Statue of Ebih-Il | Mari (Syria), ca. 2400 BCE (detail)
Photo Credit: Gary Todd via Wikimedia Commons, CC0

Why did every Sumerian city belong to a god?

Key Terms for this Section
Priest-King · Polytheism · Inanna

Holy Days | The Gods of Sumer

Temples were built to provide a ceremonial interface between humanity and the gods of Mesopotamian tradition. Life in the city focused on the temple, where citizens worshipped a god or gods who protected the city. Early stories about the gods’ plans made life seem less chaotic and less based on chance. What we think of as “religion” today was simply an embedded part of everyday life and events. In other words, everything was “sacred” and done with sacredness in mind (cf. Sec. 1.3). There was no such category as “secular,” like we have now in the modern world.

For the Mesopotamians, the gods revealed themselves in the natural world: the sky, the sun, the moon, and in storms, floods, and droughts. Religious holidays and festivals were often timed with the seasons. In fact, the word “holiday” comes from the words “holy day.” Each power of nature had a name, and each of the great gods had a home city that was his or hers. The people of a city held festivals to honor their god and wore the god’s symbols in battle, just as sports teams today rally around their mascots:

• Anu | the sky, father of the gods, at Uruk
• Enlil | the wind and storm, king of the gods, at Nippur
• Enki | fresh water and wisdom, at Eridu
• Nanna | the moon, at Ur
• Utu (Shamash) | the sun and justice, at Sippar

Beside them stood Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of love and war, whom the Semitic peoples called Ishtar. Her partner, the shepherd Dumuzi (Tammuz), spends half of every year in the underworld, and his death was mourned each summer, when the fields burned brown. This is polytheism: many gods, each with a province of the world, a city, and a house.

The Temple | The House of the God

The Sumerian word for temple was simply é, “house.” Enlil’s temple at Nippur was the É-kur, “Mountain House.” Inanna’s at Uruk was the É-anna, “House of Heaven.” Every Sumerian city was understood to be the estate of its god, and the temple was the big house on that estate: it owned fields, herds, and workshops, paid its workers in rations of barley, and kept the accounts. The earliest writing we have is the temple’s bookkeeping (cf. Sec. 1.5). The temple was the city’s storehouse, bank, and employer, and the god’s statue inside it was dressed and fed twice a day.

A citizen who could afford it did not stand in the temple himself. He commissioned a statue to stand there for him. Dozens survive, with huge inlaid eyes and hands clasped at the chest, like the superintendent Ebih-Il of Mari above. The eyes are the point: the statue keeps watch before the god forever, so that its owner’s prayer is never interrupted.

The priests also read the will of the gods in the world itself. Before any great decision, a sheep’s liver was inspected for marks, and night after night the stars were tracked. Divination was the priest’s science, and the Babylonian star records became the beginning of astronomy (Sec. 2.6).

The Priest-King | Steward of the God

As mentioned in Sec. 2.1, the Mesopotamian priest-kings used writing to collect information on their citizens. They also used writing to record their commands so their wishes could be carried out in different cities. Throughout the ancient world, the same group of people generally controlled economic matters and sacred matters. With the power of literacy kept for themselves, the priest-kings amassed enormous wealth around the temple. This temple wealth encouraged the idea that the priest-king was the direct representative of the city’s god, its steward rather than its owner. The Egyptians took this a step further, with their kings (the pharaohs) announcing that they are actually gods themselves (Sec. 3.1)! The idea of the god-king will play out again and again, even much later in ancient Rome under Julius Caesar (d. 44 BCE, cf. Sec. 8.2).

What the gods did not offer was a happy afterlife. The dead went down to one place, a house of dust:

To the land of no return, the land of darkness, … To the house without exit for him who enters therein, … The place where dust is their nourishment, clay their food. They have no light, in darkness they dwell. Descent of Ishtar (trans Jastrow, 1915)

So the Mesopotamian kept faith with the gods for this life: for rain, for harvest, for the city’s walls. That is the world Abraham leaves in Genesis. The great ziggurat of Iraq stands at Ur, the same Ur from the story of Abraham in the Bible (Genesis 11:31, Sec. 9.1), and Mesopotamia’s great flood story, in which one righteous man is warned, builds a boat, and saves his family and the animals, is older than any surviving copy of Genesis (Sec. 2.5). The Bible begins its story between the rivers.

The Standard of Ur, War Side | Royal Cemetery of Ur, ca. 2500 BCE (detail)

Why did civilization begin here, and not Norway, Mexico, or Australia?

