han
states appeared in once-peripheral regions in northwest- dynasty in China (206 BCE–220 CE), the Roman empire
ern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, southern India, and in the Mediterranean (27 BCE–476 CE), and the Mauryan
southern China. Increasingly, agrarian civilizations empire (c. 324–c. 200 BCE) in India.The Muslim Abbasid
encroached on regions inhabited by foragers, independ- empire, which ruled much of Persia and Mesopotamia
ent peasants, and pastoralists. Similar processes occurred from 749/750 to 1258, controlled a slightly larger area
in the Americas but with a time lag of approximately two than its Achaemenid predecessors. Contacts also flour-
thousand years. ished between imperial states. During the sixth century
BCE Cyrus I, the founder of the Achaemenid empire,
Afro-Eurasia invaded parts of modern central Asia.When the Chinese
The Achaemenid empire, created in Persia (modern Iran) emperor, Han Wudi, invaded the same region three cen-
during the sixth century BCE, marked a significant en- turies later, the separate agrarian civilizations of the
hancement in state power because the empire controlled Mediterranean world and eastern Asia came into closer