| Indian History (Ancient) |
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| Civilization Civilization is a way of life that arose after people began to live in cities or in societies organized as states. The word comes from the Latin word civis, which means citizen of a city. A civilization consists of the art, customs, technology, form of government, and everything else that makes up the way of life in a society. In this respect, civilization is similar to culture. But culture refers to any way of life and includes both simple and complex life styles. The word civilization refers only to life styles that feature complex economic, governmental, and social systems. Therefore, every human being lives within a culture, but not everyone lives within a civilization. Throughout history, individual civilizations have arisen and collapsed, but the basic features of civilization do not disappear. Ideas and inventions spread from one civilization to another. In many cases, similar developments occur independently in different civilizations. How civilizations develop. During most of the prehistoric period, people lived in small groups and moved from place to place in search of food. They hunted, fished, and gathered wild plants. These early people had a simple social organization based on close family ties. Between 13,000 and 10,000 years ago, some societies of hunters and gatherers in the Middle East adopted more settled ways of life and developed social organizations based on larger, more formal groups. All of these societies developed in areas with predictable seasonal supplies of such foods as fish and easily gathered plant foods. Some archaeologists believe that the social changes occurred in part because certain grain plants became more plentiful near the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago. The technology and social organizations of some of these more advanced societies served as a foundation for later farming societies. About 9000 B.C., people in the Middle East began to cultivate cereal grasses and other plants. They also domesticated goats and sheep at about this time, and they later tamed cattle. In Southeast Asia, people had begun raising crops by about 7000 B.C. People in what is now Mexico also learned to grow crops by about 7000 B.C. The rise of agriculture was a major step in the development of civilization. Farmers settled in permanent villages, which had enough food to support a few craft workers and priests. Periodic food shortages led to increased trade among villages. The villagers exchanged grain, pottery, and various raw materials. By about 3500 B.C., people in the Middle East had learned to smelt copper and make bronze tools and weapons. The demand for metal ore increased, and priests and chieftains gained greater control over trade. Gradually, villages in the Middle East grew into cities. Religious shrines and sacred places, which flourished as ceremonial sites, became the centers of economic and political power in the emerging cities. Several civilizations developed independently in various parts of the world. The first one arose about 3500 B.C. in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley in the Middle East. Other civilizations developed in the Nile Valley in Egypt, the Indus Valley in what are now Pakistan and northwestern India, the Huang He Valley in China, and the Andes Mountains of present-day Peru. These ancient civilizations grew up in widely different natural environments. The people developed systems of writing and new forms of government, made advances in science and technology, and excelled in crafts and art. Why civilizations rise and fall Philosophers, historians, and archaeologists have suggested many reasons for the rise and fall of civilizations. Georg W. F. Hegel, a German philosopher of the early 1800's, compared societies to individuals who pass the torch of civilization from one to another. During this process, according to Hegel, civilization develops through three stages: (1) rule by one person, a dictator; (2) rule by one class of society; and (3) rule by all the people. Hegel believed the process eventually results in freedom for all people. The German philosopher Oswald Spengler thought civilizations, like living things, are born, mature, and die. In The Decline of the West (1918-1922), he wrote that Western civilization is dying and will be replaced by a new Asian civilization. The British historian Arnold Toynbee proposed his theory of challenge and response in A Study of History (1934-1961). Toynbee believed that civilizations arise only where the environment challenges the people, and only when the people are ready to respond to the challenge. For example, a hot, dry climate makes land unsuitable for farming and represents a challenge to people who live there. The people may respond to this challenge by building irrigation systems to improve the land. Toynbee suggested that civilizations collapse when the people lose their creativity. Most archaeologists attribute the rise of civilizations to a combination of causes, including the structure of political and social life, the ways people modify their environment, and changes in population. In many cases, civilizations may have appeared because local chieftains took deliberate steps to strengthen their own political power. Many scientists believe that political forces and the misuse of land and other natural resources resulted in the economic and political collapse of early civilizations. World, History of the People have probably lived on the earth about 2 million years. But the story of world history begins only about 5,500 years ago with the invention of writing. The period before people began to write is usually called prehistory. Archaeologists have pieced together the story of prehistory by studying what the people left behind, including artwork, tools, ruins of buildings, fossils, and even their own skeletons. Such objects provide the main evidence of what prehistoric people were like and how they lived. The first traces of writing date from about 3500 B.C. From then on, people could record their own history. By writing down their experiences, they could tell future generations what they were like and how they lived. From these documents, we can learn firsthand about the rise and fall of civilizations and the course of other important events. The history of the world--from the first civilizations to the present--is based largely on what has been written down by peoples through the ages. The development of agriculture about 9,000 B.C. brought about a great revolution in human life. Prehistoric people who learned to farm no longer had to roam in search of food. Instead, they could settle in one place. Some of their settlements grew to become the world's first cities. People in the cities learned new skills and developed specialized occupations. Some became builders and craft workers. Others became merchants and priests. Eventually, systems of writing were invented. These developments gave rise to the first civilizations. For hundreds of years, the earliest civilizations had little contact with one another and so developed independently. The progress each civilization made depended on the natural resources available to it and on the inventiveness of its people. As time passed, civilizations advanced and spread, and the world's population rose steadily. The peoples of various civilizations began to exchange ideas and skills. Within each civilization, groups of people with distinctive customs and languages emerged. In time, some peoples, such as the Romans, gained power over others and built huge empires. Some of these empires flourished for centuries before collapsing. Great religions and later science and scholarship developed as people wondered about the meaning of human life and the mysteries of nature. About 500 years ago, one civilization--that of western Europe--started to exert a powerful influence throughout the world. The Europeans began to make great advances in learning and the arts, and they came to surpass the rest of the world in scientific and technological achievements. The nations of Europe sent explorers and military forces to distant lands. They set up overseas colonies, first in the Americas and then on other continents, and conquered other regions. As a result, Western customs, skills, political ideas, and religious beliefs spread across much of the world. Today, the many peoples of the world continue to be separated by different cultural traditions. But they also have more in common than ever before. Worldwide systems of communications and transportation have broken down barriers of time and distance and rapidly increased the exchange of ideas and information between peoples. However far apart people may live from one another, they are affected more and more by the same political and economic changes. In some way, almost everyone can now be affected by a war or a political crisis in a faraway land or by a rise in petroleum prices in distant oil-producing countries. The separate cultures of the world seem to be blending into a common world culture. Much of world history is the story of the way different civilizations have come closer together. Early centers of civilization For hundreds of thousands of years, prehistoric people lived by hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants. Even small groups of people had to roam over large areas of land to find enough food. A group usually stayed in one place only a few days. The discovery of agriculture gradually ended the nomadic way of life for many people. After prehistoric men and women learned to raise crops and domesticate animals, they no longer had to wander about in search of food. They could thus begin to settle in villages. Agriculture was developed at different times in different regions of the world. People in the Middle East began to grow cereal grasses and other plants about 9000 B.C. They also domesticated goats and sheep at about that time, and they later tamed cattle. In southeastern Asia, people had begun raising crops by about 7000 B.C. People who lived in what is now Mexico probably learned to grow crops about 7000 B.C. The invention of farming paved the way for the development of civilization. As prehistoric people became better farmers, they began to produce enough food to support larger villages. In time, some farming villages developed into the first cities. The plentiful food supplies enabled more and more people to give up farming for other jobs. These people began to develop the arts, crafts, trades, and other activities of civilized life. Agriculture also stimulated technological and social changes. Farmers invented the hoe, sickle, and other tools to make their work easier. The hair of domestic animals and fibers from such plants as cotton and flax were used to make the first textiles. People built ovens to bake the bread they made from cultivated grain and learned to use hotter ovens to harden pottery. The practice of agriculture required many people to work together to prepare the fields for planting and to harvest the crops. New systems of government were developed to direct such group activities. The changes brought about by agriculture took thousands of years to spread widely across the earth. By about 3500 B.C., civilization began. It started first in Southwest Asia. Three other early civilizations developed in Africa and in south and east Asia. All these early civilizations arose in river valleys, where fertile soil and a readily available water supply made agriculture easier than elsewhere. The valleys were (1) the Tigris-Euphrates Valley in the Middle East, (2) the Nile Valley in Egypt, (3) the Indus Valley in India, Part of in Present Pakistan, and (4) the Huang He Valley in northern China. While civilization was developing in the four valleys, people in most other parts of the world were still following their old ways of life. Little cultural progress was being made in such regions as northern and central Europe, central and southern Africa, northern and southeastern Asia, and most of North America. In parts of Central and South America, the people were developing some new ways of life. But advanced civilizations did not appear there until hundreds of years later. The Tigris-Euphrates Valley One of the most fertile regions of the ancient world lay between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southern Mesopotamia (now Iraq). Silt deposited by the rivers formed a rich topsoil ideal for growing crops. By the 5000's B.C., many people had settled in villages in the lower part of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, an area later called Sumer. The Sumerians lived by farming, fishing, and hunting the wild fowl of the river marshes. They built dikes to control the flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and irrigation canals to carry water to their fields. By about 3500 B.C., some Sumerian farm villages had grown into small cities, which marked the beginning of the world's first civilization. A number of these cities developed into powerful city-states by about 3200 B.C. The Sumerians produced one of the greatest achievements in world history. By about 3500 B.C., they had invented the first form of writing. It consisted of picture like symbols scratched into clay. The symbols were later simplified to produce cuneiform, a system of writing that used wedge-shaped characters. Archaeologists have found thousands of clay tablets with Sumerian writings. These tablets show the high level of development of the Sumerian culture. They include historical and legal documents; letters; economic records; literary and religious texts; and studies in mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. The Sumerians used baked bricks to build great palaces and towering temples called ziggurats in their cities. They believed that their gods lived on the tops of the ziggurats. Sumerian craft workers produced board games, beautifully designed jewelry, metal ware, musical instruments, decorative pottery, and stone seals engraved with pictures and inscriptions. The Sumerians invented the potter's wheel and were among the first people to brew beer and make glass. Their system of counting in units of 60 is the basis of the 360-degree circle and the 60-minute hour. For more information on the Sumerian civilization. The Sumerian city-states had no central government or unified army and continually struggled among themselves for power. As time passed, they were increasingly threatened by neighboring Semitic peoples, who were attracted by the growing wealth of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. During the 2300's B.C., a Semitic king, Sargon of Akkad, conquered Sumer. Sargon united all Mesopotamia under his rule, creating the world's first empire. The Akkadians combined Sumerian civilization with their own culture. Their rule lasted more than 60 years. Then invaders from the northeast overran the empire. These invaders soon left Mesopotamia, and Sumer was once again divided into separate city-states. One city-state, Ur, briefly controlled all