CLASSICS 1M03 Study Guide - Comprehensive Final Exam Guide - Ancient Greece, Spartan Army, Sparta

• School: McMaster University
• Department: Classics
• Course: CLASSICS 1M03
• Professor: Johnathan Reeves

Document Summary

Civilization first seen in asia + middle east. Civilization: usually understood to be a complex society characterized by the practice of agriculture and settlement in cities. Stable, settled occupation & predictable food supply leads to economic surplus: Economic surplus = creation of political economy; specialization (division between rich and poor) Socio-economic inequality becomes constant aspect of human experience. Ne model: monarch as divine figurehead oversees extraction (taxation) of surplus and reallocation to economic specialists, soldiers, builders (communal projects) Reconstruction of the neo-sumerian ziggurat of ur, c. 2100 bc. Highly bureaucratized economy of collection and redistribution. Mediterranean region cool, wet winters, dry, hot summers (semiarid) Shortage of natural resources and arable land. Few useful mineral reserves (no tin = far away from sources) Copper + tin = bronze (this was hard to make) Residential rooms, storehouses, workshops, central courtyard (unwalled) Peer polity interaction produces cretan palace states. Minoan records: hieroglyphic (c. 2000 bc), linear a (c. 1700 bc)