Breakout

by Lamberg-Karlovsky, Martha

• ISBN13: 9780873659109
• ISBN10: 0873659104
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-08-01
• Publisher: Peabody Museum of Archaeology &

Summary

For much of the twentieth century, Mesopotamia was thought to he the singular "Cradle of Civilization;" and the agents of change that brought it about were thought to be demographic, ecological, and technological. Bronze Age Mesopotamian accomplishments were believed to have diffused outward, influencing the development of civilization in the rest of the world. Part of this Mesopocentric view was revised as archaeological evidence revealed that other unique civilizations had existed in both the Old and New Worlds, but the traditional Near Eastern pattern of development continued to serve as a model. In the mid-1980s, however, Harvard's Kwang-chih Chang proposed in Symbols--a publication of Harvard's Peabody Museum and Department of Anthropology--that China's first civilization did not evolve according to the conventional Mesopotamian model and argued instead for a new paradigm for understanding the origins of civilization in ancient China and the New World. In this collection of subsequent Symbols articles and other essays, Maya and Near Eastern studies specialists engage in a stimulating debate of Chang's thesis, also presented here.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Acknowledgments	xii
Introduction: In the Beginning	xiii
Martha Lamberg-Karlovsky
Ancient China and Its Anthropological Significance	1	(12)
Kwang-chih Chang
The Near Eastern ``Breakout'' and the Mesopotamian Social Contract	13	(12)
C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky
Ancient Chinese, New World, and Near Eastern Ideological Traditions: Some Observations	25	(14)
Gordon R. Willey
On Theories of Order and Justice in the Development of Civilization	39	(6)
David H. P. Maybury-Lewis
Sacred Landscape and Maya Kingship	45	(12)
Linda Schele
The Indo-European Origins of the Concept of a Democratic Society	57	(6)
Mason Hammond
How Was Ancient Israel Different?	63	(6)
William G. Dever
Absolutism and Reciprocity in Ancient Egypt	69	(30)
Mark Lehner
Harappan Beginnings	99	(16)
Gregory L. Possehl
Orientalism and Near Eastern Archaeology	115	(12)
Mogens Trolle Larsen
Index	127