This book provides the first comprehensive history of Afro-Eurasia
during the first millennium BCE and the beginning of the first
millennium CE. The history of these 1300 plus years can be summed
up in one word: connectivity. The growth in connectivity during
this period was marked by increasing political, economic, and
cultural interaction throughout the region, and the replacement of
the numerous political and cultural entities by a handful of great
empires at the end of the period. In the process, local cultural
traditions were replaced by great traditions rooted in lingua
francas and spread by formalized educational systems. This process
began with the collapse of the Bronze Age empires in the east and
west, widespread population movements, and almost chronic warfare
throughout Afro-Eurasia, while the cavalry revolution transformed
the nomads of the central Asian steppes into founders of tribal
confederations assembled by charismatic leaders and covering huge
territories. At the same time, new artistic and intellectual
movements appeared, including the teachings of Socrates, Confucius,
the Buddha, and Laozi. Increased literacy also allowed people from
a wide range of social classes such as the Greek soldier Xenophon,
the Indian Buddhist emperor Ashoka, the Roman emperor Marcus
Aurelius, and elite women such as the poetess Sappho, the Christian
martyr Perpetua, and the scholar Ban Zhao to create literary works.
When the period ended in 300 CE, conditions had changed
dramatically. Temperate Afro-Eurasia from the Atlantic to the
Pacific was dominated by a handful of empires-Rome, Sassanid
Persia, and Jin Empire-that ruled more than half the world's
population, while an extensive network of trade routes bound them
to Southeast and Central Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa and made
possible the spread of new book based religions including
Christianity, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism, thereby
setting the stage for the next millennium of Afro-Eurasian history.
General
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