civilizations based in river valleys that are based in or surrounded by deserts or ... valleys. The oldest civilization was based along the Tigris and the Euphrates in ... unless stated otherwise, wadi is referred to as a low land located in any dry or.
Wadier: A New History of Ancient Civilizations By Rongxing Guo (Draft only: 2017-11-08) Abstract Existing textbooks and relevant monographs in the subjects of anthropology and history have presented incomplete and sometimes misleading descriptions of how mankind has advanced from the hunter-gatherer society to more complicated cultures. For example, historians have suggested that fertile land and other favorable environmental (geographic) factors have helped Sumerians/Egyptians make a creative leap to the early civilizations along river valleys. However, this is not the real story about civilizations, and more critical geographic factors (or conditions) incentivizing humans to develop various civilizations have not been presented. Still, anthropologists and historians have highly simplified, if not dismissed, some key biological factors that may have decisively influenced the dynamic behaviors of mankind. The book delves into the factors and mechanisms that may have influenced the dynamic behaviors of six earliest civilizations –Sumerian, ancient Egyptian, Harappan (Indus), Chinese, Mesoamerican, and Andean South American. My narratives and analyses are focused on both environmental (geographic) factors on which traditional historic analyses are based and human (behavioral) factors on which anthropological analyses are usually based. In this book a few of common ancestral terms are resurrected to help understand the complicated process of human and cultural evolutions throughout the world. Specifically, in almost all indigenous languages throughout the world, the words „wa‟ and any variants of it are originally associated with the crying of – and certainly was selected as the common ancestral word with the meanings of “house, home, homeland, motherland, and so on” by – early humans living in different parts of the world. What is more important, many early, natively created and even some later, derivative words in which the syllable „wa‟ (or any of its variants) is included have the meaning of physical and/or moral protection. This book provides many neglected but still crucial environmental and biological clues about the rise and fall of civilizations – ones that have largely resulted from mankind‟s long-lasting “WinStay Lose-Shift” games throughout the world. The narratives and findings presented at this book are unexpected but reasonable – all of which are what every student of anthropology or history needs to know and doesn't get in the usual text.
Introduction „Wadi,‟ in Arabic and Hebrew, refers to as a valley. In some instances, it may denote a dry (ephemeral) riverbed that contains water only during times of heavy rain or simply an intermittent stream. In Maghreb, which includes much of Northwest Africa and the west of
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Egypt, the term „wadi‟ (or „wad,‟ sometimes „oued,‟ in Maghrebi Arabic) is applied to all rivers – permanent or seasonable. Arabic is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world, from Mesopotamia in the east to the Anti-Lebanon mountains in the west, and from northwestern Arabia to the Sinai peninsula on the south. Historically, Hebrew is regarded as the language of the Israelites and their ancestors. Modern Hebrew is one of the two official languages of the State of Israel (the other being Modern Standard Arabic), while Classical Hebrew (also called Biblical Hebrew) – one of the oldest languages in the world – is used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world today. Both Hebrew and Arabic belong to Afroasiatic (Afro-asiatic), also known as Afrasian and traditionally as Hamito-Semitic (Chamito-Semitic). Hamito-Semitic is a large family of several hundred related languages and dialects (including several important ancient languages, such as Ancient Egyptian, Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, and Old Aramaic) that have been spoken predominantly in the Middle East and northern Africa, including the Horn of Africa. In South and Southeast Asia many place and human names are called „wadi‟ or have the suffix of „wadi.‟ Similar terms can also be found there, with the suffixes of „wati‟ and „vati‟ being most popular in place and human names. Saraswati is the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, arts, wisdom and learning. She is a part of the trinity (Tridevi) of Saraswati, Lakshmi and Parvati. In India Saraswati is locally spelled as Saraswati (in Bengali and Malayalam) and Sarasvati (in Tamil). Outside India, Saraswati has several variants. In Thailand, for example, it is called as Suratsawadi or Saratsawadi. In Indonesia, Java or Jawa is derived from the Proto-Austronesian root word „Iawa‟ that means „home,‟ even though the word „Yawa-dvipa‟ (here, „dvipa‟ means „island‟), which is mentioned in India's earliest epic, the Ramayana, is also referred to as the island of Java. In