ChAPTER 10 The End of the Classical Era: World

• Roman fleets and Chinese ships sailed the ocean with local merchants.

• Christ's head is surrounded by a halo and he is holding up his hand in a sign of blessing in the 12th century Sicilian mosaic.
• In the 6th-century Afghan painting at right, the Buddha is depicted with a halo and with his hand raised in a sign of blessing.
• The symbols of sacredness could have arisen independently in two different cultures.

• The idea of saints, monasteries, holy water, the five-chained censer to burn incense, and the hand blessing were included.
• The same practices would later be developed by Christianity.
• We don't know, but the coincidences are striking.
• There was movement in the other direction.
• There is a tomb for Saint Thomas in southern India.

• They invited other people to participate in the trading opportunities.
• India was the first beneficiary.
• The empire continued for a century or more after Rome's demise.
• From the Persian gulf to southeast Asia, Indian merchants fanned out.
• Much of their trade with southeast Asia was motivated by the value of gold.
• They could offer fine cotton cloth.
• New temples were built as a result of Indian prosperity.
• Indian influence helped expand Buddhism into southeast Asia.

• The dynasty fell.
• There were new opportunities for Persians and Greeks to compete for trade in the Indian Ocean.
• China would reestablish itself as well.
• The Indian Ocean was open to new claims for trade supremacy after the long crisis of the classical world.
• The Arabs were previously limited to lesser commercial roles, including piracy.

• The fading of the great classical empires had consequences beyond the borders of The Exchange of Languages.
• The change in civilization boundaries unleashed new forces that affected goods and ideas in Central Asia, Saharan Africa, northern Europe, and other parts of Asia.

• There are three issues that dominate.
• The cause was important.
• The armies of the classical civilizations had an advantage over the nomadic forces.
• As the empires faded, the rapid spread of world religions provided a vital part of the answer.

• After the reign of Wudi, the Han dynasty briefly decline, with definite but more faltered, then seemed to recover, and by about 80 c.e.
• The Chinese launched a new campaign.

• The quality of the emperors began to decline after about 88 c.e.
• Most reigns were short and full of scheming.
• The stage was set for more fundamental problems.

• The Han dynasty deteriorated on several levels.
• Bureau crats competing for power at the top were the subject of assassinations.
• The peasantry's conditions began to get worse at a basic level.
• Under the Han, large landowners formed private armies and avoided taxes.
• Farmers were forced into serfdom, where they had to provide labor and turn over much of their own produce, because taxes on peasants increased.
• Social protest increased.

• Peasant unrest culminated in a great revolutionary effort.
• Han generals launched a revolt in the 18th century.
• In 220 c.e., the last Han emperor was deposed.
• China was divided into three kingdoms.

• China was ruled by the land-owning class for a long time.
• The south has higher levels of economic growth and continues to absorb tribal peoples into Chinese culture.

• There were no dynasties established in this 350-year period.
• invasions from central Asia pressed Northern China.
• As the government deteriorated, the nomads broke loose and began to invade the Middle King dom.
• Several states were formed, but none lasted long.
• There was a breakdown in Chinese stability that became endemic to internal warfare.

• Buddhism offered spiritual solace in the midst of political uncertainty and economic distress.

• Men and women gained ground in Buddhist monasteries.
• Many Chinese monks made pilgrimages to India.

• The spread could be preserved.

• Buddhists were required to pay taxes to the government and submit to government regulations on the formation of monasteries.

• Asia, 600 years ago.
• The impact of Buddhism on women in China at the end of the classical era was fascinating.

• China's belief in patriarchal power should have been disrupted by Buddhism because they believed that women and men had souls.
• Some individual women in China won a lot of attention because of their spiritual accomplishments.
• Changes in Buddhism were caused by Chinese culture.
• Many men valued Buddhist wives because they might benefit the family's salvation and because Buddhist activity could keep their wives busy, calm, and out of trouble.
• Buddhism could be mean to Chinese women, but it didn't really challenge patriarchy.

• The growing influence of Buddhism forced the formalization of the doctrine of Daoism, as well as efforts to reach the common people.
• Many Chinese found similari ties between the two faiths, although Buddhism had an advantage of offering a clearer doctrine of personal salvation and a better set of personal ethics.
• A number of practices, including meditation and diet restrictions, could bring immortality.
• The good and evil done in this life would be compensated by the heavens or hells.
• Priests and shamans practiced faith healing to cure diseases.
• The ramifications of Daoism were appealing to the Chinese peasantry.

• During this confused period in Chinese history, Confucianism lost its footing.

• The Great Wall of China was repaired after the govern united all of northern China.
• southern China was conquered by attempts to expand into Korea and central Asia.