the others. By about 2000 B.C., the Sumerians had completely lost all political power to invading Semites. Mesopotamia then broke up into a number of small kingdoms under various Semitic rulers. The city of Babylon became the center of one kingdom. The Babylonian rulers gradually extended their authority over all Mesopotamian peoples. The greatest Babylonian king was Hammurabi, who ruled from about 1792 to 1750 B.C. Hammurabi developed one of the first law codes in history. The famous Code of Hammurabi contained nearly 300 legal provisions, including many Sumerian and Akkadian laws. It covered such matters as divorce, false accusation, land and business regulations, and military service. The Nile Valley The civilization of ancient Egypt began to develop in the valley of the Nile River about 3100 B.C. Agriculture flourished in the valley, where the floodwaters of the Nile deposited rich soil year after year. Beyond the Nile Valley lay an uninhabited region of desert and rock. Egyptian culture thus developed with little threat of invasions by neighboring peoples. During the 3000's B.C., Egypt consisted of two large kingdoms. Lower Egypt covered the Nile Delta. Upper Egypt lay south of the delta on the two banks of the river. About 3100 B.C., according to legend, King Menes of Upper Egypt conquered Lower Egypt and united the two kingdoms. Menes also founded the first Egyptian dynasty (series of rulers in the same family). The rulers of ancient Egypt were believed to be divine. The ancient Egyptians borrowed little from other cultures. They invented their own form of writing--an elaborate system of symbols known as hieroglyphics. They also invented papyrus, a paper like material made from the stems of reeds. The Egyptians developed one of the first religions to emphasize life after death. They tried to make sure their dead enjoyed a good life in the next world. The Egyptians built great tombs and mummified (embalmed and dried) corpses to preserve them. They filled the tombs with clothing, food, furnishings, and jewelry for use in the next world. The most famous Egyptian tombs are gigantic pyramids in which the kings were buried. The pyramids display the outstanding engineering and surveying skills of the Egyptians. The government organized thousands of workers to construct the pyramids, as well as temples and palaces, in the Egyptian cities. The cities served chiefly as religious and governmental centers for the surrounding countryside. Most of the people lived in villages near the cities. Over the years, huge armies of conquering Egyptians expanded the kingdom's boundaries far beyond the Nile Valley. At its height in the 1400's B.C., Egypt ruled Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and part of the Sudan. As a powerful state at the junction of Asia and Africa, Egypt played an important role in the growth of long-distance trade. Egyptian caravans carried goods throughout the vast desert regions surrounding the kingdom. Egyptian ships sailed to all the major ports of the ancient world. From other lands, the Egyptians acquired gems, gold, ivory, leopard skins, fine woods, and other rich materials, which they used to create some of the most magnificent art of ancient times. Although the ancient Egyptians had contacts with other cultures, their way of life changed little over thousands of years. Their civilization gradually declined, and the Egyptians found it harder and harder to resist invaders who had greater vigor and better weapons. Egyptian records from the 1200's and 1100's B.C. describe constant attacks by "sea peoples." These peoples may have come from islands in the Aegean Sea or from lands along the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. After 1000 B.C., power struggles between rival Egyptian dynasties further weakened the kingdom. The Indus Valley Historians have only partly translated the writings left behind by the ancient civilization that arose in the valley of the Indus River and its tributaries. As a result, they have had to rely almost entirely on archaeological findings for information about the Indus culture. The ruins of two large cities-Mohenjo-Daro (also spelled Moenjo Daro) and Harappa--tell much about the Indus Valley civilization. In addition, the remains of hundreds of small settlements have been discovered in the valley. Some of these settlements were farming villages, and others were seaports and trading posts. Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa probably had more than 35,000 inhabitants each by about 2500 B.C. The people of the Indus Valley had a well-developed system of agriculture that provided food for the large population. They dug ditches and canals to irrigate their farms. The Indus cities had brick buildings and well-planned streets laid out in rectangular patterns. Elaborate brick-lined drainage systems provided sanitation for the towns. Craft workers made decorated furniture, fine jewelry, metal utensils, toys, and stone seals engraved with animal and human forms. Inscriptions on these seals, as well as on some pottery and a few other objects, provide the only traces of Indus writing known at present. Archaeologists have discovered that standardized sizes of bricks and uniform weights and measures were used throughout the Indus Valley. The Indus settlements traded with one another and with foreign cultures. Traces of seals used on goods from the Indus Valley have been found as far away as Mesopotamia. The Indus people probably also traded with people of central Asia, southern India, and Persia. Between 2000 and 1750 B.C., the Indus Valley civilization began to decay. Scholars do not know why this process of decay took place. Changing river patterns may have disrupted the agriculture and economy of the region. Overuse of the land along the riverbanks also may have damaged the territory. By about 1700 B.C., the Indus civilization had disappeared. The Huang He Valley. The earliest written records of Chinese history date from the Shang dynasty, which arose in the valley of the Huang He during the 1700's B.C. The records consist largely of writings scratched on animal bones and turtle shells. The bones and shells, known as oracle bones, were used in religious ceremonies to answer questions about the future. After a question was written on an oracle bone, a small groove or hole was made in the bone. The bone was then heated so that cracks ran outward from the groove or hole. By studying the pattern of the cracks, a priest worked out the answer to the question. Thousands of oracle bones have been found. They provide much information about the ancient Chinese. Many of the bones record astronomical events, such as eclipses of the sun and moon, and the names and dates of rulers. The system of writing used by the Shang people had more than 3,000 characters. Some characters on the oracle bones closely resemble those of the present-day Chinese language. Little remains of the cities of the Shang period. Most of the buildings were made of mud or wood and have long since crumbled away. However, the foundations of pounded earth survive and indicate that some of the cities were fairly large and surrounded by high walls. The people of the Shang period cast beautiful bronze vessels. They also carved marble and jade and wove silk. The Shang people had many gods. They attached great importance to ties of kinship and worshiped the spirits of their ancestors. They believed that their ancestors could plead with the gods on their behalf. The Shang people were governed by a king and a hereditary class of aristocrats. The king and the nobility carried out religious as well as political duties. However, only the king could perform the most important religious ceremonies. The Shang leaders organized armies of as many as 5,000 men and equipped them with bronze weapons and horse-drawn war chariots. They used their armies to control the other peoples of the Huang He Valley. The Shang ruled much of the valley for about 600 years. The advance of civilization From about 1200 B.C. to A.D. 500, Mesopotamia and Egypt were increasingly affected by the gradual growth of a new civilization on the islands and shores of the Aegean Sea. The most magnificent civilization of ancient times--that of the Greeks--eventually developed in the Aegean region. For a time, the Greeks dominated much of the ancient world. Later, the lands of the Greeks, as well as Mesopotamia and Egypt, became part of the Roman Empire. The combined arts, philosophies, and sciences of ancient Greece and Rome provided much of the foundation of later European culture. As the civilizations of ancient times grew and spread, they began to have certain features in common. By about A.D. 500, for example, all the major civilizations had learned how to make iron. The spread of such knowledge was helped by trade, conquest, and migration. Traders carried the products of one culture to other cultures. The soldiers of invading armies often settled in the conquered lands, where they introduced new ways of life. Groups of people migrated from one region to another, bringing the customs, ideas, and skills of their homelands with them. The most important migrations in ancient times were made by peoples belonging to the Indo-European language groups. The Indo-European peoples once lived in the area north of the Black Sea, in southeastern Europe. Sometime before 2000 B.C., large numbers of them began moving into other parts of Europe, into the Middle East, and across the highlands of Persia to India. Many of the migrations resulted in the destruction of old states and the creation of new ones. Middle Eastern civilizations. For several hundred years following 1200 B.C., various Indo-European and Semitic peoples struggled for power in the Middle East. One of the Semitic peoples, the Israelites, founded a kingdom in what is now Israel about 1029 B.C. The Israelites, later called Jews, established the first religion based on the belief in one God. Their faith, called Judaism, had a lasting influence on human history. Both Christianity, the most widespread religion of modern times, and Islam, the religion of the Muslims, developed from Judaism. During the 700's B.C., much of the Middle East was conquered by the Assyrians, a northern Mesopotamian people. The cities of Nineveh and Assur on the upper Tigris River were the chief centers of their empire. The Assyrians were a rough, warlike people who often treated their subject peoples cruelly. Conquered rulers were replaced by brutal Assyrian governors who acted on orders from the central government in Nineveh. For more information, In 612 B.C., the Babylonians and an Indo-European people called the Medes joined forces and destroyed Nineveh. The Assyrian Empire thus ended. The Medes then established the Median Empire, which included the area north of Mesopotamia. In Mesopotamia and to the west, the New Babylonian Empire, sometimes called the Chaldean Empire, came into being. Under its most famous ruler, Nebuchadnezzar II, Babylon became one of the most magnificent cities of the ancient world. Nebuchadnezzar probably built the Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. About 550 B.C., the Persians, led by Cyrus the Great, overthrew the Medes and established the Persian Empire. Cyrus went on to conquer Babylonia, Palestine, Syria, and all Asia Minor. Cyrus' son Cambyses added Egypt to the empire in 525 B.C. The Persians built excellent roads throughout their vast empire. They divided the empire into provinces, each governed by a Persian official. Unlike the Assyrians, the Persians allowed the conquered peoples to keep their own religions and traditions. The Persian Empire lasted more than 200 years. Under Persian rule, Medes, Babylonians, Jews, and Egyptians were united for the first time. Although they still had different traditions and customs, they could no longer be thought of as belonging to separate civilizations. Another people who came under Persian control were the Phoenicians, who lived along the coasts of what are now Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. The Phoenicians were great explorers and traders who helped spread civilization among the peoples living in coastal areas along the Aegean Sea and in what is now Turkey. The Phoenicians invented an alphabet that became the basis of the Greek alphabet. All other Western alphabets, in turn, have been taken from the Greek. The Greeks. The first major civilization in the region of Greece began to develop on Crete, an island in the Aegean Sea, about 3000 B.C. Scholars call this civilization the Minoan culture after Minos, the legendary king of the island . The Minoans were skilled artists and architects and active traders. By about 2000 B.C., they had begun to build a series of magnificent palaces, the most elaborate of which was the Palace of Minos in the town of Knossos. The Minoans traded with peoples in the Middle East, Sicily, and Greece. Their trade routes provided an important link between Middle Eastern civilizations and mainland Europe. Minoan culture flourished for about 500 years. It began to decline after 1450 B.C., when fire destroyed nearly all the towns on Crete. By about 1100 B.C., the culture had disappeared. The most important early culture on the mainland of Greece centered on the southern city of Mycenae. The people of Mycenae were probably descendants of Indo-European peoples who had been migrating to Greece since about 2000 B.C. By the 1500's B.C., the Mycenaean culture had become rich and powerful. Mycenae was the leading political and cultural center on the Greek mainland until it collapsed in the early 1100's B.C. About this time, barbarian peoples from the north began moving into Greece. Later Greeks called these people the Dorians. Historians are not sure what part the Dorians played in the fall of Mycenae. Greek civilization developed between about 800 and 500 B.C. The first recorded Olympic Games were held for Greek athletes in 776 B.C., and the first surviving Greek inscriptions date from about 50 years later. The ancient Greeks settled in independent communities called city-states. Between 750 and 338 B.C., the chief city-states were Athens, Corinth, Sparta, and Thebes. The city-states were never united politically, and the people were divided into various groups. However, the Greeks were tied together by a common culture and language, and they thought of themselves as distinct from other peoples. The first democratic governments were established in the Greek city-states. Neither slaves nor women could vote, but more people took part in government in Greece than in any earlier civilization. Greek culture gradually spread to other lands. The Greeks established many towns and trading posts in Sicily and in what are now southern Italy and Turkey. Greek colonists also founded settlements as far away as present-day Portugal, France, Libya, and India. Many Greeks served as craft workers, teachers, and soldiers in the courts of foreign rulers. In 479 B.C., the Greeks defeated the Persians after a long war. Greek civilization then entered its Golden Age. Architects constructed masterpieces of classical