Living in Ancient Greece

Living in Ancient Greece 

By: Norman Banchroft Hunt

Most land suited to agriculture is found along the coastal plains and in a few area of the Peloponnese.Within the sparsely populated mountainous interior, many communities were isolated from each other, and even more so from the more inhabited coastal regions.This isolation led to societies that developed in very different ways. Climate, too, played a role in increasing social isolation. Mountain passes, blocked by snow in the extremely harsh winters, cut off communication even between neighboring valleys for several months of the year.The spring melt made the few tracks impassable for a further period. With pastoral land rare, the great plain of Thessaly was the only place for raising horses, which made Thessalians the strongest in cavalry. For much of the rest, travel and battling on foot was the norm. [download]

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Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece 

By: Anne Pearson

ThelandofGreeceis made up of mainlandGreeceand the numerous islands scattered throughout the Aegean andAdriatic Seas. It is a mountainous country with hot dry summers and rain only in winter. The early Greek settlements developed as small independent communities cut off from each other by the mountains and often competing for the best land, because the fertile arable soil is in short supply. Each of the citystates which developed out of these communities had a strong individual identity, and citizens were very loyal to their home state and to its patron deity. This miscellaneous collection of city-states sometimes joined together for mutual defence and did so most successfully against the Persians. [download]

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Rome Against Caratacus

Rome Against Caratacus 

By: Graham Webster 

The invasion of Britainby the Roman army had taken place late in the summer of AD 43. It had been in response to the sudden rise to power by the anti-Roman faction of the royal house of the Trinovantes, following the death of its King, Cunobelinus. The task of the first governor, Aulus Plautius, had been to land his forces without serious opposition and defeat the Britons. The latter he had achieved with remarkable success at the decisive battle of the Medway; thereafter he was able to spread out and occupy the rest of the new province with little difficulty, except for fierce resistance in the south-west, which was overcome by the future emperor Vespasian, then in command of Legio II Augusta. The area selected byRome for the creation of theprovince ofBritannia embraced the lowlands which contained most of the rich agricultural land and the mineral wealth then known. [download]

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Empires of Medieval West Africa

Empires of Medieval West Africa 

By: David C. Conrad

THE GEOGRAPHY OF NORTHWESTERN AFRICA HAS SHAPED its history in dramatic ways. TheSaharaDesertwas an extremely important geographical feature in the history of the three great medieval African empires described in this book. Today theSaharais the largest desert in the world. But it was not always so. Rock paintings found in the mountains of theSaharareveal that until about 5000 b.c.e., the region was a land of rivers and lakes. It was populated by hunters and fishermen, grassland animals such as rhinoceros, elephants, and giraffes, and water creatures including hippopotami, crocodiles, and fish. By around 3000 b.c.e., the region had begun to dry out. Rock paintings from this period show that the big animals were gone. They had moved north and south to wetter climate zones. [download]

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Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt 

By: Kathleen Kuiper

It can be said that the story of ancient Egypt begins with theNile River. Settlements along the Nile existed at least 2,000 years beforeEgypt’s first ruling dynasty was founded about 3100 bc. The earliest settlers along theNilewere nomads and pastoralists who grew barley on the fertile floodplain or fished and hunted. TheNileRiver basinserved as the stage for the evolution and decay of an advanced civilization. The river itself enabled the descendants of these seemingly unexceptional people to build a civilization that would tower over the ancient world. This book helps explain how they did it and what it means for us today. Early Egyptwas divided geographically and culturally into Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. [download]

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Empire of Alexander The Great

Empire of Alexander The Great 

By: Debra Skelton and Pamela Dell 

IN 336 b.c.e., A PROUD, INTELLIGENT, AND SUPREMELY ambitious young man rose to become king of Macedon, which is a kingdom on the northern border of modern-day Greece. He was only 20 years old and already wanted to take over the mighty Persian Empireto the east. He accomplished this feat and much more, despite the wealth, power, and military strength of his opponents. And he did it in just under 12 years. This illustrates his extraordinary gifts as a leader and military strategist (a person who sets strategy). It has also kept his name at the top of the list of legendary “action figures” even into the 21^st century, more than 2,300 years later. He is still known throughout the world as Alexander the Great. [download]

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Empire of The Mongols

Empire of The Mongols 

By: Michael Burgan

FOR SEVERAL THOUSAND YEARS, WARRIORS ON HORSEBACK rode across centralAsia, conquering nearby towns and cities. These horsemen lived on the steppes, which is a flat, grassy region that extends from Asia into centralEurope. The riders were nomads people with no permanent home. They moved from one grazing spot to another with their herds of horses, sheep, camels, goats, and cattle. Over the centuries, these nomads battled such people as the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Persians, the Chinese, and the Arabs. Of all the nomadic warriors of centralAsia, the fiercest were the Mongols. In the 13th century, starting in their homeland ofMongolia, just north ofChina, the Mongols spread out to the south and west. Under the leadership of Chinggis Khan (ca. 1162–1227) and his descendants, the Mongols quickly built an empire that stretched fromKoreato eastern Europe the largest continuous area of land ever controlled by one ruling family. [download]

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Empire of The Inca

Empire of The Inca 

By: Barbara Somervill

UNCOVERING FACTUAL DATA ABOUT THE INCA EMPIRE requires a formidable team of experts: mathematicians, archaeologists, and historians. Mathematicians work to unravel the only concrete records left by people of the empire quipus, knotted strings that tabulated the Inca population and productivity down to the last dehydrated potato. Archaeologists dig up ancient temples, buried cities, and shrouded mummies that tell of a complex society. Historians delve into the chronicles of Spanish conquistadors, priests, and government clerks the only written records of the Inca culture. And all must separate fact from fiction, dealing with a culture whose history is intertwined with legends of stone warriors and visits from the gods. The task is made more difficult because the Inca Empire had no written language not even hieroglyphs or pictograms or numerical system. [download]