• The time of troubles was over.
• Political Sui was reflected in new artistic works.

• Although it divided into many sects that disagreed over details of theology and ritu, the Army Supremo made a vow on many ordinary Chinese believers.
• He was more concerned with spiritual benefits.
• The spirits of his parents will someday reach the Pure Land and will thus be forever freed from the three unhappy they arranged to have Buddhist sermons copied, as a means of states of existence and the eight calamities, while adding a note of their own.
• Listen to the Buddha's teachings forever.

• They suggest the various reasons people might go through the small, may find happiness at will, that blessings may daily rain challenging process of converting to a new religion.

• The preceding incantation has been translated.

• If this incantation is done 7 times a day after the Buddha, the Law, and the Monastic have cleansed the mouth with a willow Order.
• The donation was made in the name of the Celestial King twig, which had scattered flowers and incense before the image of Vaisravana.
• He made a donation of a thousand to Buddha, had knelt and joined the palms of his hands, and had a thousand more to ransom his servants.
• The body won't be affected by sand more than to help his domestic animals.
• One will be born into the realm of used for copying sutras because of this money.
• It is accompanied by the prayer that the immeasurably long life, and reincarnation in the female form Celestial King may attain Buddhahood, and that the disciple's family will be escaped forever.

• Happiness is not lucky: pray for it and it will respond.

• One can complete 200,000 recitations if results are not born of thin air.
• There will be no relapses when the Buddhist and nun fect intelligence are born.
• One will see Amita Buddha come to be born in her present form, a woman, vile face to face, and will certainly be reborn into the Pure Land if her conduct in her previous life was not 300,000 recitations.

• Old values did not die as well.

• The idea of a united empire was trained by the competing landlords.
• Christianity and Islam came close to replacing older concerns of political loyalties in the Mediterranean, but China had a greater cultural homogeneity established in the classical era.

• The revival of older political habits was encouraged by the imitation of Chinese styles by many nomadic invaders.

• The decline of classical civilization in India was less severe than the collapse of Han China because India had not depended so much on political structures to hold its civilization together.
• Political unity became more difficult to achieve as a result of the Gupta col lapse.
• Stone relief from the tomb of the Tang emperor Taizong was the high point of Gupta rule.
• How does II early in the 5th century, but his immediate relief suggest the barbarian threat was being handled after China's crisis period.

• The Huns began a series of invasions that reduced the empire's strength.
• The response to invasion was made more difficult by the Gupta pattern of somewhat decentralized rule, where vas sal princes were treated as partial allies rather than subject to central administration.
• The typi cal invasion route of the subcontinent was controlled by the Huns.
• The quality of Gupta kings was diminishing by this time, and this added to the problem.
• The rulers who followed Vardharna, not the Guptas themselves, broke the hold of the Huns in the northwest about in India, and the Guptas were too weak to restore their claims.
• The dynasty collapsed in northern India around 500 c.e.

• During the 7th century, there were some echoes of Gupta.
• Between 616 and 663, a descendant of the Guptas established a loose empire across northern India.
• His empire broke up again after he died without heirs.
• Until a series of invasions began, northern India was politically divided.

• Few regional dynasties lasted very long.
• A section of northern India was invaded by Tang Chinese-led Tibetan troops who captured a young Indian prince and took him back to the Chinese capital.
• This was the first clash between China and India.
• There were many wars in western India, but few great princes.

• Indian culture continued to evolve in this framework.
• Buddhism declined in India over time.
• The Guptas preferred Hinduism and the Hun invaders disliked Buddhism.
• Military-minded princes didn't like the Buddhist principles of calm and contemplation.
• The Hun leaders were converted by Hindu beliefs.
• India's core culture was partially redefined by Hinduism, and INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals The caste system was promoted by the reassertion of Hinduism.

• India's economic activity remained strong even during periods of invasion.
• Indian civilization did not fall to the extent of Han China or the western Mediterranean.

• After 600 c.e., another threat came after a more diverse political lineup.

• India's contacts with this force were limited.

• Some people in the north converted to Islam.
• The Indian Ocean Trade Routes tion hit India's international economic position by the 8th century.

• India's commercial strength was reduced when the Indian Ocean was taken control of by 4,000 KILOMETERS.

• The routes show a wide range of trading contacts with India from the west to the east, from the Roman empire to the east.

• The Roman Empire began to show signs of decay in the late 2nd century.
• It became more difficult to recruit effective armies as birth rates no longer kept pace with mortality rates.

• The residents of the empire were falling on hard times.
• The major world religion of Egypt said that the original inhabitants of the villages were in 610 c.e.