beauty. Lasting works of art, literature, drama, history, and philosophy were produced. Greek scientists made great advances in mathematics, medicine, physics, botany, and zoology. During this period, Athens became the cultural center of the Greek world. The achievements and growing power of Athens were the envy of the other Greek city-states. Hostility between the Athenians and their fellow Greeks led to the bitter Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.). Athens lost the war. The victorious city-states soon started to quarrel among themselves, and Greece began to decline in power. In 338 B.C., Philip II of Macedonia conquered the Greek city-states. His son, Alexander the Great, succeeded him in 336 B.C. Until his death in 323 B.C., Alexander expanded his empire through conquests of much of the civilized world from Egypt to the Indus River. Alexander helped spread Greek ideas and the Greek way of life into all the lands he conquered. After Alexander died, his empire was divided among his generals. They continued to preserve Greek culture. The period after Alexander's death became known as the Hellenistic Age in Greece and the Near East. It lasted until the Romans took control, ending in Greece in 146 B.C. Egypt, the last major stronghold of the Hellenistic world, fell to the Romans in 30 B.C. The Romans. By the 500's B.C., Greek traders and colonists had established many settlements in Italy and Sicily. They carried Greek civilization directly to the mixed group of peoples living there, most of whom were descendants of Indo-European immigrants. These peoples included the Etruscans, who had settled in west-central Italy during the 800's B.C. In 509 B.C., the people of Rome, one of the cities under Etruscan control, revolted. The Romans gained their independence and declared Rome a republic. For hundreds of years, Roman conquerors expanded the republic. By 290 B.C., Rome controlled most of Italy. It soon became one of the most powerful states of the western Mediterranean. During the 200's and 100's B.C., Rome defeated its only major rival, the former Phoenician colony of Carthage, in a series of struggles called the Punic Wars. As a result of the wars, Sicily and Spain became Roman provinces. Rome also expanded into the eastern Mediterranean. In 148 B.C., the Romans made Macedonia their first eastern province. Two years later, they conquered Greece. In 55 and 54 B.C., the Roman general Julius Caesar invaded Britain. Other conquests followed until the original city of Rome had grown into an enormous empire. At its height, in A.D. 117, the empire covered about half of Europe, much of the Middle East, and the entire north coast of Africa. Roman territory included all the Greek lands of the Hellenistic Age. The Romans imitated Greek art and literature, made use of Greek scientific knowledge, and based their architecture on Greek models. Educated people throughout the Roman Empire spoke Greek. By imitating Greek accomplishments, the Romans preserved and passed on much Greek culture that otherwise might have been lost. The Romans also contributed their own achievements to the civilization they developed. They were superb engineers who constructed massive aqueducts and bridges, vast systems of roads, and monumental arches. The Romans developed an excellent legal system. Their legal code forms the basis of civil law in numerous European and Latin-American countries, and many of its principles and terms are part of English and American common law. Latin, the language of the Romans, was the official language of the empire. It became the basis of French, Italian, Spanish, and other Romance languages of today. The Romans excelled in the art of government. One of their most important achievements was the empire itself, which provided a stable framework of government for many peoples with widely different customs. The Romans showed great respect for these customs and won the good will of many of the peoples they governed. Rome was a republic until 27 B.C., when Augustus took supreme power. Augustus and his successors retained republican titles and forms of government, but Rome actually became a monarchy ruled by emperors. During the A.D. 100's and 200's, Rome was increasingly threatened by barbarian invaders in both the east and the west. As a result, the army became more and more powerful and began to play a major role in choosing Rome's emperors. One of the most important emperors the army helped bring to power was Constantine the Great, who came to the throne in 306. In 313, Constantine granted Christians of the Roman Empire freedom of worship. Christ had been born during the reign of the Emperor Augustus and was crucified by the Roman authorities in about A.D. 30, during the rule of Tiberius. The Romans had at times persecuted the Christians. However, after Constantine granted Christians legal recognition, a strong link was formed between the Christian church and the Roman Empire. Emperor Theodosius I proclaimed Christianity the official religion of the empire in the late 300's. A period of great disorder followed Constantine's death in 337. In 395, the Roman Empire split into two parts--the West Roman Empire and the East Roman, or Byzantine, Empire. The West Roman Empire soon fell to Germanic tribes, but the Byzantine Empire was to thrive for many years. For more information on the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Achievements in India. About 1500 B.C., bands of Aryans, an Indo-European people, began migrating to India. The Aryans came from the plains of central Asia through the mountain passes of the Hindu Kush. By 1000 B.C., they had taken over most of the valley of the upper Ganges River in northern India. The Aryans never invaded southern India, but their influence gradually extended over the entire country and greatly affected Indian culture. Sanskrit, the language developed by the Aryans, is the basis of languages still spoken in India. Hinduism, the religion of most Indians today, is rooted in Indo-European beliefs. The division of present-day Indian society into social classes called castes dates from the divisions of early Aryan society into four classes. These classes were priests and scholars; rulers and warriors; merchants and professionals; and laborers and servants. At various times in its history, the Aryan territory was divided into many states. In one state, a prince named Siddhartha Gautama was born about 563 B.C. Gautama abandoned a life of luxury to seek religious enlightenment. He became a great religious teacher known to his followers as Buddha (Enlightened One). Gautama's teachings are the foundation of Buddhism, one of the world's major religions. By about 300 B.C., much of India was united for the first time under one dynasty, the Maurya. The Maurya Empire reached its peak under Emperor Asoka, who ruled during the 200's B.C. From his capital at Pataliputra (now Patna) in northern India, Asoka controlled almost all India and part of central Asia. Asoka supported Buddhism, which spread and prospered during his reign. He sent Buddhist missionaries to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and other countries. See ASOKA; MAURYA EMPIRE. The Maurya dynasty ended with the assassination of its last emperor in 185 B.C. For most of the next 500 years, India was divided into small political units under no one ruler. In A.D. 320, a new dynasty, the Gupta, came to power in northern India. The Gupta dynasty lasted about 200 years. During the Gupta period, Indian civilization enjoyed a golden age of peace, good government, and cultural development. Beautiful cities arose, and universities were founded. Sanskrit literature, particularly drama, flourished during the Gupta era. The Gupta emperors were Hindus, but Buddhism also thrived under their rule. Achievements in China. About 1122 B.C., the Zhou people of western China overthrew the Shang and established their own dynasty. The Zhou ruled until 256 B.C. The Zhou kings introduced the idea that they had been appointed to rule by Heaven. All later Chinese dynasties adopted that idea. From its beginning, the Zhou dynasty directly controlled only part of northern China. The rest of the kingdom consisted of semi-independent states. As time passed, the lords of these states grew increasingly powerful and so weakened the dynasty. In 771 B.C., the Zhou were forced to abandon their capital, near what is now Xi'an, and move eastward to Luoyang. For hundreds of years after the Zhou moved their capital, fighting raged among the states for control of all China. Efforts to restore order to Chinese society led to the birth of Chinese philosophy during this period. The great philosopher Confucius stressed the importance of moral standards and tradition and of a well-ordered society in which people performed the duties of their stations in life. In 221 B.C., the Qin (also spelled Ch'in) state in northwestern China defeated all its rivals. The Qin created the first unified Chinese empire controlled by a strong central government. The name China came from the name of their dynasty. The first Qin emperor, Shi Huangdi, standardized weights and measures and the Chinese writing system. He also built extensive irrigation projects. To keep out barbarian invaders, he ordered major construction on the Great Wall of China. The Qin dynasty lasted only until 206 B.C. The Han dynasty gained control of China in 202 B.C. Under the Han emperors, Confucianism became the philosophical basis of government. Candidates for government jobs had to take a civil service examination based on Confucian ideals. Art, education, and science thrived during the Han period. By A.D. 1, the Chinese had invented paper. Sometime before A.D. 100, Buddhism was introduced into China from India. Han China expanded southwest to what is now Tibet. Han warriors also conquered parts of Indochina and Korea and overcame nomadic tribes in the north and west. Political struggles among the Han leaders led to the collapse of the dynasty in A.D. 220. For the next 400 years, China was again divided into warring states. The world from 500 to 1500 Various parts of the world gradually came more closely into contact with one another during the period from 500 to 1500. In fact, some regions came into contact with other regions for the first time. However, the various regions still remained largely independent of one another during most of that time, and their histories continued to progress along separate lines. Great changes occurred in the old areas of civilization during the 1,000-year period. In western Europe, a number of separate states eventually arose from the disorder that followed the fall of the West Roman Empire. The East Roman, or Byzantine, Empire continued to survive and flourish. A new world religion, Islam, sprang up in Arabia and spread to many other parts of the world. Meanwhile, China continued to preserve its special way of life under a series of dynasties. Partly under influence from China, another Oriental civilization appeared, that of Japan. In the Americas, civilizations developed without any outside influences. In European history, the period between about 500 and 1500 is often referred to as the Middle Ages or the medieval period. The word medieval comes from the Latin words medium, meaning middle, and aevum, meaning age. The terms Middle Ages and medieval period made sense to later Europeans who looked back on those years as a distinct period in the middle of their history between the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome and the start of modern times. But the terms cannot be applied to world history as a whole because the histories of many parts of the world have no connection with ancient Greece and Rome. Medieval Europe. By A.D. 400, many barbarian invaders and immigrants from the east had settled within the West Roman Empire. In 476, a Germanic chieftain named Odoacer overthrew the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus. By that time, Germanic conquerors had carved kingdoms out of all the West Roman provinces. The framework of government created by the Romans had disappeared. Roman culture was not completely destroyed, however. Many Germanic rulers adopted some Roman customs and converted to Christianity. The Christian church became the most important civilizing force among the Germanic peoples. Its missionaries introduced the barbarians to Roman ideas of government and justice. Cathedrals and monasteries provided the main centers of learning and philosophy. The monks and the clergy helped continue the reading and writing of Latin and preserved many ancient manuscripts. For hundreds of years after the fall of the West Roman Empire, the Germanic kings had great difficulty defending themselves against invaders. The invaders included Arabs from the south, Vikings from the north, and Magyars and Avars from the east. During these troubled times, a new military and political system known as feudalism developed in western Europe. Under this system, powerful lords--who owned most of the land--gave some of their holdings to less wealthy noblemen in return for pledges of allegiance. These lesser nobles, called vassals, swore to fight for the lord when he needed their help. Peasants worked the fields of the lords and their vassals. By the 900's, most of western Europe was divided into feudal states. The feudal lords completely controlled their estates. Kings ruled only their own lands and vassals. During the 1000's, many lords established strong governments and achieved periods of peace under the feudal system. Trade revived along the old land routes and waterways used by the Romans. Towns sprang up and prospered along the trade routes. The peasants learned better farming methods and gained new farmland by clearing forests and draining swamps. The population rose. Learning and the arts thrived as trade brought increasing contact with the advanced Byzantine and Islamic civilizations. During the 1100's and 1200's, the first European universities were established. The people of the medieval towns often supported the kings against the feudal lords. The townspeople agreed to pay taxes to the kings in return for protection and freedom. During the 1300's and 1400's, some kings became increasingly powerful and began to extend their authority over the feudal lords. By 1500, France, England, Spain, and Portugal had become unified nation-states ruled by monarchs. For more information about medieval Europe. The Byzantine Empire was a continuation of the East Roman Empire. Its capital and military stronghold was Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey). The Byzantine rulers kept Roman governmental and legal traditions. However, the East Roman provinces had always been more influenced by Greek culture than by Latin culture. As a result, the Byzantines helped preserve ancient Greek language, literature, and philosophy. Christianity flourished in the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine church was the chief civilizing force among the Slavic peoples of southeastern Europe and Russia. Byzantine missionaries converted the Slavs to