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Empire of The Islamic World

Empire of The Islamic World 

By: Robin Doak 

FROM 632 TO 1258 THE ISLAMIC EMPIRE HAD THE MOST advanced culture and was the most powerful state in the world. Less than a century after it was founded, it had grown from a loose alliance of desert tribes into the largest empire in the history of the world. No ancient empire extended its reach farther around the globe. At its height, the Islamic Empire stretched from Spainin the west to the borders of Indiain the east, from central Asia in the north to North Africain the south. The Muslim conquests led to the downfall of both the Persian and Byzantine Empires. Throughout their newly conquered lands, the Muslims used the religion of Islam and the Arabic language to create a bond between the conquerors and the conquered. [download]

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Empires of Ancient Persia

Empires of Ancient Persia 

By: Michael Burgan

FOR ALMOST 1,200 YEARS, FROM 550 b.c.e. TO 651 c.e., THE. Persians dominated an area that stretched from the Black Sea (which is north of modernTurkeyand bordered by Eastern Europe) intoCentral Asia. Throughout its long history,Persiahad contact with and often battled many of the other great empires of the past. The Persian homeland was centered in the southwest of modernday Iran, along the Zagros Mountains. From there, the Persians conquered the various kingdoms of Mesopotamia, in the region between the Tigris and EuphratesRiversin what is now Iraq. They then spread their influence over Egyptand the fringes of southern Europe. This made them the first empire builders to control part of three continents. To the east, Persian rule extended as far as India. [download]

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Empire of Ancient Rome

Empire of Ancient Rome

By: Michael Burghan

ANCIENT ROME THE NAME SUGGESTS MILITARY AND economic power, detailed laws, political skill and intrigue, masterful literature, and massive buildings that have stood for more than 2,000 years. Romerepresents the greatness an empire can achieve. It also reminds us that even the most powerful empires decline and crumble over time. At least one historian has claimed that studying the rise and fall of Romepresents the two most complex topics any historian can tackle. The people, places, and ideas of the Roman Empirestill fascinate us. The Romans left behind many books that explain their empire and the lives of its citizens. (Unfortunately, even more writings did not survive to modern times.) These writers, like authors and historians today, describe the world as they saw it, bringing their personal feelings and ideas into their work. [download]

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Empire of Ancient Greece

Empire of Ancient Greece 

By: Jean Kinney Williams

THE TERM ANCIENT GREEKS CAN REFER TO MANY CULTURES. and times in world history. The ancient Greeks include the warriors who fought in the Trojan War in the 1200s b.c.e. and whose mythical stories, retold by Homer, are considered the foundation of Western literature. They also are the sophisticated (from the Greek word sophos, which means “wise”) Athenians of what is known as Classical Greece. They gave us democracy in the 400s b.c.e. and their architecture and literature still influences modern society. And they are the Mediterranean peoples who, in the two centuries before Rome began its rule of the Western and Near Eastern world in the 140s b.c.e., made groundbreaking contributions to science and mathematics. [download]

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Ancient Chinese Warfare

Ancient Chinese Warfare 

By: Ralph D. Sawyer

ANCIENT CHINESE WARFARE AND ITS COMPANION, Western Chou Warfare, were started more than thirty years ago but were soon deemphasized, though never abandoned, to investigate more accessible topics because insufficient archaeological material was available for assessing many aspects of ancient Chinese military history. Even though dramatic new finds such as San-hsing-tui (Sanxingdui) can still provoke astonishment and significantly affect historical understanding, the accumulation of thousands of discoveries and hundreds of highly relevant reports over the intervening decades has not only resulted in something akin to a minimal critical mass, but also considerably diminished the impact of archaeology’s accidental nature. [download]

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King Hamurabi of Babylon-A Biography

King Hamurabi of Babylon-A Biography

By: Marc Van De Mieroop

Hammurabi became king of Babylon in 1792 bc. He must have been relatively young at the time as he was to remain on the throne for forty-three years, but whether he was in his teens, twenties, or thirties, we do not know. People had a lower life expectancy then than they do today, yet several men of the period are known to have lived into their seventies, and conceivably Hammurabi was among them. His mother’s name is unknown. His father was his predecessor on the throne, one Sin-muballit, who himself had ruled for twenty years. They both belonged to a dynasty of independent kings of the city of Babylon and its surroundings that had started to rule around 1900 and would continue to do so until around 1600. These kings are now referred to as the First Dynasty of Babylon, of which Hammurabi was the most illustrious member. [download]

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Empire of Ancient Egypt

Empire of Ancient Egypt

By: Wendy Christensen

EGYPT, THE WORLD’S FIRST SUPERPOWER, WAS BORN ABOUT 5000 B.C.E. in the valley of the Nile River in northeastern Africa. Tucked into a long, narrow gorge threaded by the river and bounded by steep cliffs, Egypt enjoyed a predictable, mostly pleasant climate and natural barriers against invasion. To the west lay the Sahara Desert, to the east a harsh, mountainous wasteland. To the south, a series of six great rapids (called cataracts) obstructed the river. To the north was the “Great Green:” the Mediterranean Sea. An Egyptian called his homeland Kemet. His world was divided into lowland kemet (“black land”), the narrow ribbon of rich, black earth on the valley floor, and highland deshret (“red land”), the pale, reddish sand of the forbidding desert plateaus. Foreigners were “highlanders.” “Going up” meant leaving the valley; “descending” was returning home. [download]

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