Indus & India
This Indus Valley city was excavated beginning in 1920, revealing an ancient urban civilization.
Harappa
This river dominated northern China and frequently flooded.
What is the Yellow River?
This island was home to the Minoan civilization.
What is Crete?
This neighboring civilization influenced Rome’s early alphabet, city-building, and religion.
Who were the Etruscans?
Both Harappa and Rome used these urban systems to carry away waste.
What are drainage or sewage systems?
The still-undeciphered system found on Indus seals makes this civilization difficult to understand.
What is the Indus script?
What is the Mandate of Heaven?
This Zhou concept justified a ruler’s authority from Heaven.
This Greek term describes an independent city-state.
What is a polis?
These three conflicts between Rome and Carthage established Roman dominance in the Mediterranean.
What are the Punic Wars?
These two civilizations featured the polis and the republic, respectively, as forms of political organization.
What are Greece and Rome?
This sacred collection of texts, including the Rigveda, is a principal source for early Aryan culture.
What are the Vedas?
This philosophy stressed filial piety and moral conduct.
What is Confucianism?
This city-state trained boys for military service beginning at age seven.
What is Sparta?
This Roman general conquered Gaul and revised the calendar.
Who is Julius Caesar?
Qin Shi Huangdi and the Mauryan emperors both relied on this type of government administration.
What is a centralized imperial bureaucracy?
This Mauryan emperor spread Buddhist teachings and emphasized compassion and nonviolence.
Who is Ashoka (Asoka)?
This first ruler of unified Qin China standardized weights, measures, and administration.
Who is Qin Shi Huangdi?
This naval alliance against Persia eventually became an instrument of Athenian power.
What is the Delian League?
This ruler emerged from civil war as Rome’s first emperor and ushered in the Pax Romana.
Who is Augustus (Octavian)?
Although Athens and the Roman Republic developed different political systems, both civilizations shared this significant limitation regarding political participation and citizenship.
What is the exclusion of women, enslaved people, and many noncitizens from political participation and full citizenship rights?
This ancient Indian dynasty established a powerful empire in the Ganges Valley beginning in 320 C.E. and ushered in a golden age characterized by advances in Sanskrit literature, Hindu philosophy, and cultural achievements.
What is the Gupta Dynasty (Gupta Empire)?
Unlike Mencius, this Confucian thinker argued that selfish human impulses require education and refinement.
Who is Xunzi?
This Macedonian ruler’s conquests spread Greek culture as far as the Indus Valley.
Who is Alexander the Great?
These water-carrying structures supplied fresh water to Roman urban populations.
What are aqueducts?
Compare the Qin and Roman experiences: name one challenge that could undermine a large empire in either case.
What are succession crises, political infighting, military pressures, or difficulties administering vast territories?