Christianity and invented a script in which the Slavic languages were written down. The church in Constantinople was united with the church in Rome for many years. But rivalries developed between the churches, and they drifted apart. The Western church eventually became known as the Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox Churches developed out of Byzantine Christianity. The Byzantine Empire reached its greatest extent under Emperor Justinian, who came to the throne in 527. His empire included Italy, much of southeastern Europe, part of Spain, much of the Middle East, and lands along the north coast of Africa. At the command of Justinian, Byzantine scholars collected and organized the many laws of the ancient Romans. The resulting code of laws, called the Justinian Code, clarified the laws of the times and is today the basis of the legal systems of many countries. Art and architecture flourished during Justinian's reign. The Byzantines constructed domed cathedrals with ornately decorated interiors. One of these cathedrals is the magnificent Hagia Sophia built by Justinian in Constantinople. For hundreds of years, the Byzantine Empire protected western Europe from attacks from the east by barbarians, Persians, and such Muslim invaders as the Arabs and Ottoman Turks. Beginning in the 1000's, however, the Byzantine emperors fought a losing battle against the Muslims. By 1400, the Ottoman Turks had taken much of southeastern Europe and all the Asian territories of the Byzantines. In 1453, the Ottomans captured Constantinople. This conquest brought to an end the last remnants of the old Roman Empire. The Islamic world. In the 600's, Islam, a new religion based on the teachings of Muhammad, began in Arabia. Muhammad was born about 570 and grew up in Mecca, a major trading center on the Arabian Peninsula. At that time, most Arabs believed in nature gods and prayed to idols and spirits. But Muhammad urged the Arabs to worship one God. The Meccans rejected Muhammad's teachings and persecuted him and his followers. In 622, Muhammad and his disciples fled to the city of Medina (then called Yathrib). Muhammad's flight, called the Hegira, marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. The people of Medina accepted Muhammad as God's messenger. By 630, Muhammad and his followers had captured Mecca. After Muhammad's death in 632, authority to head the Islamic community passed to religious leaders later called caliphs. The first caliphs were members of Muhammad's family. Under their leadership, Islam became a great conquering force. The Muslim armies defeated the tribes of southern Arabia and then spread north to Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Persia. In 661, the caliphate passed to another family, the Umayyads, who established their capital at Damascus. The Umayyad caliphs led the Muslim Arabs to new victories. By the early 700's, the Arabs had conquered Cyprus, Rhodes, Sicily, northern Africa, and Afghanistan. Muslim forces had also pushed into Spain and India and reached the borders of China. In 750, the Abbasids became the caliphs of the expanding Islamic world. They moved the capital to Baghdad. Under the Abbasids, Islamic civilization reached its greatest heights. Baghdad became a huge city, rivaling Constantinople in wealth and population. Islamic art and architecture flourished, and many Islamic academies and universities were founded. As a result of their conquests, the Muslims had come into contact with Persian astronomy, history, and medicine; Indian mathematics; and Greek science and philosophy. The Arabs became learned in these fields and made significant contributions of their own in mathematics, medicine, astronomy, and other sciences. They also developed literature of their own in Arabic. Many ancient Greek texts were translated into Arabic and eventually introduced into western Europe. The Abbasid caliphate declined during the 900's as peoples from central Asia began invading the Middle East. Some of these peoples were Turks who had been converted to Islam. During the early 1300's, the Ottoman Turks, who had settled in Anatolia (now Turkey), became the military leaders of the Islamic world. After the Ottomans seized Constantinople in 1453, they made the city the capital of their empire. By 1700, the Ottoman Empire covered southeastern Europe, southern Russia, part of northern Africa, and much of the Middle East. China. From 500 to 1500, Chinese civilization still owed little to the outside world. Land travelers found it hard to reach China, and few travelers came by sea. Isolation helped make Chinese society extremely stable and self-sufficient. During the Tang dynasty (618-907) and the Song dynasty (960-1279), China enjoyed great prosperity and cultural accomplishment. The Tang and Song rulers continued to use the system of civil service examinations based on Confucianism that had begun hundreds of years earlier during Han times. Successful candidates for government office thus shared a common body of beliefs and a respect for traditional ways. Cities and towns grew rapidly during the Tang and Song periods. The Tang capital at Chang'an (now Xi'an) had a population of more than a million people. The Tang and Song emperors continued to extend the Grand Canal system, which had already linked the rice-growing lower Yangtze Valley with the north by the early 600's. Literature, history, and philosophy flourished under the Tang and Song dynasties. During the Tang period, the Chinese invented block printing. Chinese inventions during the Song period included gunpowder and movable type for printing. During the 1200's, Mongol warriors swept into China from the north. The Mongol leader Kublai Khan established the Yuan dynasty, which lasted from 1279 to 1368. The Mongol period marked the first time that all China had come under foreign rule. Kublai Khan encouraged commerce and cultural exchange with other civilized peoples. During Yuan times, Europeans became increasingly interested in China as a result of the reports of travelers and traders. Rebellions drove the Mongols from China during the mid-1300's. In 1368, Chinese rule was reestablished under the Ming dynasty, which held power until 1644. The rise of Japanese civilization. The development of Japanese civilization was greatly influenced by the neighboring Chinese culture. During the 500's, Confucianism, Buddhism, and knowledge of iron making reached Japan from China. The Japanese borrowed the Chinese system of writing and adopted some Chinese ideas of government and administration. Japanese government, like Chinese government, centered on an emperor. Beneath the emperor, Japanese society was divided into various clans. During the late 700's and early 800's, the Fujiwaras, an aristocratic clan, rose to power in Japan. The Fujiwaras gained control over the emperor and his court by intermarrying with the imperial family. Under the Fujiwaras, the court nobility enjoyed a life of splendor and luxury. The people of Japan began to cast off Chinese cultural influences. Some of the first masterpieces of Japanese literature were written during the Fujiwara era. The Japanese also produced fine ceramics and lacquerware and developed such arts as flower arranging, landscape gardening, and silk weaving. Japanese exports gradually began to appear in the markets of China and southeastern Asia. The Fujiwara clan ruled Japan about 300 years. During that time, the emperors lost all real power, though they still officially reigned. During the 1000's, civil wars between rival noblemen brought an end to Fujiwara rule. Another powerful clan, the Minamoto, seized control of the imperial court in 1185. The Minamoto leaders established a form of military government called the shogunate. The emperor remained in retirement, and a Minamoto shogun (military commander) ruled in his name. The Minamoto shogunate collapsed in the early 1300's, when Japan was again torn by violent civil wars. The wars slowed the growth of cities and towns and weakened the nation. But Japan remained safe from attack by foreign powers because of its isolated island position. The Mongols tried to invade Japan in 1274 and 1281, but both attempts failed because of typhoons in the Sea of Japan. The age of invasions of India. After the Gupta Empire fell in about 500, India broke up into many small kingdoms. From then until the early 1500's, India suffered repeated invasions from the northwest. In the early 700's, Muslim invaders from Arabia swept across northwestern India but were eventually overcome by Indian forces. During the late 1100's, Muslim Turks from central Asia conquered the Indus Valley. By 1206, they had established a sultanate (government by a sultan) in Delhi. The Delhi sultanate soon controlled all northern India. During the sultanate, many Muslims came to India to serve as soldiers, government officials, merchants, and priests. Muslim holy men converted many Indians to Islam. In 1398, a Mongol army raided India and captured Delhi. The Mongols soon withdrew, however. The sultanate regained Delhi, but the rest of the sultanate territory was split into kingdoms. In 1526, Babar, a Muslim prince from what is now Afghanistan, invaded India and defeated the forces of the last sultan of Delhi. Babar founded the Mogul Empire and made himself emperor. By the time Babar died in 1530, the Mogul Empire stretched from Kabul in Afghanistan to the mouth of the Ganges River in what is now Bangladesh. African civilizations. The Muslim Arabs completed their conquest of northern Africa by 710. For hundreds of years, the Islamic faith and culture spread to other parts of Africa. Camel caravans that crossed the Sahara brought northern Muslims into contact with western Africa. Muslim traders who sailed the Indian Ocean converted the peoples living along the east coasts of what are now Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania. Black African empires developed and prospered along some of the major trade routes. Islamic records provide information about the Ghana Empire, the first great black empire in western Africa. The empire existed from the 300's to the mid-1000's. The Arabs called Ghana the "land of gold" because Ghanaian traders supplied them with gold from regions south of the empire. During the 1200's, an even bigger empire, the Islamic Mali Empire, arose as the most powerful state in western Africa. One of Mali's cities, Timbuktu, became an important center of trade and Muslim culture. The Mali Empire began to break up during the 1400's. By 1500, most of it had come under the control of the Songhai Empire. This empire, which was also Islamic, became powerful mainly by controlling trade across the Sahara. Songhai lasted until 1591. Islamic influence did not extend into southern Africa. Much of the south was originally settled by black peoples who spoke Bantu languages. About the time of Christ, these peoples began migrating southward from what is now the border region between Nigeria and Cameroon. Their migrations lasted over 1,000 years. On the east coast of Africa, the Bantu peoples came into contact with traders from the Persian Gulf region who wanted to buy gold, copper, iron, ivory, and slaves. Several large trading empires developed in southeastern Africa, but little is known about them. One empire, the Mwanamutapa Empire, arose during the 1400's in what are now Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The city of Zimbabwe served as the empire's capital. During the late 1400's, the Changamire Empire conquered the Mwanamutapa and took over the capital. Massive towers and walls from a royal residence and burial place built during Changamire times still stand on the site of the city. Civilizations in the Americas. The first civilizations in the Americas arose in Central America and in what are now Mexico and Peru. The Maya Indians of Central America and Mexico developed one of the most advanced early cultures. Between about 250 and 900, the Maya built large religious centers that consisted of palaces, pyramids, temples, and terraces. The Maya studied astronomy, invented an accurate yearly calendar, and developed an advanced form of writing. For reasons still unknown, Maya civilization began to decline during the 900's. Many Maya sites were abandoned. From about 900 to 1200, the Toltec Indians were the dominant people in the central Mexican highlands. By the early 1400's, the Aztec replaced the Toltec as the most powerful people in central Mexico. The Aztec built a magnificent capital city, Tenochtitlan, on the site of present-day Mexico City and established a mighty empire. The Aztec devoted much of their time to religious practices. Human sacrifice was the central feature of their religion. The Aztec waged war on neighboring peoples mainly to obtain prisoners to sacrifice to their gods. By the 1200's, civilization had made great advances in Peru. Peruvian farmers were using bronze tools, and Peruvian stonemasons had become master builders. The people used quipu, a cord with knotted strings of various lengths and colors, to keep records and send messages. During the 1300's and 1400's, the Inca Indians gained control of the Peruvian civilization. By the early 1500's, the Inca ruled an empire that stretched between what are now southern Colombia and central Chile. A vast network of roads linked the distant provinces of the empire. Conquered peoples were forced to help build and maintain the roads, to raise crops for the Inca, and to serve in the Inca army. |