• There were human symptoms.
• The motto on Roman tombstones was "I was not, I was, I am not, I have no more desires."
• Life became harder to find as the empire deteriorated, and this made structural revival more difficult.
• The quality of political and economic life began to change after about 180 c.e., when the empire's geographic expansion had slightly retreated from its high point.
• The Roman Empire depended heavily on expansion to provide prestige but also to recruit slaves.
• Rome had to restructure its labor poli cies on the great commercial estates and in the mines because the empire's boundaries had been pushed to the limits it could support.
• Market production was reduced by this restructuring.

• Internal issues of politics and population were the initial pressing issues.
• Government leadership became a problem.
• A series of weak rulers and battles over succession to the throne were caused by political confusion.
• Interven tion of the army in the selection of emperors, as the army became an increasingly separate institution, complicated political life and contributed to the worsening of rule.

• The plagues that swept over the empire at the end of the 2nd century c.e.
• were still important in this decline.
• The population was decimated by these plagues.
• Rome's urban population was weakened by lead poisoning from the pipes leading from the aqueducts, according to some authorities.
• Finding labor was made more difficult by the lower population.
• Germanic sol diers were hired by the empire to guard its frontiers.
• The need to pay troops added to the demands on the state's budget, just as declining production cut into tax revenues and the absence of new conquests cut into other rewards for soldiers.
• The Roman tax base was hurt by environmental degradation in north Africa.

• A set of general problems, including a cycle of plagues that could not be prevented, may be the key to the process of decline.
• There is a side to Rome's downfall that is hard to say whether it was a cause or a result of the initial difficulties.
• The Roman general Stilicho and his wife were depicted in this plaque.
• Stilicho was able to become Master decayed.
• The fact that his father was a vandal father of Western theology made him vulnerable to rumors about art and literature of the later empire.
• The enemies of the Romans said that he was intriguing against the interests books about rhetoric and intended to place his own son on the throne.
• His son, eucherius, was murdered while they were writing compendiums about imprisoned.

• The cultural decline was not caused by disease or economic collapse, but began in some ways before those problems hit.

• Something was happening to the Roman elite, perhaps because of the deadening hand of political rule, or because of a new commitment to luxuries.
• The recruitment of paid soldiers from Germanic tribes along the northern borders of the empire was forced because military service became less attractive to the upper class.

• As the quality of imperial rule declined and as life became more dangerous and economic survival more precarious, many farmers surrendered full control of their plots of land, hoping for military and judicial protection.
• The manorial system of Europe in the Middle Ages was influenced by the decentralization of political and economic authority.
• The estate system gave the landlords a lot of power.
• The emperor's power was weakened and the economy was driven away from the trade patterns of Mediter ranean civilization.
• Almost everything needed was produced on the spot.
• Tax revenues dropped as trade and production declined.
• The empire was locked in a vicious circle in which the responses to initial deterioration lessened the chances of recovery.

• The emperors tried to reverse the flow.
• Administration and tax regulation increased.
• Increasing collection was one of the things that Diocletian tried to do.

• Christians wouldn't give Caesar preference over their god, which prompted him to persecute them with viciousness.
• He set up a second capital city.
• He tried to use the reli capital at Constantinople to unify the empire and use the religious force of Christianity as his own faith.
• These measures had a result.
• The empire was ruled from Constantinople to the east.

• Christianity spread under official sponsorship.

• The army deteriorated further.
• In the 400s, there was little resistance to the Germanic invasions.

• The last Roman emperor in the West was displaced in 476, after German kingdoms were set up in many parts of the empire.
• The Germanic invaders numbered at most 5 percent of the population of the empire, but the earlier decline put an end to one of the world's great political structures.

• The most famous invader in Europe was Attila the Hun.
• The nomadic Huns were led by Attila.
• The kingdom ran from Germany to China.
• The "scourge of God" was the nickname given to Attila by Christians.

• The Romans and Germanic tribes resisted him.
• The end run into Italy brought him to Rome, where the pope begged him to spare the city.
• Rome's collapse was caused by Attila.
• His kingdom fell after he died.
• The Greeks and Romans ignored the importance of cavalry in warfare because of their preference for infantry.

• Rome's fall echoes questions that apply to China and India.
• There were a few military advantages for Germanic or central Asian invaders.
• The Huns were able to overrun more populous peasant settlements because of their reliance on hunting and herding.
• The Germans learned new organizational methods from their contacts on the Roman borders.
• In their glory days, the armies of Rome or Han China could have contained the invaders if they had internal strength.
• The Germanic intrud ers dealt the final blow to Rome.
• The reputation of the classical empires and the luxurious living of the upper classes helped lure the invaders in.