Chinese, the term „wadi,‟ denoting “land lower than its surroundings,” had more important meanings in ancient times than it does in modern times, especially in northern China where agriculture is based on arid or semiarid land. In Cantonese (or Yue, spoken in southern China) and Wu (spoken in eastern China with proximity to Shanghai) – two Han-Chinese languages (dialects) that are more similar to Proto-Chinese than Mandarin Chinese, the abbreviated character of China and Chinese (i.e., „hua‟ in Mandarin Chinese) is read „wa‟ and „wo,‟ respectively. In Japan Wa has been used to represent both „Japan‟ and „Japanese‟ since ancient times. Moreover, Japanese tends to include the syllable „wa‟ in its vocabularies. In China and Myanmar, there is an ethnic group called Wa (or Va). The Wa speak a Mon-Khmer language that belongs to the Austro-Asiatic phylum, and they use at least three different dialects. Many old terms, especially those that originate in indigenous languages, usually reveal the early stories about humans and their cultures. In southern Africa, for example, many native languages (such as Swahili and Swazi or Swati – to name but two) are inclined to generate vocabularies in each of which „wa‟ or „va‟ is often included. In Amharic – an Afro-Asiatic language of the Semitic branch and one spoken as a mother tongue by the Amhara people in Ethiopia, if a noun is definite or specified, this is expressed by a suffix, the article, which is -wa, -itwa or -ätwa for
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feminine singular nouns. Nawa (or Nava) is a common ancestral word derived from „wa‟ (or „va‟). Though now having varying definitions, „Nawa‟ has been widely used as auspicious names in many indigenous languages of southern Africa (such as Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe) and of the New World as well. Like those of the Old World, the indigenous languages of the New World also frequently use the syllable „wa‟. For example, Aymara and Kichwa (or Quechua in Spanish) – two widely spoken indigenous languages in Andean South America and perhaps the main languages the Inca empire once adopted – use the terms Wana Q'awa and Qhichwa to express dry river valley and temperate valley, respectively. In addition, the following terms are included in Quechua: wasiy or wasii (my house), wasiyki (your house), wasin (his/her/its house), and wasinchik (our house). Thus, it can be judged that the Quechua term „wasi‟ denotes „house,‟ „home,‟ or „homeland.‟ In northern Guatemala, about 60 km west of Tikal, a pre-Columbian Maya archeological site, which was named “El Perú” when rediscovered in the twentieth century, has been identified as Waka' – a term that is very similar to the Quechuan word Wak'a. A frequently used term in present-day Peru, Wak'a (called Huaca in Spanish) means “god of protection” or “sacred object or place” in the indigenous Quechuan languages. In the Pacific Ocean, there are three major groups of islands, which are Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia. However, most of the indigenous islanders living there have a common Austronesian origin. Moreover, their native languages, like other indigenous languages in the rest of the world, include many common ancestral words or syllables. In the Hawaiian language, for example, the word „Hawaii‟ is similar to Proto-Polynesian Sawaiki, both of which have the reconstructed meaning of „home‟ or „homeland.‟ In addition, the cognates of Hawaii (Hawai‟i) are found in other Polynesian languages: such as Hawaiki (in Maori), Savai‟i (in Samoan), and Avaiki (in Rarotongan), all of which contain the syllable „wa‟ or „va.‟ The derivation of the name „Taiwan‟ is actually from the ethnonym of a tribe in the southwest part of the island that was also read as Tayowan, Taiyowan, Taiouwang, and so forth. Since the syllables „tai‟ (its variants include „tay,‟ „taiy,‟ taiyo‟and „taiou‟) and „wa‟ (its variants include „wan‟ and „wang‟) have the meanings of „big‟ (or „great‟) and „motherland,‟ respectively, the original meaning of Taiwan is “great motherland” in the Proto-Chinese and many proto- or modern languages in the East Asian islanders. Homo sapiens – the species sapiens (wise) of the genus Homo (man) – have appeared and populated Eurasia, Oceania, and the Americas. However, human and cultural evolutions have followed a complex process with various nonlinear facts. When explaining the rise and fall of the various cultures and civilizations throughout the world, historians have overly emphasized intercontinental and environmental differences. Even if natural and environmental influences on the structure and distribution of world civilizations did exist throughout history, the real stories are not always like what some historians have described in the usual text. The roles that many natural and environmental factors have played during the civilizational era have been quite complicated. These factors can never be simply defined as either „good‟ or „bad‟; instead, they are both „good‟ and „bad.‟ And their influences on cultures and civilizations each are both „positive‟ and „negative.‟