| culture Culture is a term used by social scientists for a way of life. Every human society has a culture. Culture includes a society's arts, beliefs, customs, institutions, inventions, language, technology, and values. A culture produces similar behavior and thought among most people in a particular society. To learn about a culture, one may ask such questions as these: What language do the people speak? What do the people of the society wear? How do they prepare their food? What kind of dwellings do they live in? What kind of work do they do? How do they govern themselves? How do they judge right from wrong? People are not born with any knowledge of a culture. They generally learn a culture by growing up in a particular society. They learn mainly through the use of language, especially by talking and listening to other members of the society. They also learn by watching and imitating various behaviors in the society. The process by which people--especially children--learn their society's culture is called enculturation. Through enculturation, a culture is shared with members of a society and passed from one generation to the next. Enculturation unifies people of a society by providing them with common experiences. The term culture has been defined in many ways. It often is used in a narrow sense to refer to activities in such fields as art, literature, and music. In that sense, a cultured person is someone who has knowledge of and appreciation for the fine arts. But under the broader definition used by social scientists, culture includes all areas of life, and all human beings have a culture. Social scientists identify certain aspects of culture as pop culture or popular culture. Pop culture includes such elements of a society's arts and entertainment as television, radio, recordings, advertising, sports, hobbies, fads, and fashions. The term civilization is similar to culture, but it refers mostly to cultures that have complex economic, governmental, and social systems. A civilization is technologically more advanced than other cultures of its time. A culture is any way of life, be it simple or complex, advanced or not advanced. For hundreds of thousands of years, human beings have had at least some of the biological abilities on which culture depends. These abilities are to learn, to use language and other symbols, and to employ tools to organize their lives and adapt to their environments. Besides human beings, other animals also have such elements of culture as the ability to make and use tools and the ability to communicate. For example, elephants break off tree branches and wave them with their trunks to brush off flies. Dolphins communicate with one another by means of barks, whistles, and other sounds. But no other animals have developed language and other symbols as complex as those of human beings. Thus, no other animal possesses to the same extent the abilities to learn, to communicate, and to store, process, and use information. The rest of this article focuses on the main aspects of human culture. Characteristics of culture There are several important characteristics of culture. The main ones are these: (1) A culture satisfies human needs in particular ways. (2) A culture is acquired through learning. (3) A culture is based on the use of symbols. (4) A culture consists of individual traits and groups of traits called patterns. Satisfying basic needs. All cultures serve to meet the basic needs shared by human beings. For example, every culture has methods of obtaining food and shelter. Every culture also has family relationships, economic and governmental systems, religious practices, and forms of artistic expression. Each culture shapes the way its members satisfy human needs. Human beings have to eat, but their culture teaches them what, when, and how to eat. For example, many British people eat smoked fish for breakfast, but many Americans prefer cold cereals. In the Midwestern United States, people generally eat dinner at 5 or 6 p.m. However, most Spaniards dine at 10 p.m. Many Turks prefer strong coffee with the grounds left in the cup, but most Australians filter out the grounds for a weaker brew. Many Japanese eat their meals from low tables while sitting on mats on the floor. Canadians usually sit on chairs at higher tables. Learning. Culture is acquired through learning, not through biological inheritance. That is, no person is born with a culture. Children take on the culture in which they are raised through enculturation. Children learn much of their culture through imitation and experience. They also acquire culture through observation, paying attention to what goes on around them and seeing examples of what their society considers right and wrong. Children also may absorb certain aspects of culture unconsciously. For example, Arabs tend to stand closer together when speaking to one another than most Europeans do. No one instructs them to do so, but they learn the behavior as part of their culture. Children also learn their culture by being told what to do. For example, a parent tells a son or daughter, "Say thank you" or "Don't talk to strangers." Individual members of a particular culture also share many memories, beliefs, values, expectations, and ways of thinking. In fact, most cultural learning results from verbal communication. Culture is passed from generation to generation chiefly through language. Using symbols. Cultural learning is based on the ability to use symbols. A symbol is something that stands for something else. The most important types of symbols are the words of a language. There is no obvious or necessary connection between a symbol and what it stands for. The English word dog is a symbol for a specific animal that barks. But other cultures have a different word that stands for the same animal--the French word chien, for example, or the Swahili word mbwa. There are many other kinds of symbols besides the words in a language. A flag, for example, stands for a country. Colors have symbolic meaning, and the meanings vary from culture to culture. For Chinese people, white is a color of mourning. In Western societies, black is the color of mourning. White is a symbol of purity, and brides wear white. All human societies use symbols to create and maintain culture. Forming patterns Cultures are made up of individual elements called cultural traits. A group of related traits is a cultural pattern. Cultural traits may be divided into material culture and nonmaterial culture. Material culture consists of all the things that are made by the members of a society. It includes such objects as buildings, jewelry, machines, and paintings. Nonmaterial culture refers to a society's behaviors and beliefs. A handshake, a marriage ceremony, and a system of justice are examples of nonmaterial culture. Cultural patterns may include numerous traits, both material and nonmaterial. The pattern for agriculture, for example, includes the time when crops are harvested (nonmaterial), the methods (nonmaterial) and machinery (material) used in harvesting, and the structures for storing the crops (material). Most traits that make up a cultural pattern are connected to one another. If one custom, institution, or value that helps form a cultural pattern changes, other parts of the pattern will probably change, too. For example, until the 1950's, the career pattern for most women in Western societies was to work full-time as homemakers and mothers. By the late 1900's, the pattern was for most women to get jobs outside the home. As part of the new pattern, attitudes about marriage, family, and children also changed. The new pattern includes marriage at a later age than ever before, a dependence on alternative child-care systems, and more frequent divorce. The boundaries of cultures Every human society has a culture. People who grow up in the same nation can be said to share a national culture. But they may be part of other societies within the nation that have separate cultural traditions. Social scientists sometimes use the term subculture to describe variations within a culture. Social groups often develop some cultural patterns of their own that set them apart from the larger society they are part of. Subcultures may develop in businesses, ethnic groups, occupational groups, regional groups, religious groups, and other groups within a larger culture. For example, Amish people in Pennyslvania and several Midwestern States make up a subculture, as do members of a teen-age street gang. Many cultural traits and patterns are limited to a particular culture, but many others are common to more than one culture. For example, cultures in the same part of the world often have similar patterns. A geographical region in which two or more cultures share cultural traits and patterns is called a culture area. Northern Europe is an example of a culture area. Some cultural traits have spread throughout the world. For example, some clothing, music, sports, and industrial processes are the same in many areas of the world. Cultural traditions that extend beyond national boundaries form what is called international culture. For example, countries that share an international culture include Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Their common cultural traditions include the English language and a heritage of British founders. Culture and society Multiculturalism. Some societies--such as those of Tibetans in Tibet and various peoples of the Pacific Islands--have traditionally been associated with a single culture. Other societies--such as those of the United States and Canada--are multicultural societies. They include many distinct cultures. A shared cultural background makes people feel more comfortable with other people from their own culture. Many people initially may feel confused and uneasy when they deal with people of another culture. The discomfort that people often feel when they have contact with an unfamiliar culture is called culture shock. Culture shock usually passes if a person stays in a new culture long enough to understand it and get used to its ways. People of one culture who move to a country where another culture dominates may give up their old ways and become part of the dominant culture. The process by which they do this is called assimilation. Through assimilation, a minority group eventually disappears because its members lose the cultural characteristics that set them apart. In a multicultural society, however, assimilation does not always occur. A multicultural society supports the view that many distinct cultures are good and desirable. The multicultural view encourages such diversity. Thus, in the United States, millions of people speak both English and the language of their own culture. They eat both American food (apple pie and hamburgers) and ethnic food. They celebrate both national holidays (Fourth of July and Thanksgiving) and their ethnic holidays. For example, many Mexican Americans celebrate Mexican Independence Day on September 16. In Chinese communities across the country, parades and other festivities mark the Chinese New Year. Multiculturalism succeeds best in a society that has many different ethnic groups and a political system that promotes freedom of expression and awareness and understanding of cultural differences. Ethnic groups can bring variety and richness to a society by introducing their own ideas and customs. However, ethnic groups that keep their own values and traditions can also threaten national unity. In many parts of the world, neighboring ethnic groups dislike and distrust one another. In some cases, these feelings have even led to war. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example, a civil war broke out in the early 1990's between Serbs and non-Serbs, who included Bosnian Muslims and Croats. Ethnocentrism and cultural relativism. Many people in all cultures think that their own culture is right, proper, and moral. They tend to use their own cultural standards and values to judge the behavior and beliefs of people from different cultures. They regard the behavior and beliefs of people from other cultures as strange or savage. The attitude that one's culture is best is called ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is harmful if carried to extremes. It may cause prejudice, automatic rejection of ideas from other cultures, and even persecution of other groups. The opposite view of ethnocentrism is called cultural relativism. It contends that no culture should be judged by the standards of another. This view can also present problems if carried to extremes. An extreme cultural relativist would say there is no such thing as a universal morality. An extreme cultural relativist would argue that the rules of all cultures deserve equal respect, even rules that allow such practices as cannibalism and torture. But many social scientists would reply that certain values are common to all societies--a prohibition against incest, for example, and support for marriage. They would argue that international standards of justice and morality should not be ignored. How cultures change Every culture changes. But all parts of a culture do not change at the same time. For example, science and technology may sometimes change so rapidly that they lessen the importance of customs, ideas, and other nonmaterial parts of a culture. At other times, changes in ideas and social systems may occur before changes in technology. The failure of certain parts of a culture to keep up with other, related parts is referred to as cultural lag. A number of factors may cause a culture to change. The two main ones are (1) contact with other cultures and (2) invention. Contact with other cultures. No society is so isolated that it does not come in contact with other societies. When contact occurs, societies borrow cultural traits from one another. As a result, cultural traits and patterns tend to spread from the society in which they originated. This spreading process is called diffusion. Corn growing, for example, began in what is now Mexico thousands of years ago and eventually spread throughout the world. Diffusion can occur without firsthand contact between cultures. Products or patterns may move from group A to group C through group B without any contact between group A and group C. Today, diffusion is rapid and widespread because many cultures of the world are linked through advanced means of transportation and communication. When two cultures have continuous, firsthand contact with each other, the exchange of cultural traits is called acculturation. Acculturation has often occurred when one culture has colonized or conquered another, or as a result of trade. In addition to adopting each other's traits, the two cultures may blend traits. For example, if the people of the cultures speak different languages, they may develop a mixed language called pidgin in order to communicate. The cultures may also exchange or blend such traits as clothing, dances, music, recipes, and tools. Through acculturation, parts of the culture of one or both groups change, but the groups remain distinct. In this way, acculturation differs from assimilation. Through assimilation, one group becomes part of another group and loses its separate identity. Invention is the creation of a new device, process, or product. Inventions provide a new solution to an old or new problem. Without inventions, human beings would be at the mercy of the climate and the land. Inventions have given people much control over their environment and enabled them to lead easier lives. Inventions have led to many changes in a culture. The invention of agriculture, for example, made it possible for people to settle in farm villages. Their values and social organization changed. They placed importance on using land and animals to produce crops. They began to build permanent housing. They developed systems of irrigation and a number of tools. The invention of spinning and weaving machines and an improved steam engine in the 1700's produced another great change in the way people lived. These inventions led to the opening of factories. Many people who had worked at home in rural areas flocked to the cities to work in the new factories. As cities became more crowded, new kinds of political, economic, and social systems developed. The invention of the electronic computer in the mid-1900's has had enormous impact. It has brought far-reaching changes in communication, education, entertainment, and numerous other areas of modern life. How people study culture The scientific study of human beings is called anthropology. One of the main branches of anthropology is cultural anthropology, which studies human cultures. The work of cultural anthropologists is comparative and cross-cultural--that is, cultural anthropologists study various societies to determine their cultural similarities and differences. Cultural anthropologists study the artwork, houses, tools, and other material products of contemporary cultures. They also investigate the nonmaterial creations, including social groups, religious beliefs, symbols, and values. They gather information primarily by living for a time among the people they are studying and by observing them and talking with them. They organize the information into a scientific description called an ethnography. Another main branch of anthropology is archaeology. It focuses on cultures of the past. Archaeologists study the remains of these cultures, including buildings, clothing, pottery, tools, and artwork. They trace the development of cultures by examining the things the people made and used. Archaeologists work at a specific site. They dig carefully for buried objects in a process called excavation. They describe whatever they find and take photographs of representative samples. Archaeological research is the chief method available for learning about societies that existed before the invention of writing about 5,500 years ago. However, some archaeologists study later cultures, even contemporary cultures. For example, an archaeological project begun in 1973 in Tucson, Arizona, has provided information about contemporary American life through a study of people's garbage. Other social scientists who study aspects of culture include sociologists and political scientists. They work mainly in a single urban, industrial society, and they make cross-cultural comparisons less often than anthropologists. |