• Rome's fall split the unity of the Mediterra nean lands that had been won through a lenistic culture.
• The end of the Roman Empire was more serious than the displacement of the last classical dynasties in India and China.
• The shared political culture and bureaucratic traditions that allowed for revival after a period of chaos were not produced by Greece and Rome.
• The Chora Church in Istanbul, Turkey is one of the best Byzantine churches in the Mediterranean.
• There are mosaics and frescos depicting biblical scenes in the interior.
• While the church was used as a mosque, the great works of art were covered with plaster due to Islam's prohibition against images.
• The building opened to the public as a museum after World War II because of the restoration of the art.

• As Rome fell, these religions came too late to save the empire and created a deep rift between Christians and Muslims.

• The fall of Rome divided the Mediterranean world into three zones, the beginning point of three different civilizations.

• The emperors continued to rule Greece, other parts of southeast greek, and eventually lost Palestine, Syria, Europe, and the northern Middle East.

• The problem of decline and fall has fascinated historians, as well as that upper classes become soft and selfish, and that observers since civilizations began to decline.
• Many writers tried to figure out what was happening as Rome's vital territories expanded.

• Paul Kennedy, an American diplomatic historian, has argued that Christianity was not to blame, as some non-Christians argued that the religion's emphasis on nomic vitality was to blame.
• In the 19th century Britain and the United States worried that the cause of Rome's collapse was immorality.

• Some warnings are generated by it.

• The moral of the classical era and realy occurred only in the western part of the empire, according to several 20th-century historians.
• The people of Eastern Rome accepted formscessful and were led by the aristocracy.
• China and India are not unchanged by the decline of the government.
• The great classical empires did not die as civilizations.
• The question of decline must be phrased carefully with awareness changes in the culture of the later Roman Empire.
• The diverse examples world history yields have been won by it.

• The second zone was disrupted more in political terms than in economic or cultural terms.
• The southeastern shores of the Mediterranean were part of this zone.
• The eastern empire held its ground for a while.
• The empire was briefly succeeded by several regional kingdoms.
• Although Christianity spread in the area, it was not as successful as in the Byzantine empire or western Europe.
• The Coptic church in Egypt is a Christian minority in that country, and another branch in Ethiopia, because of differing beliefs and doctrines.
• Much of north Africa was filled with Islam and a new Arab empire.

• Italy, Spain, and points north were the western part of the empire.
• Rome's fall reduced the level of civilization.
• Ger manic kingdoms grew in parts of Italy and France.
• The spread of Christianity was the most important force in this region.
• Christianity could not sustain sophisticated literature, art, or theology.
• Commercial activity declined in Rome's collapse.

• Rome's decline encouraged new religious influences in societies around the Mediterranean.
• Christianity started in the Middle East as Buddhism spread east from India.
• Christianity became one of the two largest world faiths more quickly than Buddhism did.
• The postclassical civilizations of eastern faded were formed by it.

• The importance of spiritual concerns beyond the daily cares of life was emphasized by the newly expanding religions.
• All three offered the hope of a better existence after this life ended, and all responded to the growing poverty of many people in various parts of the classical world.
• Active missionary efforts were promoted to spread their ideas of religious truth across cultural and political boundaries.

• Christianity and Buddhism were similar in many ways.
• It could encourage a focus on spiritual destiny and divinity.
• The Chinese version of in groups is to live a spiritual life and serve their religion.
• Christianity was similar to Bud Buddhism in that it emphasized the possibility of an afterlife and emphasized the role of holy leaders in helping to attain it.

• The earlier Buddhist holy men and women were hostile to religious images, but they emphasized the religion as a channel of salvation because of the statues of the Buddha.

• The people who achieved enlightenment were often the ones who chose to return to earth to help others do the same thing.
• Christianity was seen as models of Christian similar directions.
• It came to emphasize salvation with rituals.
• Religious images, lifestyles, and built up treasury of merit helped focus popular belief in most versions that could be tapped by more of Christianity.

• The sculpture of Maitreya is from the 3rd century.
• Many of the new themes in Chinese art were based on stylized figures of the Buddha.
• The statue of the Buddha became an object of worship in this process.

• As new religions spread amid the ruins of great empires, the similarities between Christianity and Buddhism remind us of the processes at work.

• Christianity had its own flavor.
• It is more similar to the Roman Empire in structure and organization than any other form of Buddhism.
• Christianity stressed its possession of exclusive truth and its intolerance of competing beliefs more than any other major religion.
• The new religion's success was due to its fierce confidence.