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It seems that some long-established concepts and theories that relate to history and civilization in existing textbooks are not convincing. For example, the „Fertile Crescent‟ concept could mislead readers to believe that it was the good environment in Mesopotamia that gave birth to the world‟s first civilization. In addition, existing textbooks have not paid enough attention to human‟s hard struggles against and creative responses to various challenges and threats. It should be noted that humans have always played, and will continue to play, the most important, if not the only, role in their cultural evolutions. All civilizations on Earth are also human civilizations. Without human beings, there would be no civilizations. Therefore, in order to understand the driving forces behind the rise and fall of civilizations, one should first examine the inherent characteristics of humankind per se. Or, at the very least, humans and the environments in which humans have been living should be used as a joint proxy for explaining the whole history of civilizations. Food surplus or population growth stemming from it might not necessarily lead to cultures and civilizations. Population growth or agglomeration may be helpful to the advancement of civilizations; but it may also destroy, through interethnic conflicts or wars, civilizations. The abundance of materials provided by the nature never gave birth to any civilizations. However, necessity is the mother of civilization. In this book, my intent is to bring students and other readers into a world of stories that are either absent from or improperly presented in the usual textbook. They include, for example:
What had really happened in Sub-Saharan Africa before some Homo sapiens decided to migrate out of there? More specifically, why did the Negroid choose to stay in southern Africa while other races (including the Caucasoid and the Mongoloid) were moving to the rest of the world? What were happening in the Middle East from the time after Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa to the time before some of them (mainly the Mongoloid) set out to move to Central Asia, the Far East, and other peripheral areas? Why do the Caucasoid (native to Europe, North Africa, West and Central Asia and other surrounding areas) live in loser proximity to the cradle of humans than the Mongoloid (native to the Far East, Siberia, the Arctic, the Americas and other peripheral areas) do? Why did the Mayans use the so-called Long Count calendar ignoring seasonal changes and not apply the lunar- or solar-based calendars that have been adopted by other civilizations in the Eastern Hemisphere? And why had the New World as a whole not been able to create civilizations as powerful as those of the Old World during the preColumbian era? What incentivized humans to change their lifestyle from the hunter-gatherer society to more complicated cultures? And why were most, if not all of the world‟s earliest civilizations based in river valleys that are based in or surrounded by deserts or semideserts and not elsewhere?
Frankly speaking, most, if not all of the above questions have not been satisfactorily answered (or even not discussed) in the usual text. And, traditional historic approaches are based on either environmental (geographic) or human (behavioral) factors. Instead, I will try to simultaneously consider both of them in my description and analysis of each of these major historic events. In addition, the following topics will also serve as an addition to the hidden history of world civilizations, which are, again, absent from the usual textbook:
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Why do many indigenous languages in different parts of the world tend to generate vocabularies associated with „wa‟ or any variant of it? And why does the term „wa‟ have the same or similar meanings in these languages? What do „Ur‟ and „Uruk‟ – names of the world‟s oldest city-states in southern Mesopotamia – mean in the Sumerian cuneiform? Were they really vocalized as „Urim‟ and „Unug,‟ respectively, as suggested in the usual textbook? If not, how they were most likely be pronounced in the ancient Sumerian language. What is the term „pharaoh‟ – a synonym for the ancient Egyptian kings or rulers – derived from in the Egyptian hieroglyphs? Is it really referred to as “great house” as suggested in the usual textbook? Doesn‟t it have more auspicious meanings in the Egyptian language? Why are the Han-Chinese and many other languages in East and Southeast Asia monosyllabic, while most of the others in the rest of the world include a large portion of polysyllabic words? And, in China, why do native people in Beijing and the surrounding areas, when wanting to express a simple story, usually speak more wordily than those in Henan (and other areas in the Yellow River valley) do? Why have the populations living in the Americas, Oceania and other islands that had been isolated from the Eurasian civilizations during the pre-Columbian era been much more overweight and obese than those in the rest of the world?