| Language Language is human speech, either spoken or written. Language is the most common system of communication. It allows people to talk to each other and to write their thoughts and ideas. The word language may be loosely used to mean any system of communication, such as traffic lights or Indian smoke signals. But the origin of the word shows its basic use. It comes from the Latin word lingua, meaning tongue. And a language still is often called a tongue. Wherever there is human society, there is language. Most forms of human activity depend on the cooperation of two or more people. A common language enables human beings to work together in an infinite variety of ways. Language has made possible the development of advanced, technological civilization. Without language for communication, there would be little or no science, religion, commerce, government, art, literature, and philosophy. According to linguists (scholars who study language), there are about 6,000 languages spoken in the world today. This number does not include dialects (local forms of a language). Many languages are spoken only by small groups of a few hundred or a few thousand people. There are more than 200 languages with a million or more speakers. Of these languages, 23 have about 50 million or more speakers each: Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Korean, Malay-Indonesian, Mandarin, Marathi, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Wu. Young children quickly acquire command of a language when they have regular contact with fluent speakers of that language. Children listen to older people, imitate them, and gradually master a group of sounds used in the language. They also learn to associate particular words, such as "dog," "black," or "bark," with objects, ideas, and actions. At the same time, youngsters learn to make up sentences that other speakers accept as correct. By the age of 5 or 6, children usually have a command of the basic sound and grammatical patterns of their native language. They are then able to communicate well enough for most of their own practical purposes. In school, they learn how to express themselves more precisely both in speaking and writing about more complex matters. Learning a foreign language There are many important reasons for learning a foreign language. Among them are the following: (1) Learning a foreign language increases your range of communication. For example, if you speak only English, you can communicate with over 400 million other persons. If you also learn Spanish, you could speak to any of the 371 million Spanish-speaking people in Latin America, Spain, and other parts of the world. (2) A foreign language can help add to your knowledge of your own language. For example, by studying Latin, you can improve your understanding of many of the thousands of English words that have Latin roots. (3) Learning a foreign language helps you add to your general stock of information. A foreign language can be a key that unlocks new fields of knowledge. If you learn German you will be able to read books that are written in German on almost any subject you may wish to study. Learning any language involves four different skills: (1) speaking, (2) understanding, (3) reading, and (4) writing. If you understand a foreign language, and can make yourself understood in speech and writing, you have mastered it. Methods of study. No language is easy or difficult in itself. The ease or difficulty of any language depends on the age of the person learning it. Before the age of 10, all languages are equally easy when learned by the natural speaking method (listening and imitating). After 10, learning a language becomes more difficult. Therefore, it is desirable to learn foreign languages as early as possible. Some schools start foreign language instruction in kindergarten or in the primary grades. After the age of 10, students can learn foreign languages by either, or both, of two methods: (1) the grammar method, and (2) the spoken language method. In the grammar method, students learn general rules of grammar and apply them to specific situations. A French grammar lesson may stress the correct use of gender (masculine or feminine). Students learn that le livre (the book) is masculine and la chaise (the chair) is feminine. In this way, they learn grammar while they increase their vocabularies. In the spoken language method, students try to duplicate the process by which young children learn language. They listen to the teacher, then imitate the sounds, words, and sentences. Both the grammar method and the natural speaking method are effective. The ideal method for older children and adults seems to be a combination of the two. Study aids. For hundreds of years, language students have used grammar books, exercise books, and dictionaries. Modern study aids--especially for spoken language--include (1) voice recordings with accompanying booklets; (2) tape recorders, which permit students to listen, repeat, erase their own repetition, then try again; (3) videotapes and closed-circuit TV's, which let students watch their mouth movements and compare them with those of a speaker; and (4) computers, which correct student translations of words and phrases on a video display screen. These language study aids provide not only instruction and practice, but also self-instruction, because they can be used without a teacher. The makeup of language All languages have certain things in common. These include (1) a sound-pattern, (2) words, and (3) grammatical structure. A sound-pattern is a group of sounds that the human speech organs can utter. Most languages have from 20 to 60 of these sounds. Words are sounds or sound-patterns that have a meaning. Words may stand for objects, actions, or ideas. Grammatical structure is the manner in which certain elements of language are related to others in forming larger, meaningful units such as sentences. All languages have grammatical structures. Linguists commonly identify two aspects of grammatical structure, called syntax and morphology. Syntax involves relations among elements of a sentence, including the arrangement of words in a particular order. In the English sentences I see Mary and John sees Mark, I and John are doers of the action. Thus, they are subjects of their sentences. Mary and Mark are receivers of the action--the ones who are seen--and are the direct objects of the sentences. These sentences illustrate a common word order in English of subject, verb, and object. The word order in the sentence I Mary see is not acceptable in English. Morphology deals with elements that serve as building blocks for words. It uses a variation in the form of a word to show the function of the word in a group. The verbs in the previous paragraph differ in that sees has a morphological element that see lacks: the -s that signals a third-person verb form in English. In the sentence The teacher asked a question, the verb asked contains the -ed that signals past tense. The word teacher is made up of the verb teach and the element -er that signifies agent--that is, a teacher is one who teaches. The roles of syntax and morphology vary from language to language. All languages have word order of some sort. In some languages, however, the word order is less strict than in others. Latin, for example, allows more variations in word order than English. The Latin sentences Johannes videt Marcum and Marcum videt Johannes both mean John sees Mark. Morphological elements indicate the relationship. Johannes (John) is the doer of the action, no matter where the word occurs, because it ends in -s (not -m). Similarly, Marcum (Mark) is the receiver because it ends in -m (not -s). Some languages, such as Chinese, use syntax only. In other languages, such as Latin, the word order has little importance because word endings tell the story. Old English, or Anglo-Saxon (the form of English spoken until about A.D. 1100), resembled Latin in this way. Modern English uses a blend of syntax and morphology. When we say I see him, we give two indications that I is the doer and him is the receiver. One indication is the position of I before see and him after see. The other is the fact that we use I (not me) for the doer, and him (not he) for the receiver. Development of language The makeup of a language does not remain the same over long periods of time. Grammar, vocabulary, and sound-patterns all change with usage. How language began. No one knows how language began. Because all people who are not disabled have the ability to speak, language has probably existed at least as long as the modern human species. Most scholars believe that language developed very slowly from sounds, such as grunts, barks, and hoots, made by pre human creatures. According to this view, a simple system of vocal communication became more complex as the human brain and speech organs evolved. But no one knows when or how this process took place. In fact, there is no record of language for most of its existence. The first real evidence of language is writing. But scholars believe that writing did not appear until thousands of years after the origin of language. The earliest known written records are Sumerian word-pictures made about 3500 B.C. and Egyptian hieroglyphics that date from about 3000 B.C. Written Chinese dates from perhaps 1500 B.C., Greek from about 1400 B.C., and Latin from about 500 B.C. How language changes. No one knows all the reasons why languages change, but they continue to do so as long as people speak them. In a few cases, the changes can be explained. For example, words are added to a vocabulary to refer to new ideas or objects. Contacts between speakers of different languages may cause words from one language to enter another language. Most language changes occur for unknown reasons. Languages do not become better or worse, only different. The change is very slow. Speakers of English may notice differences between how they and other English speakers talk and may also recognize certain changes in their own speech. But these differences do not make English speakers think that they are changing from one language to another. If present-day speakers of English try to read Old English, however, they find that it is as unlike modern English as are French or German. In modern industrial societies, language changes take place even more slowly. Educational systems and such centralized communication systems as radio and television promote the use of a standard form of a language. Under these conditions, a language is likely to remain more stable. However, language will probably never stop changing entirely. Only when a language loses all its speakers does it stop changing completely. A language that is no longer spoken is called a dead language. Such languages include Sumerian, ancient Egyptian, Akkadian, Hittite, Etruscan, and Gothic. Language families Scholars classify languages into families. Language families are groups of languages that are related because they all developed slowly from a single earlier language called a parent language. When speakers of a language become divided into groups that are out of contact with each other, the language of each group continues to change in its own way. After several centuries, the individual groups speak so differently that they cannot understand each other. But the languages in each family are still related because all of them came from the same parent language. Indo-European is the most widespread language family. Some 2,600,000,000 people, or about half the world's population, speak languages in this family. Most of the nations that gave rise to Western civilization speak Indo-European languages. Speakers of these languages originally lived in an area extending from northern India to western Europe. They now live in other parts of the world as well. Indo-European languages have become the most important tongues in most European countries, in Australia and New Zealand, and in the countries of North, Central, and South America. The Indo-European family has 10 living branches. They are: 1) Albanian, (2) Armenian, (3) Baltic, (4) Slavic, (5) Celtic, (6) Germanic, (7) Greek, (8) Indo-Aryan, (9) Iranian, 10) Romance. All these branches except Albanian, Armenian, and Greek include two or more separate languages. For a breakdown of these branches, see the table of the Indo-European language family in this article. All languages in the Indo-European family have the same original structure, based on inflections. They all have clearly defined parts of speech. These include nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs, which take certain endings to show gender, number, case, person, tense, mood, or voice. Many simple, basic words are similar in Indo-European languages. For example, the English word mother is mata in Sanskrit, meter in Greek, mater in Latin, madre in Spanish, Mutter in German, and mat' in Russian. Speakers of the parent Indo-European language probably lived in the area north of the Black Sea. From there, they likely migrated in several directions, changing the language along the way. The earliest Indo-European language of which we have a record is Hittite, followed by Greek and Sanskrit. Other language families. Besides Indo-European, scholars have discovered numerous other language families. The Sino-Tibetan family is second in numerical importance, with about 11/5 billion speakers. It includes Chinese with