• The Jewish reform movement began with Christianity.
• There was no intent to find a new religion.
• The disciples expected Jesus' return and the end of the world after his crucifixion.
• When the Second Coming did not happen, the disciples began to fan out and pick up supporters in various parts of the Roman Empire.

• The message was clear.
• There was a single God who loved humans.
• A life of virtue should be devoted to worship of God and fellowship with other believers.
• A life of poverty might be the best way to holiness.
• Restoring Christ's Last Supper with wine and bread would promote the same goal as belief, good works, and discipline of fleshly concerns would lead to heaven.

• The official religion of the Greeks and Romans seemed sterile to many of the poor.
• The Christian emphasis on the beauty of poverty and the spiritual equality of all people, plus the fervor of the early Christians and the satisfying rituals they provided, gained growing attention.
• The Roman Empire made it easy for Christian missionaries to spread their message in Europe and the Middle East.

• When conditions deteriorated in the empire, the solace of this religion won even more converts.

• He was hostile to Christians when he was a rabbi.
• A vision of Jesus came to him while he was trying to round up the Christians in Damascus.
• He contributed to several changes in Christian doctrine.
• He spent his last years in jail because of the official opposition to Christianity.

• Early Christian leaders made adjustments that drew more converts.
• Christians began to see themselves as part of a new religion under the guidance of Paul, and they welcomed non-Jewish converts.
• A single leader, or bishop, was appointed for each major city after Paul encouraged more formal organization in the new church.
• The provincial government of the empire was paralleled by this structure.

• As the writings of several disciples and others were collected into the New Testament of the Christian Bible, Christian doctrine became more organized.

• Christianity did not advance as smoothly as it could have during the first three centuries after Christ.
• The new religion faced occasional persecution from the government.
• Christianity won 10% of the empire's population by the time Constantine converted to the religion.
• Constantine's mother was a convert who founded many churches in the Holy Land.
• The state began to interfere in matters of doctrine as a result of Constantine's favor.

• It was easier to spread Christianity with official backing.
• The church and empire were works of God according to the Christians.
• The worsening of the empire added to the motives to join this successful new church.
• In the eastern Mediterranean, where imperial rule remained strong, state control of the church became a way of life and an important motive for certain people to adopt Christianity in the first place.
• Cyrus of Panopolis, the pagan prefect of Constantinople, faced the disapproval of an imperial official in the mid-5th century and had to convert to Christianity.
• In the west, the conditions were more stable.

• The new church faced a lot of controversy but still promoted certain beliefs.
• The Nicene Creed insisted on the shared divinity of all three parts of the Trinity.

• It showed how important unified doctrine was to Christianity, in contrast to the toleration of diversity in Hinduism and Buddhism.
• The Christian interest in defending a single belief was promoted by the experience of fighting heresies.

• The papacy was established as the supreme authority in western Europe.
• In the western half of the Roman empire, Alexandria was the spiritual leader of Christianity, centralizing the Western church and standardizing established Benedictine Rule.

• Early Christianity produced an important formal theology through formative writers such as Basil's rules in Byzantine empire.

• The church gained respectability among intellectuals by incorporating many elements of classical philosophy with Christian belief.
• By working out these issues in elaborate doctrine, the early theologians, or church fathers, provided an important role for formal, rational thought in a religion that continued to emphasize the primary importance of faith.

• Christianity has many appeals like all successful religions.
• It offered deep devotion to the Almighty.
• Christianity developed a fascinating intellectual system.
• The Middle East was home to many mystical holy men and women.

• Benedict started a monastery to show the true holy life to Italian peasants in a region still worshiping the sun god Apollo.
• The Benedictine rule encouraged a disciplined life, with prayer and spiritual development alternating with hard work in agriculture and study.
• In Greece, Turkey, and Egypt there were monastic movements.
• Saint Basil organized Eastern monasticism in the 4th century.

• Christianity tried to encourage but also to discipline intense piety and to avoid a complete gulf between the lives of saintly men and women and the spiritual concerns of ordinary people.
• Political leaders were attracted to Christianity's success and organizational strength.
• The message of ritual and salvation continued to draw the poor, even though the new religion became a creature of the upper classes alone.
• Christianity provided religious unity among different groups.
• It had special interest for women.
• Christianity encouraged men and women to worship together, even though it did not preach equality between men and women.

• People of European background are used to seeing Madonna and a child in the same light.

• Christianity promoted a new culture among its converts.

• The major ity's imagery was very different from the central themes of classical Mediterranean figures of their religion.

• Christians did not put the state first.

• St. Benedict fostered a greater respectability for disciplined work than had been current in Mediterranean civilization.

• Christianity preserved important classical values in addition to the interest in solid organization and some of the themes of classical philosophy.
• The distribution of the world's major religions requires knowledge of both of them.

