As the great Sumerian empire that had stood for 1,500 years started to fall to the Amorites, the city of Isin broke free of the empire and claimed it’s independence.

Isin, together with the now Amorite ruled city of Larsa in the south, and Mari, Assur and Eshnunna in the west, formed the most powerful cities of this new Amorite period.

In the nineteenth century BC the cities of Assur and Nineveh joined to form an Assyrian kingdom, which went on to become the first Assyrian empire in 1869 BC when Shamshi-Adad, with the help of his 2 sons, conquered the cities of Mari, which had been the dominant city of the area, and Ekallutum. Read the rest of this entry »

Akkadian is one of the great cultural languages of world history. Akkadian (or Babylonian-Assyrian) is the collective name for the spoken languages of the culture in the three millennia BCE in Mesopotamia, the area between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, approx. covering modern Irak. The name Akkadian –so called in ancient time– is derived from the city-state of Akkad, founded in the middle of the third millennium BCE and capital of one of the first great empires after the dawn of human history. The downfall of Akkad is described (in literary terms) in the curse of Akkad, but the name has continued to be used for millennia since. Read the rest of this entry »

There are several reasons for taking the year 2350 as a turning point in the history of Mesopotamia. For the first time, an empire arose on Mesopotamian soil. The driving force of that empire was the Akkadians, so called after the city of Akkad, which Sargon chose for his capital (it has not yet been identified but was presumably located on the Euphrates between Sippar and Kish).

The name Akkad became synonymous with a population group that stood side by side with the Sumerians. Southern Mesopotamia became known as the “land of Sumer and Akkad”; Akkadian became the name of a language; and the arts rose to new heights. However, even this turning point was not the first time the Akkadians had emerged in history. Semites [whether Akkadians or a Semitic language group that had settled before them] may have had a part in the urbanization that took place at the end of the 4th millennium. Read the rest of this entry »

Australia is a beautiful and rugged landscape teeming with animals that exist nowhere else on earth. Both a cultural and ethnographic isolate, the unique aboriginal culture that flourished here had to adapt to conditions that many would find difficult if not impossible to survive in.

The great Australian outback rises form the central plains of this giant island nation, developing into an incredibly dry and difficult environment to not only sustain life, but to simply eek out an existence. Regardless of this, several hundred Aboriginal tribes thrived here, and adapted to the challenges of this region. They shared amazing abilities to hunt, and could find water where none seemed to be found. Throughout this time they had a rich cosmology and belief system that culminated in the “Dreamtime”, the ancestral time from which all life began. Read the rest of this entry »

Armenia (Akkadian Uraštu; Old Persian Armina): ancient kingdom, situated along the river Araxes (modern Aras), the Upper Tigris and the Upper Euphrates.

Achaemenid Armenia

From the mid-sixth century onward, Armenia was a satrapy of the Achaemenid empire; how it had become part of the kingdom of the Persians, is unclear. Read the rest of this entry »

During the Norse era, multiple “families” lived in the same longhouse, working the same farm holding. This “grand family” played an important role in shaping Norse society and its laws and customs, and was the standard unit of society.

A household might consist not only several husband-and-wife couples (with one member of each couple typically related by blood to one member of every other couple) and their children, but also the families of servants and bondsmen. During this time, the typical household size was probably ten to twenty people. This household size suggests that at the end of the settlement era, Iceland had a population of about 60,000 people. Read the rest of this entry »

THE ARABIAN PENINSULA

It is the largest of its kind in the world with an area of almost 900,000 sq miles. Although surrounded on three sides with water, its climate remains mostly rainless. With the exception of a few cultivable and fertile areas (Oases), most of this land is a scorching desert and steppe.

It is one of the driest and hottest regions of the world. Some of its western and south western areas can suffer extremely violent but short rainstorms, creating flash floods that can destroy all in its path: towns, humans, animals and vegetation. Immense as this land is, Arabia cannot boast a single important river. This type of natural adversity could only be put up with by a people who had to become fine- tuned, very hardy and adaptable to be able to survive such a hostile environment. This harshness is reflected in the very character of the Arabian, who looks upon anyone who is not of his tribe as an enemy. Read the rest of this entry »

Norse traders (and raiders) traveled extensively throughout the known world, bringing back to the Norse lands a wide variety of trade goods.

The capacity of Norse era cargo ships made it possible to trade not only in high value luxury items (such as silks and spices from the Far East), but also in more bulky, prosaic, every-day items.

Most of the trading was over short distances, to and from dozens of ports around the Scandinavian coasts. But a smaller number of international trading centers grew, attracting merchants from throughout Europe, the Arab states, and even Asia.

The map shows some of the major Norse trade routes, as well as a few of the important Norse trading centers, settlements, and navigational points. Read the rest of this entry »

Teotihuacan is an enormous archaeological site in the Basin of Mexico, containing some of the largest pyramidal structures built in the pre-Columbian Americas. Apart from the pyramidal structures, the archaeological site of Teotihuacan is also known for its large residential complexes, the so-called “street of the dead”, and its colorful well-preserved murals.

Teotihuacan was, at its apogee in the first half of the 1st millennium CE, the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas. During its zenith it may have had more than 100,000 inhabitants placing it among the largest cities of the world in this period. The civilization and cultural complex associated with the site is also referred to as Teotihuacan or Teotihuacano. Read the rest of this entry »

The earliest civilization in Central America—and possibly the earliest civilization in the Americas—was the Olmec civilization which arose sometime between 1200 and 1000 BC. They originally lived in the Gulf Coast region of southern Mexico, but soon expanded into Guatemala.

Olmec society was very simple. It was essentially divided into two groups: the elite group lived in the small urban centers (towns, really) and the common people lived in the rural areas. The Olmecs were overwhelmingly an agricultural people. The elite lived off of the agriculture of the common people, but they probably didn’t rule over the agricultural populations. Instead, they carried out religious ceremonies centered in the towns and carried out commercial trade in luxury and artistic items. Read the rest of this entry »