According to the so-called “win-stay lose-shift” strategy, the earliest humans migrating out of Africa might have had physical or cultural disadvantages over those who continued to stay in southern Africa; or, at the very least, the latter had not been, either physically or culturally, inferior to the former. Then, why was it Eurasia and the Americas – not southern Africa – that gave birth to more powerful human civilizations? Archaeological evidence has suggested that southern African is the cradle of humankind. However, that is not the cradle of human civilization. Scientists have identified various channels and mechanisms for the early human migrations: that it began when the pre-modern Homo sapiens first migrated out of Africa over the Levantine corridor and Horn of Africa to Eurasia. But that had been the prehistoric event occurring far before civilizations were born. In the absence of written documents, most aspects of the rise of early civilizations are contained in archaeological assessments that document the development of institutions and cultures. Historically, almost all of the world‟s earliest civilizations grew up in arid or semi-arid river valleys. The oldest civilization was based along the Tigris and the Euphrates in the Middle East. The name given to that civilization, Mesopotamia means “[land] between the rivers,” The Nile valley in Egypt had been home to agricultural settlements. A third civilization grew up along the Indus and the Ghaggar-Hakra rivers and their tributaries, in parts of what are now in India and Pakistan. The fourth oldest riverine civilization emerged along the Yellow river in China. In the Western Hemisphere, there were still two other earliest civilizations – the Olmec and the Norte Chico. The Olmec first appeared within various river valleys (including that of the Coatzacoalcos river); and the Norte Chico (also known as the Caral or Caral-Supe) civilization was based in an area encompassing four river valleys in present-day Peru.
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If we can simply compare civilization to a human body, then various rivers involved in each civilization have the same functions as those of the human‟s arteries and capillaries. The circulatory system is vital for sustaining life. Its normal functioning is responsible for the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to all cells, as well as the removal of carbon dioxide and waste products, among others. Specifically, the arteries are blood vessels that carry oxygenated blood away from the heart, while the capillaries, which are the smallest of the blood vessels, are also the indispensable part of the circulatory system. In the same logic, all the rivers have also been vital to the rise and fall of civilizations. Civilizations tended to grow up in river valleys for a number of reasons. People settled along rivers for access to fresh water, the most important requirements for agriculture and human needs. Plentiful water, and the enrichment of the soil due to annual flooding, made it possible to grow excess crops beyond what was needed to sustain an agricultural village. This allowed for some members of the community to engage in non-agricultural activities such as construction of buildings and cities (the root of the word „civilization‟), metal working, trade, and social organization. Additional advantages of locating near a river included easy transportation by water as well as good hunting and fishing… However, if these factors had been the only conditions under which civilizations were created along rivers, why did other large rivers, such as the Amazon, the Yangtze, or the Mississippi – to list but three, not receive a great human civilization? It is generally believed that 'ma' and 'pa' were among the first words that humans have spoken. Furthermore, the cross-linguistic similarities of these terms are thought to have resulted from the nature of language acquisition. These words are the first word-like sounds made by babbling babies (babble words), and parents tend to associate the first sound babies make with themselves and to employ them subsequently as part of their baby-talk lexicon. Thus, there is no need to ascribe to common ancestry the similarities of Navajo amá, Mandarin Chinese māma, Swahili mama, Quechua (Kichwa) mama, Polish mama, Romanian mama and English mama (all denoting „mother‟); or of Aramaic abba, Mandarin Chinese bàba, Persian baba, and French papa (all denoting “father”). It is quite reasonable to believe that human languages began to experience much more rapid changes after humans entered complicated societies. And, without good reason, the „ma,‟ „pa‟ and other earliest terms were built up from speech sounds that are easiest to produce (bilabials like „m,‟ „p,‟ and „b‟ and the open vowel „a‟). In this book, I assume that „wa‟ and its various variants have been independently invented by humans from different parts of the world. To be sure, the syllable „wa‟ or, to be more precise, „ā‟ derives from the crying of humans, which should have appeared much earlier than the syllables „ma‟ and „ba‟ (or „pa‟). As a result, the word or syllable „wa‟ (or any of its variant) has been used by many indigenous peoples to refer to one representing home or any other physical and moral protections. To this end, early humans had used „wa‟ as a term that is more important than both „ma‟ (representing „mother‟) and „pa‟ or „ba‟ (all representing „father‟). Immediately after the baby‟s birth, babies are expected to cry. This crying is necessary for the baby to survive because while inside the mother‟s uterus, the babies do not take breath from their lungs. It is the umbilical cord which provides them with fresh oxygen and takes away carbon