• There are 1.3 billion developments yet to come.

• The map shows the contemporary geography of the major religions.

• Greek was the language of most Christians in the eastern Mediterranean.
• Through the patient librarianship of the monks, monasticism was able to preserve classical as well as Christian learning.

• Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa did not change much until our own time.
• The spread of the great religions caused many people in different societies to shift their beliefs away from traditional ideas about a host of divine spirits in nature to focus on a single divine force and hope for an afterlife.
• Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, plus Hindu ism in a few parts of southeast Asia provided shared beliefs that could overcome political differences.
• They could give money away from politics.
• The three most widespread religions all emphasized spiritual equality.

• The great religions could facilitate international trade because they did not depend on local customs but on an ever-present God or divine order throughout the world; in turn, successful trade could help spread the religions.
• There was a new force in world history.

• In the wake of decline and fall, the major civilizations looked very different from the classical world, and many of the differences have never been erased.
• Classical decline went beyond the shifts in religious loyalties.
• Some areas changed more than others.
• China was able to recover many classical ingredients.
• China and India shared an ability to maintain substantial cultural cohesion, based on widespread beliefs as well as restored politics in China's case.
• India and China are the same places where they took root in the late classical times, and they still reflect the classical heritage: India in the caste system, China in Confucian beliefs and a fascination with a strong, bureaucratic culture.

• The case was different in the Mediterranean zone.
• The Roman Empire was unable to spread its beliefs very widely.
• Classical Mediterranean civilization left a very real heritage, but in part because geographic unity was lost, this heritage was used by successor civilizations far more than was true in eastern or southern Asia.

• Ocean was often the focus of key developments during the classical period.
• We've seen that there were more contacts.

• The trade and other influences of each civilization became more porous.
• India had contacts with other parts of the south-southeast during the end of the classical period.
• Asia, China, and Korea were included.
• The spread of Buddhism from India to China and to other parts of central Asia was done mainly by nomadic merchants who traveled along the Silk Road.

• As the classical civilizations began to fail, contacts in some ways set new bases for connections among various societies, but they also encountered new difficulties.

• The subject of E.E.
• is Christianity's spread.

• There are possible debates over the causes of decline.

• In contrast to the early river valley civilizations, which had no regular interregional exchange system, the classical period linking China, India, the Middle east, and the Mediterranean had fairly systematic contacts.
• Some goods were shipped through the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea.

• The Silk Road brought goods from western China through central Asia to the Middle east, where they could be trans-shipped to the Mediterranean.
• South Indian merchants and Hindu and Buddhist missionaries were connected to other parts of southeast Asia through important systems.

• Archeologists excavated the ruins of Roman Pompeii and found an ivory carving of a woman.
• The enormous crater of Mount vesuvius in Italy that erupted in 70 b.c.e., burying the town of Pompeii was confirmed by this find.

• The ruins of Pompeii would be part of the Roman heritage.

• Exchanges with the Mediterranean continued after Alexander the great established the Hellenistic circle.
• Taxila was a major center along the Silk Road and served as a link between the Mediterranean and east and southeast Asia.

• Improvements in technology, particularly for the use of draft animals, began to contribute to transportation, along with the important road systems constructed by leaders in Persia, China, and the Mediterranean.
• The Chinese improved the harnesses used for horses after 200 b.c.e., developing straps that wouldn't choke the horse.
• Knowledge of the horse collar would reach Europe centuries later, but it was these horse collar that helped facilitate trade within China.
• Significant developments from about 500 b.c.e.
• made saddles more important.
• Around 200, the first saddle knob was introduced in China.
• saddles provided both greater comfort and maneuverability, in turn increasing the utility of horses for travel and military purposes alike.

• Contacts had other effects beyond trade.
• Diseases from south Asia affect population patterns in the Mediterranean and China as part of classical decline.

• Two major episodes involved direct contact between different civilizations.
• Alexander's conquests brought greek culture into contact with India and Persia.
• We've seen indian artists copying greek styles in their work.
• Although failing to establish Buddhism, Indian missionaries to the Middle east may have influenced ethical thought in the later Roman empire.

• Rome was motivated by interest in Asian goods.
• The Romans established regular expeditions from the Red Sea.
• Small groups of Roman merchants, located in India in particular, demonstrated a desire for more direct access to Indian spices, particularly pepper, and Chinese silks, which helped motivate frequent wars with empires in Persia.
• China established regular diplomatic relations with empires in Persia.

• The spread of Chinese knowledge of Buddhism began as a result of Chinese merchant ventures into India.
• Until recently, this was the only major case of successful outside influence on Chinese culture.