its many dialects, Thai, Burmese, and Tibetan. These languages are the leading languages of East Asia. Sino-Tibetan consists of one-syllable words. Speakers of languages in this family show the different meanings of otherwise identical words by changing their tone of voice. The Afro-Asian family includes Arabic and Hebrew, the Berber tongues of North Africa, and the Amharic of Ethiopia. More than 220 million people speak languages in this family, which is concentrated in North Africa, the Near East, and northeast Africa. The Uralic and Altaic family includes Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian (or Magyar), Turkish, and many languages in central and northern Asia. Approximately 165 million people speak the languages in this family, which is found in Finland, Estonia, Hungary, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Siberia. Japanese and Korean form a language family that has approximately 200 million speakers. They are largely limited to Japan, North Korea, and South Korea. The Dravidian family is located in southern India and parts of Sri Lanka. It consists of Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, and other languages. These languages have about 220 million speakers The Malayo-Polynesian family includes the languages of Indonesia, the Philippines, Hawaii, New Zealand, Madagascar, and most other islands of the Pacific and Indian oceans. This language family has about 275 million speakers. The Mon-Khmer family has about 110 million speakers in Southeast Asia and parts of India. This family is sometimes called Austro-Asiatic. Black African languages are spoken in areas south of the Sahara and west of the Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia. The three main families of these African languages are Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Kordofanian, and Khoisan. These three groups have about 440 million speakers. American Indian languages number over 1,000. But they are difficult to classify because of the great differences among them. Their total number of speakers does not exceed 20 million. These languages appear in isolated areas of North, Central, and South America. Unusual languages and dialects include the pidgin and Creole tongues spoken in many parts of the world. They make communication possible between two or more groups that speak different languages. Examples include the colorful Melanesian pidgin English of the Solomon Islands and New Guinea; and Haitian Creole, based on French.. Universal languages People have long been interested in having one language that could be spoken throughout the world. Such a language would help promote understanding and better feeling among nations. A universal language also would increase cultural and economic ties among various countries. Through the years, at least 600 universal languages have been proposed. Esperanto is the most successful universal tongue. More than 10 million people have learned Esperanto since its creation in 1887. There are about 2 million speakers of Esperanto. Some people suggest that an existing language, such as English, French, or Russian, be adopted as a universal language. The adoption of any language, artificial or natural, would greatly simplify communication. The real problem, however, lies in the choice of such a language because there are so many possibilities. Many people oppose artificial languages. They believe that an artificial tongue does not reflect a true culture as existing languages do. Others oppose the use of any existing language as a world language. They claim that the culture of one or a few nations would be forced on all nations. As long as these arguments continue, the possibility of adoption of one world language appears dim. The science of language Between 400 and 200 B.C., the Indian grammarian Panini produced the first language study to meet rigorous linguistic criteria. He compiled a grammar of Sanskrit that linguists still admire as a model of precise and sophisticated description. During the Middle Ages, many people thought all languages came from Biblical Hebrew. In the late 1700's, scholars such as Friedrich Schlegel, Jakob Grimm, and Franz Bopp, all of Germany, studied languages by the comparative method. They compared the world's languages and noted relationships among them. Their findings led to a classification of languages into families. During the early 1900's, Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss scholar, led a new movement. He studied languages by the general method. He established laws that apply to all languages. Today, the science of language, called linguistics, is divided into two areas: (1) historical and comparative and (2) descriptive. The historical method studies language through thousands of years. It seeks to determine the history and development of individual languages and language groups. Comparative linguistics compares related languages to reconstruct a hypothetical protolanguage from which the related languages developed. The descriptive method concentrates mainly on present-day languages. Dravidians Dravidians, pronounced druh VIHD ee uhnz, were among the earliest known inhabitants of India. Their descendants now live mainly in southern India and trace their ancestry back at least 4,500 years. Dravidians and Indo-Aryans form the two major ethnic groups of India. The term Dravidian also refers to a family of about 20 languages. Four of the languages are spoken by over 240 million Indians, about 30 per cent of the country's population. The Indian government has formed separate states based on these four languages. Tamil is spoken in the state of Tamil Nadu, Telugu in Andhra Pradesh, Kannada in Karnataka, and Malayalam in Kerala. The origin of the Dravidians remains unknown. But ruins of the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Valley civilization, which began about 2500 B.C., revealed an advanced culture thought to be Dravidian. About 1500 B.C., a people of central Asia called the Aryans invaded northern India and forced the Dravidians south. From about the A.D. 300's to 600's, Dravidian kings valued Brahmans (Hindu priests and scholars) from northern India for their literary skills and adopted much of their heritage. Since the early 1900's, however, Dravidians have organized movements against remaining aspects of the Brahman heritage. During the 1960's, Tamil-speaking Indians were especially violent in protesting against a ruling that would have made Hindi, an Indo-European language, India's only official language. Today, 4 of the country's 16 official languages are Dravidian. |
| Linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Linguists try to answer questions about language, such as how languages change and why words mean what they mean. Linguists study both their own languages and languages they do not speak. When linguists study a modern language, they analyze the speech of one or more native speakers of that language. They call such a person an informant. Many languages have no written form. Therefore, linguists must often use a set of symbols called a phonetic alphabet to write down the speech sounds of an informant. Linguists also study dead languages to trace the development of modern ones. Linguists gather data, form theories and test them, and then establish facts about language. These experts believe they know extremely little about even the most familiar languages. They hope to record and study unfamiliar tongues before such languages become extinct. There are two chief fields of linguistics, descriptive linguistics and comparative and historical linguistics. Descriptive linguistics Descriptive linguistics studies the language of a single place and period. It is sometimes called synchronic linguistics. A linguist in this field tries to describe a language as it is acquired by the children of a community and used by the adults there. Such a study focuses on the ability of these people to speak and understand their language. Linguists use the term linguistic performance for any utterances people make. Constructing a grammar. A descriptive linguist records the words and sentences of informants. From this record, the linguist constructs a grammar, a description of the ability of people to use their native language. This ability is called linguistic competence. The linguist often relies on the judgment of native speakers for help in constructing a grammar. All languages have a creative aspect. It consists of the ability of native speakers to produce and understand sentences that they have never encountered before. The number of sentences in a language is infinite, and so no language could be described by listing these sentences. Instead, the linguist devises a grammar that tells, step by step, how to construct any sentence in the language. The grammar performs its function by telling how to build new sentences out of old ones. For example, the sentence The astronomer counted the stars could be substituted for it in the sentence The queen believed it. This substitution would produce a new sentence, The queen believed the astronomer counted the stars. A grammar may be used prescriptively as well as descriptively. Such a grammar attempts to tell people how they should use language. For example, the grammar might suggest using the sentence I do not have any money instead of I do not have no money. However, the rules of a particular grammar may not reflect the language as it is actually spoken. In addition, people often express their meaning well even if they follow different rules. The components of a grammar. The grammar of a language has three components: (1) the phonological component, (2) the semantic component, and (3) the syntactic component. The phonological component consists of rules that tell how to pronounce words and sentences. The phonology (sound system) of one language may differ greatly from that of another. For example, Spanish phonology does not distinguish the pronunciation of the two English vowels in the words sheep and ship. On the other hand, the Thai language distinguishes the sound of the t's in steam and team, but English does not. The semantic component tells what sentences mean. It tells whether one sentence means the same thing as another and whether one sentence implies another. For example, The student managed to pass the test implies The student passed the test. However, the sentence The student tried to pass the test does not imply The student passed the test. The syntactic component shows the relationship between the meaning of a sentence and the arrangement of the words in the sentence. It may show that two or more arrangements of words have a single meaning. For example, the two sentences The waitress gave the sandwich to the tallest girl and The waitress gave the tallest girl the sandwich mean the same thing. Linguists say that such sentences paraphrase each other. The syntactic component may also show that a single arrangement of words has more than one meaning. For example, the sentence The farmer thought the chicken was too hot to eat has two possible meanings. Either the farmer thought that his dinner was too warm, or he thought that the chicken refused to eat because of the heat. A sentence that has more than one meaning is ambiguous. Comparative and historical linguistics Comparative linguistics is the study of language as it varies from place to place, from speaker to speaker, and from one period to another. This field is sometimes called diachronic linguistics. Some comparative linguists attempt to formulate universally valid statements about language structure and language change. This area of study is called linguistic typology. Comparative linguists would like to be able to state how language first developed and to describe the conditions that led to its invention. But written records are relatively recent because human beings have had systems of word writing for only about 5,000 years. People have used spoken languages far longer. As far as linguists can tell, all cultures of today have equally complex languages. For these reasons, almost nothing is known about the origin of language. Comparative linguists use two chief procedures in their study of language. These procedures are called internal reconstruction and comparative reconstruction. Internal reconstruction involves using one stage in the development of a language to explain certain characteristics of an earlier stage. For example, a linguist may notice that the sound of e in the words keep and kept varies with the number of consonants that follow the vowel. The linguist may then hypothesize that the sound of e in the two words had been the same in earlier English. The linguist further hypothesizes that a sound change has altered the sound of the vowel in different ways, depending on the number of consonants that follow. Such a change is called a sound shift. The same relationship involving the sound of e occurs in many other words, including sleep and slept and deep and depth. Comparative reconstruction is a procedure in which a linguist uses several similar languages to reconstruct a hypothetical language, which is called a proto language. The linguist assumes that the proto language was the ancestor of the languages from which it is reconstructed. A linguist might note that some words that start with a certain letter in various languages start with a different letter in English. For example, the English word feather begins with an f. The Greek and Latin words for feather--Pteron and penna--begin with a p. Likewise, the English word thaw begins with th, and the Greek and Latin versions of the word--tekein and tabes--begin with t. Similarly, the English word hide begins with an h. The Greek and Latin words for hide begin with a k or k-like sound--kutos and cutis. The linguist could hypothesize that Greek and Latin contain the consonants of the proto language. As a result, the expert concludes that English underwent a sound shift that systematically replaced some consonants with others. This sound shift characterizes the Germanic languages, which include English, German, and Dutch. Linguistics and other fields of study Many linguists study aspects of language that involve other fields. For example, anthropological linguists study the influences that language and other elements of culture exert on one another. Socio linguists try to find out how language varies with differences in age, sex, and economic and social status. Psycholinguists seek regularities in the ways people acquire and use language. They also study diseases and injuries that affect the ability to use language. Mathematical linguists are interested in the relation between human languages and the artificial languages used in computer programming. Experts in applied linguistics attempt to use linguistic principles to improve the teaching of reading and foreign languages. History Comparative and historical research. For hundreds of years, people have been curious about various aspects of language. The comparativists began their studies during the late 1700's. At that time, British politicians and merchants who had lived