Apart from the the civilizations of Eurasia - the Greeks, Romans, Persians, the Chinese, and the Indians of South Asia, there were also the Mesoamerican Maya and the Andean Tiwanaku who thrived along with several other civilizations in sub-Saharan Africa. It also included the Meroe, Axum, and the Niger River valley.
Starting in Africa, the movement of mankind encompassed Eurasia, Australia, the Americas, and Pacific Oceania. Gathering and hunting remained the basis for sustaining life and societies in different communities formed by these people. On the super-continents of Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas, the revolutionary transformation of human life generated particularly in rich agricultural environments. During the second-wave era, Eurasia was home to more than 80% of the world's people with Africa at around 11%, and the Americas between 5-7%. The Americas had no pastoral societies since they had no presence of most animals. Africa also lacked in having animals but because of their close proximity to Eurasia, there was availability in them after the animals had been domesticated. Africa often interacted with Eurasia because it was adjacent to Eurasia while separating the Americas from both Africa and Eurasia.
Africa's Civilizations
Africa was the most tropical of the world's three super-continents. Constant warm temperatures resulted in decomposition of humus which affected poorer and less fertile soils and less productive agriculture than in Eurasia. Africa's climate also caused health problems with disease-carrying insects and parasites.
Mesoamerica's Civilizations
Mesoamerica: "extraordinary diversity compressed into a relatively small space."
Mesoamerica's environment consisted of lowland rain forests to cold and windy highland plateaus with numerous mountains and valleys. These conditions contributed to the substantial linguistic and ethnic diversity along with chiefdoms and states. It was a region bound together by elements of a common culture despite its diversity. Its peoples shared an intensive agricultural technology devoted to raising maize, beans, chili peppers, and squash. They practiced religions that featured a pantheon of male and female deities, understood a cosmic cycle of creation and destruction, and constructed monumental ceremonial centers. Also, they practiced human sacrifice. Their ritual calendar included 260 days and they communicated frequently with themselves. They learned hieroglyphic writing and were influenced by the Olmec culture who had similar traits and ways of doing certain things in their own civilization.
Andes's Civilizations
The landscape of the Andes had bleak deserts, dozens of rivers, and mountains. Deserts supported human habitation because they were cut by dozens of rivers which flowed down through the mountains opening up the possibility of irrigation and cultivation. The presence of the Pacific Ocean offered the Andes an abundant amount of seabirds and fish. The Andes was a towering mountain chain with highland valleys and ecological niches. The Andean societies looked for access to resources through these environments in colonization, conquest, or trade.
The Incas were the most well-known civilizations to take place in this environment. They encompassed practically the entire region in the 15th century. But, the coastal region of central Peru (Norte Chico) had been one of the world's First Civilizations. Between 1000 B.C,E, to 1000 C.E., a number of Andean civilizations arose and eventually died out because they never truly developed as civilizations. They did not develop writing so historians who look into their lives have to depend on archaeology in order to come to some sort of understanding regarding these civilizations.
Bantu Africa
Although civilizations are what world historians focus most and put effort in to break down, understand, and come to conclusions about, there were also human communities that evolved alongside civilizations. Two regions in Africa and North America developed in this way. In Africa, Bantu-speaking peoples moved into the subcontinent in the vast region of Africa south of the equator. The Bantu expansion was a slow movement of peoples. It generated a number of cross-cultural encounters. Bantu-speaking farmers had a numerical advantage because agriculture pushed them to a more productive economy. Gathering and hunting at large were displaced, absorbed, or eliminated in most parts of Africa.
North America
In the Mesoamerican and Andean regions, cities, states, and dense populations created civilizations similar to those of Afro-Eurasia. In other places, gathering and hunting peoples carried most of ancient human adaptions to the environment. In the eastern woodlands of the United States, Central America, the Amazon basin, and the Caribbean islands were populated by peoples who could be considered as "semi-sedentary" - less intensive and productive agricultural societies. These people made their own histories changing and developing their unique environments.
The growth, prosperity, and general development of these civilizations are very much a significant part of our world's history. Historians take so much time and effort to find and discover evidence from these civilizations to better understand how the people lived as individuals and as communities.
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