• These developments were very important.
• They had serious limits.
• Interregional trade was important to some of the trading hubs in central Asia, such as Samarkand, but it had little economic importance to China.
• It was nothing compared to the growth of production for China's internal trade.
• There is no evidence that anyone traveled all the way from Rome to China, and Roman knowledge of China was very hazy.
• There was no interaction between Chinese and Roman culture.
• Two cases of direct exchange between civilizations are fascinating, but they are also unusual.
• The Hellenistic experience in northwestern India is questionable.

• There is a carving on a temple in India.
• Hindu art is an active part of Indian culture.

• The primary framework for the major societies remained internal as contacts advanced significantly in this period.
• The classical civilizations developed their own way.
• The fundamental feature of the classical period was that these contacts were vital to the formation of larger civilizational areas.
• At this stage in world history, far more energy went into this process than into interregional linkages.

• A number of central themes in world history were added to by the classical period.

• A number of social systems gained greater organization and cultural support, beginning with the Indian caste system but extending to Mediterranean slavery and the Confucian ideas about social order in China.
• Regional differences need to be compared in order to win new attention to state building.
• Increased economic activity and pressures applied by political leaders contributed to environmental changes.
• The systems were important at the time and proved to last a long time.

What were the main reasons for the success of Confucianism in China?

• The cathedral was a representation of the growing importance of religion.

• The period 600-1450 did not involve political boundaries.
• The spread of the major world religions--Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam-- across political and cultural borders and the development of new, more regular systems of trade that connected much of Asia, Africa, and Europe were involved.

• The age is characterized by faith and trade.
• Many religious leaders looked down on merchants because of the lure of wealth.
• The spread of trade and confidence in a divine order helped merchants take risks.

• The maps show the expansion of Afro-Eurasian trade and the surge of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam from their initial centers.
• As the classical empires collapsed, Buddhism and Christianity gained new life.
• Islam was new.
• Active missionary efforts were involved in all three religions.
• Government sponsorship and military pressure helped all the time.
• If the conquerors want to impose higher taxes on those who did not convert to their religion, they can.
• Millions of people changed their beliefs about the world around them through a combination of persuasion and pressure.
• The dominant religious frameworks that still prevail in Asia, Europe, and parts of Africa are the result of the religious beliefs they adopted during the postclassical period.

• The postclassical period saw the development of systematic interna tional trade that went far beyond the capacity of the old Silk Road.
• The hub of this trade was the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, which brought northwestern Europe, west Africa, Japan, and other regions into the existing east-west trade routes between China and Egypt.
• The connections among societies began to shape world history in important ways.

• Three Big Concepts help organize the understanding of the postclassical period along with religious change.
• Important new routes were added to the transregional communication and exchange networks.
• New seafaring technologies and missionary activity contributed to this.

• Second, forms of state organization diversified and now have a variety of looser political structures.
• Several societies, headed by China, increased their productive capacity.
• Sufi became an important part of new urban centers and the experimentation with element in Islam's missionary efforts.

• Larger groups of people with broadly shared beliefs and religious institutions were created by their spread.
• The postclassical period followed the opportunities for mutual intolerance and the decline of the great classical empires.
• As areas that had previ Muslims, particularly, developed disdain for each other, they also experienced examples of constructive tolerance.

• The decline of the classical empires had an effect on Jews.
• Religion created new loyalties that could compete the collapse of established boundaries, which caused people to turn their attention to new areas.
• The fall of the on the whole received less attention than in the Roman Empire, which opened up new opportunities in the classical era.

• Islam lost territories in the Mediterranean during the 12th century and turned its attention to developing a particular dynamism that affected more different opportunities in Russia and eastern Europe.
• All major institutions encouraged trade and missionary activity.

• The power of Islam was triggered by this.
• As the postclassical period moved along, other aspects of culture were headed by art.
• The Chi architecture was changed by nese, who invented the compass, and from the Middle East, which had religious values.

• Different things to different peo trade can be seen in maps improved as a result of wider Religion.
• Further travel was encouraged by them.
• Long-distance communities and leaders increased, for example, with monastic credit arrangements, for example, as a result of the number of devoted religious true for new banking and commercial practices.

• Many people combine religion with other interests.
• Most people combined new religions with older values and styles.

• The spread of world Religion and commerce were the engines of change in the religions.
• The main period was the postclassical period.

• Chinese inventions like printing and explosives moved west more quickly during the Postclassical Period.

• A series of interlock ideas spread as a result of the development of regular trade.
• The trade routes that joined Asia, Africa, and Europe were thanks to Indian mathematics.

