Page 91 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

this fleeting world / acceleration: the agrarian era tfw-31

A sixteenth-century Native American
agricultural village as depicted by early
English settlers in Virginia.

Mayan civilization consisted of a large number of regional
states, some of which may have established at least tem-
porary control over their neighbors. Both these powerful
systems collapsed, however, during the second half of the
first millennium CE. As in southern Mesopotamia early
during the second millennium BCE, the collapse may have
been caused by overexploitation of the land.
However, just as the political traditions of Sumer were
eventually taken up in Babylon and Assyria, so, too, in
Mesoamerica the political traditions of Teotihuacan and
the Maya provided the cultural foundations for even
more powerful states during the next period of the agrar-
ian era. In the Andes, too, cities and states began to ap-
pear; the first may have been the Moche state of northern
Peru, which flourished for almost eight hundred years
during the first millennium CE. Like Teotihuacan, the
Moche kingdom influenced a large area, although we
cannot be certain how much direct political power it had
over other cities and states. During the later half of the
first millennium statelike powers also emerged farther
south in the lands near Lake Titicaca in South America. where agriculture had still made few inroads. In North
America the slow northward spread of maize cultivation
Expansion in Other Areas led to the establishment of numerous agricultural or
Populations also grew beyond the zone of agrarian civi- semiagricultural communities, such as those known as the
lization, generating new forms of hierarchy. In the thinly “Anasazi” (on the Colorado Plateau at the intersection of
populated steppe zones of Eurasia, pastoral nomads be- present-day Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah).
gan to form large, mobile confederations that raided and In the eastern parts of North America, too, farming com-
taxed neighboring agricultural zones. In Mongolia in cen- munities emerged in regions such as the Ohio River val-
tral Asia the Xiongnu people created spectacular empires ley, where they cultivated local plants such as sunflowers.
during the second century BCE, as did the founders of the Even in Australia foraging communities intensified pro-
first Turkic empire during the sixth century CE. At its duction and settled in denser communities, particularly
height the first Turkic empire reached from Mongolia to along the coasts.
the Black Sea. In the Pacific zone migrants from the
islands near Fiji began to settle the islands of Polynesia, Agricultural Societies
scattered through the central and eastern Pacific. Hawaii on the Eve of the Modern
and remote Easter Island may have been settled by 600 Revolution: 1000–1750
CE, but New Zealand seems to have been the last part of During the last period of the agrarian era, from 1000 to
Polynesia to be settled, some time after 1000. Polynesia 1750, earlier trends continued, but fundamental changes
was settled by farming peoples, and in some regions, also prefigured the modern era.
including Tonga and Hawaii, population growth created Agriculture spread into previously marginal regions
the preconditions for significant power hierarchies. such as North America, southern Africa, and western
Finally, significant changes occurred even in regions China. Often migrant farmers settled new lands with the