in India introduced Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, to European scholars. These scholars found grammatical similarities among the Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin languages. They concluded that all three languages, and perhaps others as well, came from a single earlier parent language. The term comparative grammar was first used by the German scholar Friedrich Schlegel in 1808. That concept stimulated modern comparative and historical linguistics. Among the first comparativists was German scholar Jakob Grimm, one of the two brothers known for their collection of fairy tales. Grimm proved that English, German, Dutch, and Scandinavian languages were related to each other and to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. During the 1800's, linguists identified languages that belonged to a family of languages called Indo-European--that is, languages located primarily in India and Europe. Linguists compared archaic words of modern languages and analyzed vowel changes and word endings. As a result, they established the origin of words that came from Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Germanic, Greek, Indo-Iranian, and Latin. Today, the Indo-European family has eight branches: Germanic, Romance, Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian, Greek, Celtic, Albanian, and Armenian. During the 1800's, linguists also began a reconstruction of an earlier language known as Proto-Indo-European (PIE). No written record of it exists. By 1861, a German linguist named August Schleicher compiled a grammar of PIE. For many years, linguists and anthropologists have searched for the origin of Proto-Indo-European. Since 1945, their research has linked speakers of Proto-Indo-European with a prehistoric culture that developed as early as 5000 B.C. in southeastern Europe, north of the Black Sea. The culture was named Kurgan, meaning barrow, from the practice of placing mounds of dirt over individual graves. Structuralism arose in the early 1900's. The structuralists viewed languages as systems composed of patterns of sounds and words. They studied these patterns to learn about the structure of a language. They believed each language has a distinct structure that cannot be compared with that of any other language. A Swiss linguist named Ferdinand de Saussure became the first leader of the structuralists. American structuralists included Leonard Bloomfield and Edward Sapir. The generative theory of language began during the 1950's with Noam Chomsky, an American linguist. Generative linguists believe that a grammar of a language consists of certain rules for the construction of an infinite number of sentences. Generativists have shown that certain structuralist conceptions of grammar are inadequate for the description of languages. According to generative linguists, grammatical devices called grammatical transformations relate sentences to one another. These transformations are necessary for a complete description of many sentences. This kind of rule had no role in structuralist theory. Beginning in the 1960's, Chomsky's ideas sparked a number of competing theories. There is much disagreement among generative linguists about the basic and universal characteristics of languages. Linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Linguists try to answer questions about language, such as how languages change and why words mean what they mean. Linguists study both their own languages and languages they do not speak. When linguists study a modern language, they analyze the speech of one or more native speakers of that language. They call such a person an informant. Many languages have no written form. Therefore, linguists must often use a set of symbols called a phonetic alphabet to write down the speech sounds of an informant. Linguists also study dead languages to trace the development of modern ones. Linguists gather data, form theories and test them, and then establish facts about language. These experts believe they know extremely little about even the most familiar languages. They hope to record and study unfamiliar tongues before such languages become extinct. There are two chief fields of linguistics, descriptive linguistics and comparative and historical linguistics. Descriptive linguistics Descriptive linguistics studies the language of a single place and period. It is sometimes called synchronic linguistics. A linguist in this field tries to describe a language as it is acquired by the children of a community and used by the adults there. Such a study focuses on the ability of these people to speak and understand their language. Linguists use the term linguistic performance for any utterances people make. Constructing a grammar. A descriptive linguist records the words and sentences of informants. From this record, the linguist constructs a grammar, a description of the ability of people to use their native language. This ability is called linguistic competence. The linguist often relies on the judgment of native speakers for help in constructing a grammar. All languages have a creative aspect. It consists of the ability of native speakers to produce and understand sentences that they have never encountered before. The number of sentences in a language is infinite, and so no language could be described by listing these sentences. Instead, the linguist devises a grammar that tells, step by step, how to construct any sentence in the language. The grammar performs its function by telling how to build new sentences out of old ones. For example, the sentence The astronomer counted the stars could be substituted for it in the sentence The queen believed it. This substitution would produce a new sentence, The queen believed the astronomer counted the stars. A grammar may be used prescriptively as well as descriptively. Such a grammar attempts to tell people how they should use language. For example, the grammar might suggest using the sentence I do not have any money instead of I do not have no money. However, the rules of a particular grammar may not reflect the language as it is actually spoken. In addition, people often express their meaning well even if they follow different rules. The components of a grammar. The grammar of a language has three components: (1) the phonological component, (2) the semantic component, and (3) the syntactic component. The phonological component consists of rules that tell how to pronounce words and sentences. The phonology (sound system) of one language may differ greatly from that of another. For example, Spanish phonology does not distinguish the pronunciation of the two English vowels in the words sheep and ship. On the other hand, the Thai language distinguishes the sound of the t's in steam and team, but English does not. The semantic component tells what sentences mean. It tells whether one sentence means the same thing as another and whether one sentence implies another. For example, The student managed to pass the test implies The student passed the test. However, the sentence The student tried to pass the test does not imply The student passed the test. The syntactic component shows the relationship between the meaning of a sentence and the arrangement of the words in the sentence. It may show that two or more arrangements of words have a single meaning. For example, the two sentences The waitress gave the sandwich to the tallest girl and The waitress gave the tallest girl the sandwich mean the same thing. Linguists say that such sentences paraphrase each other. The syntactic component may also show that a single arrangement of words has more than one meaning. For example, the sentence The farmer thought the chicken was too hot to eat has two possible meanings. Either the farmer thought that his dinner was too warm, or he thought that the chicken refused to eat because of the heat. A sentence that has more than one meaning is ambiguous. Comparative and historical linguistics Comparative linguistics is the study of language as it varies from place to place, from speaker to speaker, and from one period to another. This field is sometimes called diachronic linguistics. Some comparative linguists attempt to formulate universally valid statements about language structure and language change. This area of study is called linguistic typology. Comparative linguists would like to be able to state how language first developed and to describe the conditions that led to its invention. But written records are relatively recent because human beings have had systems of word writing for only about 5,000 years. People have used spoken languages far longer. As far as linguists can tell, all cultures of today have equally complex languages. For these reasons, almost nothing is known about the origin of language. Comparative linguists use two chief procedures in their study of language. These procedures are called internal reconstruction and comparative reconstruction. Internal reconstruction involves using one stage in the development of a language to explain certain characteristics of an earlier stage. For example, a linguist may notice that the sound of e in the words keep and kept varies with the number of consonants that follow the vowel. The linguist may then hypothesize that the sound of e in the two words had been the same in earlier English. The linguist further hypothesizes that a sound change has altered the sound of the vowel in different ways, depending on the number of consonants that follow. Such a change is called a sound shift. The same relationship involving the sound of e occurs in many other words, including sleep and slept and deep and depth. Comparative reconstruction is a procedure in which a linguist uses several similar languages to reconstruct a hypothetical language, which is called a proto language. The linguist assumes that the proto language was the ancestor of the languages from which it is reconstructed. A linguist might note that some words that start with a certain letter in various languages start with a different letter in English. For example, the English word feather begins with an f. The Greek and Latin words for feather--Pteron and penna--begin with a p. Likewise, the English word thaw begins with th, and the Greek and Latin versions of the word--tekein and tabes--begin with t. Similarly, the English word hide begins with an h. The Greek and Latin words for hide begin with a k or k-like sound--kutos and cutis. The linguist could hypothesize that Greek and Latin contain the consonants of the proto language. As a result, the expert concludes that English underwent a sound shift that systematically replaced some consonants with others. This sound shift characterizes the Germanic languages, which include English, German, and Dutch. Linguistics and other fields of study Many linguists study aspects of language that involve other fields. For example, anthropological linguists study the influences that language and other elements of culture exert on one another. Socio linguists try to find out how language varies with differences in age, sex, and economic and social status. Psycholinguists seek regularities in the ways people acquire and use language. They also study diseases and injuries that affect the ability to use language. Mathematical linguists are interested in the relation between human languages and the artificial languages used in computer programming. Experts in applied linguistics attempt to use linguistic principles to improve the teaching of reading and foreign languages. History Comparative and historical research. For hundreds of years, people have been curious about various aspects of language. The comparativists began their studies during the late 1700's. At that time, British politicians and merchants who had lived in India introduced Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, to European scholars. These scholars found grammatical similarities among the Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin languages. They concluded that all three languages, and perhaps others as well, came from a single earlier parent language. The term comparative grammar was first used by the German scholar Friedrich Schlegel in 1808. That concept stimulated modern comparative and historical linguistics. Among the first comparativists was German scholar Jakob Grimm, one of the two brothers known for their collection of fairy tales. Grimm proved that English, German, Dutch, and Scandinavian languages were related to each other and to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. During the 1800's, linguists identified languages that belonged to a family of languages called Indo-European--that is, languages located primarily in India and Europe. Linguists compared archaic words of modern languages and analyzed vowel changes and word endings. As a result, they established the origin of words that came from Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Germanic, Greek, Indo-Iranian, and Latin. Today, the Indo-European family has eight branches: Germanic, Romance, Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian, Greek, Celtic, Albanian, and Armenian. During the 1800's, linguists also began a reconstruction of an earlier language known as Proto-Indo-European (PIE). No written record of it exists. By 1861, a German linguist named August Schleicher compiled a grammar of PIE. For many years, linguists and anthropologists have searched for the origin of Proto-Indo-European. Since 1945, their research has linked speakers of Proto-Indo-European with a prehistoric culture that developed as early as 5000 B.C. in southeastern Europe, north of the Black Sea. The culture was named Kurgan, meaning barrow, from the practice of placing mounds of dirt over individual graves. Structuralism arose in the early 1900's. The structuralists viewed languages as systems composed of patterns of sounds and words. They studied these patterns to learn about the structure of a language. They believed each language has a distinct structure that cannot be compared with that of any other language. A Swiss linguist named Ferdinand de Saussure became the first leader of the structuralists. American structuralists included Leonard Bloomfield and Edward Sapir. The generative theory of language began during the 1950's with Noam Chomsky, an American linguist. Generative linguists believe that a grammar of a language consists of certain rules for the construction of an infinite number of sentences. Generativists have shown that certain structuralist conceptions of grammar are inadequate for the description of languages. According to generative linguists, grammatical devices called grammatical transformations relate sentences to one another. These transformations are necessary for a complete description of many sentences. This kind of rule had no role in structuralist theory. Beginning in the 1960's, Chomsky's ideas sparked a number of competing theories. There is much disagreement among generative linguists about the basic and universal characteristics of languages. |
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