• The connections developed in the classical period were not the only ones.
• The period began with innovations from the Arabs, who were thought to have invented the numbering system.

• A hint of consumer culture is created by the Byzantine.
• There is a taste for tea in Asia.
• Wine and porcelain were traded among elite customers throughout sugar, developed earlier in India and easily manufactured.

• New routes connected additional regions into the network.

• Thanks in part to improvements in the first English-language mention of sugar, Europeans encountered it with thence to the Middle East.

• The spread of disease accelerated.
• The "Black Death" epidemic of bubonic plague moved from the north to the south in the 14th century.
• Up to a third of the population in many areas were killed by overland traders who worked from China through the Middle East to Europe using rivers.

• The interregional trade of the postclassical era was not what we think of as a global economy today.
• The volume and range of trade between Europe and Arab countries were much lower.

• Despite drawbacks like disease, Japan began a regular exchange with Korea.
• The more distant regions provided less postclassical era had major effects, including new opportunities for trade in gold, exotic animals, and imitations.
• Interregional trade quickly forest products and spices.

• Knowledge of a new tech result was a major, often explicit, effort at borrowing that nologies.
• A number of Chinese inventions, the first paper and another innovation in the period as a whole.

• A new breed of long- then printing and explosives spread to the Middle East and on to distance travelers, particularly by the final centuries of the post Europe, because of the wide patterns of trade.
• This exchange was very classical during the postclassical period.
• Merchants and missionaries who were slower than in previous centuries, but went from one part of Asia to another, or through the Indian Ocean more quickly, were included.

• The veiling of women in the cities, as well as new contacts, were reflected in travel.

• Extensive knowledge slavery was a major component of social and labor of Arabic, which was a sign of the hold of a first-world language over much of Afro-Eurasia.
• Contacts could lead to earlier traditions in the region.

• There were no more barriers when it came to Christian architecture.

• Today we live in a period of rapid contact with women.
• During the postclassical centuries, there were sweeping innovations in social struc among all the world's major societies.

• The social structure of societies and peasants was affected by the expansion of a merchant class.
• The majority of the population was made up of contem.
• The caste system maintained or revived older social interactions among major regions in key areas.
• Large political units developed in a few places, but period marked a major separation between earlier eras, in which outside of China and the Byzantine Empire, polities were mostly contacts among different regions.

• The Amer ies developed.
• Defining the relationship between the systems of icas and Pacific Oceania, although scenes of significant devel interaction in the postclassical period and later patterns provides opments, operated on separate dynamics and had few if any a key way to map the process of change in world history.

• The transcontinental network compelled many societ ies in Afro-Eurasia to decide on how to organize their participation in trade and exchange, and how to take advantage of the impact on daily life: women opportunities involved.

• The postclassical period had an intriguing tension that affected analyzing it, and some societies changed their conditions for women.
• The spread of world religions, which one hand, the major religions all insisted that women were created huge new areas of shared faith, but also new spiritual divisions equal to men--that they had souls or shared in among the religions themselves, contributed to but also compliment of the divine This was a big innovation.
• The evolution of the transcontinental network wascated by religious.

• Buddhist leaders argued for women's importance.
• Property ownership was one of the new rights established by Islam.

• Christianity and Communism and LIMITATIONS have established religious communities for women that give them new forms of expression and also Change, including the formation of transcontinental net new leadership roles.
• Many women work, which inevitably affects different societies.

• The success of classical civilization deteriorated during this period as the condition of women empires also collapsed.
• Many scholars argue that people should maintain or retrieve classical forms.

• The upper-class women were treated like ornaments.
• Although by Islam and Buddhism, it limited the influence of religion, it provided new outlets for women, the spiritual focus outside religions.
• China was not a changeless society and it might distract them from other issues.

• In India, the practice of sati, in which some widows rise of Islam, remained the same.
• The link to Islam and the Islamic public life was excluded from the active roles of New Faith and New Commerce during the Postclassical Period.
• The trading system was important in other Islamic societies.
• Two dynamics were developed in Europe and southeast Asia.
• Most of histo had contacts with Islam and rians, and they concluded that the condition of women in western Europe is related to interregional trade.
• Byzantine culture took root in eastern Europe as detailed in Chapter 14, while a newer soci emerged in western Europe as described in Chapter 15.

• The major cultures that developed in the women's history were described in Chapter 16.
• New religions were important to many people.
• New customs limited opportunities for women to address developments in China and the expansion of Chinese greater degree than in the classical era.
• Key parts of the limitations are still present in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.

• The last two centuries of the postclassical period saw important new developments.
• Chapters 11 and 12 examine the surge of Islam after the decline of the Mongols and the end of a Chinese experiment in leading world trade.