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dioxide from their blood stream. Once coming outside their mothers‟ womb, the babies need to breathe on their own. Have all the journeys of humans and the creation of all cultures and civilizations also been accompanying by humans‟ tearful experiences throughout the world? In this book, unless stated otherwise, wadi is referred to as a low land located in any dry or temperate climate. Wadis are not biologically fertile. Therefore, humans, when they were huntergatherers who usually treated forests and steppes as their homeland, had disregarded the wadis. Agriculturalists were losers as compared with hunter-gatherers. However, it was agriculturalists who built their homeland in the wadis. And they were the wadiers.
Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................... 1 List of Figures and Tables ...................................................................................................... 9 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 Part 1: Challenges, Human Responses and Civilization ......................... 错误！未定义书签。 1. Win-Stay, Lose-Shift: A Game .......................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 1.1 Lucy: A Last Tree Climber ............................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 1.2 Where is the Land of Promise? ....................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 1.3 Winners Stay, Losers Shift ............................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 1.4 Losers Become Wadiers ................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 1.5 Narrative Setting ............................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 Exercise ................................................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 References ............................................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 2. Human Thermodynamics and Culture ............................................. 错误！未定义书签。 2.1 Strong Man, Weak Man .................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 2.2 Physical Weakness and Culture ...................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 2.3 Language Comes out of Crying ...................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 2.4 Religion is Created by and for the Weak ........................................ 错误！未定义书签。 2.5 Lucretius, Poggio and Sima Qian ................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 Further Reading .................................................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 References ............................................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 3. Environment Matters, But Not the Way You Think ....................... 错误！未定义书签。 3.1 “That‟s What I‟m Doing Right Now!” ........................................... 错误！未定义书签。 3.2 Good Environment, Bad Environment ........................................... 错误！未定义书签。 3.3 Old World, New World .................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 3.4 New World, Old Issues ................................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 3.5 External Threat as (Dis)incentives .................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 Further Reading .................................................................................... 错误！未定义书签。
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References ............................................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 4. Civilization as Responses to Cyclical Challenges ............................. 错误！未定义书签。 4.1 Did the Myths Exist? ...................................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 4.2 Rivers and Cyclical Floods ............................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 4.3 Cyclical Challenges and Civilization .............................................. 错误！未定义书签。 4.4 X-potamias and Civilization ........................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 4.5 Let the Floods Come More Violent! ............................................... 错误！未定义书签。 Exercise ................................................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 References ............................................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 Part 2: A New History of Ancient Civilizations ....................................... 错误！未定义书签。 5. Mesopotamia: Wa and Waka ............................................................ 错误！未定义书签。 5.1 “In Ur, We Call it Wa!” .................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 5.2 Rivers, Floods and Culture ............................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 5.3 Mesopotamia and Beyond .............................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 5.4 Constant Wadis, Varied Wadiers .................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 References ............................................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 6. Ancient Egypt: Wadi, Wahe, Wafaa… ............................................. 错误！未定义书签。 6.1 Nile Valley and Beyond .................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 6.2 Floods, Cyclicity and Culture ......................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 6.3 Upper Egypt, Lower Egypt ............................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 6.4 What do the Hieroglyphs Say? ....................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 References ............................................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 7. Harappa and Beyond: “Wadi, Wati or Vati?” ................................. 错误！未定义书签。 7.1 Siwa: A Hidden Story ..................................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 7.2 Warm Desert, Cold Desert .............................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 7.3 From Wadi to Wati, and to Vati...................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 7.4 “The Wadier is Dead, Long Live the Wadier!” .............................. 错误！未定义书签。 References ............................................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 8. China: “Wa, Wadi – And It’s Wodi!” ............................................... 错误！未定义书签。 8.1 Wa: From Home to Nation .............................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 8.2 Spatial Disparity and Early China................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 8.3 Yellow River and Flood Control .................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 8.4 Wadi Culture, Chinese Style ........................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 References ............................................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 9. Mesoamerica: Waka', Wahaka and Nawa........................................ 错误！未定义书签。 9.1 In Search of Wadis .......................................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 9.2 Wadi Culture, Equatorial Style ....................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 9.3 Breaking the Maya Code ................................................................ 错误！未定义书签。 9.4 Nawa: “We‟re from Wadis!” .......................................................... 错误！未定义书签。
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References ............................................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 10. Andean South America: Wak'a and Kawa .................................... 错误！未定义书签。 10.1 Crossing the Andes ....................................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 10.2 Wadi Culture, Andean Style ......................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 10.3 From Wadis to Wak'as .................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 10.4 Kichwa: “We‟re Wadiers Too!” ................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 References ............................................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 Annex ....................................................................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 A: A Model of Human Evolution ......................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 B: A Model of Long-Run National Growth .......................................... 错误！未定义书签。 References ............................................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。 Epilogue ................................................................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 Acknowledgements ............................................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 List of Figures and Tables Figure 1.1 A map of the spreading of Homo sapiens throughout the world Figure 2.1 Incentives for complexity decrease with respect to physical strength Figure 2.2 Bechuana (a South African people) hunting the lion Figure 2.3 Connecting the six ancient civilizations of the world: linguistic evidence Figure 3.1a Bali‟s rice terrace: Life is easy with the Subak irrigation system Figure 3.1b Loess plateau: Life is never easy along the Yellow river Figure 3.1c Sacred valley: Life falls short of the best, but still better than the worst Figure 3.2a Average female height and indigenous populations, the Americas Figure 3.2b Body mass index (BMI) and indigenous populations, the Americas Figure 4.1 Sea level changes after the last glacial maximum Figure 5.1 The Ziggurat of Ur (reconstruction) Figure 5.2 Ancient Mesopotamia (with early cities) Figure 5.3 Hammurabi‟s code of laws (upper part of the stele) Figure 6.1 The Nile Delta, showing the major cities and sites (c. 3150–30 BC) Figure 6.2 The Nile (section), showing the major cities and sites (c. 3150–30 BC) Figure 6.3 Pharaoh (with a was-scepter in his right hand and an ankh in his left hand) Figure 7.1 Excavated ruins (3rd millennium BC) of Mohenjo-daro, Sindh province, Pakistan Figure 7.2 South Asia‟s climate classification and ancient culture sites Figure 8.1 The cultural sites of the Xia dynasty (c. 2100–c. 1700 BC) Figure 8.2 The Nine Dragons handscroll (section) Figure 9.1 Locations of the artifacts during the Olmec era (1400–400 BC) Figure 9.2 The ecological friendliness of Mesoamerica Figure 9.3 Tikal (Guatemala) and Zhengzhou (China): Average monthly temperatures Figure 10.1 Amazonia vs coastal Peru Figure 10.2 The river systems in central north Peru Figure 10.3 Culture sites‟ radiocarbon dates (BC) and distances from the coast (km)
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Table 2.1 The linguistic evolutions of the two Chinese characters (Hua and Xia) Table 3.1 Dialect differences in Beijing, Shandong, Shanghai and Henan Table 3.2 The human and cultural features of selected American countries Table 3.3 The average per capita GDPs (in PPP $) by different types of nations, 2010 Table 4.1 Rivers and the earliest civilizations Table 4.2 A comparison of the four riverine civilizations in the Eastern Hemisphere Table 4.3 Cultural advantages of lower vis-à-vis upper reaches/lands Table 8.1 Confucianism versus Taoism: some basic facts Table B.1 Determinants of long-run economic performance: Estimated results
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