Key Terms for this Section
Fertile Crescent · Cuneiform · Akkadian Empire

The Fertile Crescent | Land, Rivers, & Animals

We’ll begin our study of ancient civilizations with Mesopotamia (~Iraq). The name is Greek: mesos, middle, and potamos, river. The land between the rivers. The rivers are the Tigris and the Euphrates, and they run from the mountains of Turkey to the Persian Gulf through the Fertile Crescent, an arc of farmable land that curves from the Gulf up through Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean.

So why did Western civilization begin in Mesopotamia and not somewhere else? Why do we trace it to what is basically modern Iraq instead of, say, Norway, Mexico, or Australia? Well, here are five ways ancient Mesopotamia stood out from the rest of the world.

• Best Land | A mild climate, freshwater rivers, and abundant farmland. Ancient Mesopotamia looked a lot more like Iowa back in the day.

• Best Geography | A land bridge between Africa, Europe, and Asia, so people travelling from all directions passed through, sharing ideas, techniques, and technology.

• Best Rivers | The spring floods laid down fresh silt every year, and river mud baked into brick. What the land lacked (stone, timber, and metal) the rivers carried in by boat, from as far away as Afghanistan.

• Best Crops | Many founder crops, like barley, wheat, and peas, grew here naturally.

• Best Animals | Cows, goats, sheep, and pigs are all native to this region, useful for food, milk, and clothing.

If every animal could be tamed, civilization would have sprung up in many more places. But domestication (cf. Sec. 1.4) can only occur if five very specific things happen: the animals must have a diet that is flexible and cheap, mature quickly, breed in captivity, have an easy-going temperament, and follow a leader. Only four river valleys had them: the Tigris and Euphrates, the Nile, the Yellow and Yangtze, and the Indus. Northern Europeans domesticated reindeer, but you can’t teach a reindeer to plow. Mesoamerica domesticated the turkey, and the Andes the llama, but llamas can’t plow either. And Australia… Well, they have kangaroos, but trying to get a kangaroo to plow just isn’t going to be a good day for anybody (least of all the kangaroo).

Only ancient China, India, and Egypt could ever really compete.

Sumer & Akkad | City-States & the First Empire

• ca. 3500 BCE | The Sumerian city-states rise (Uruk, Ur, Lagash)
• ca. 3200 BCE | Cuneiform writing appears at Uruk (cf. Sec. 1.5)
• ca. 2334 BCE | Sargon of Akkad unites the river valley
• ca. 1792 BCE | Hammurabi takes the throne of Babylon
• 612 BCE | Nineveh falls, and Assyria with it

Mesopotamia was organized into regional city-states (cf. Sec. 1.5) controlled by priest-kings, rulers who stood for the city before its god. The Sumerian word for king was lugal, literally “big man.” Writing at this time developed as a political tool of the priest-kings. Simply put, those with the power to read and write held great sway over those who couldn’t — this remains true today.

The Sumerians developed a system of writing called cuneiform (Latin cuneus, a wedge, for the marks a reed leaves in soft clay, later baked hard). Writing had several political advantages. It let the Sumerians catalog their stored food, plan for the future, collect taxes, and trade. Finally, writing encouraged the development of laws.

Around 2334 BCE, a Semitic king named Sargon of Akkad (d. ca. 2279 BCE) took over the entire region. His Akkadian Empire is often called the first empire in history: one ruler over many cities. The term Semitic refers to anyone who speaks a Semitic language. Hebrew and Arabic are the best known today, and the word Semite comes from Shem, Noah‘s son in the Hebrew Bible.

Babylon & Assyria | ca. 1750–331 BCE

In the 1700s BCE the region was unified again, under Babylon. Its most famous king, Hammurabi (d. ca. 1750 BCE), had his laws cut into stone, and the stone opens with the king’s job description:

…to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak…
Code of Hammurabi, Prologue (trans. L. W. King)

The laws themselves wait for Sec. 2.6.

The peak of Mesopotamian power came in the Iron Age (cf. Sec. 1.6), between 1000 and 612 BCE, when the Assyrians were in charge. They built huge palaces at Nineveh (~Mosul), their gates guarded by winged bulls with human heads (the lamassu). But the fall of Nineveh in 612 BCE to the Medes and Babylonians marked the end of Assyria, and in 539 BCE the Persian king Cyrus (d. 530 BCE) took Babylon with little resistance. Two centuries later, Persia itself was conquered by the Greek Alexander the Great (d. 323 BCE), who entered Babylon in 331 BCE (Sec. 7).

By then, the cities between the rivers were already 3,000 years old.

An Iron Forge | Joseph Wright of Derby, 1772 (cropped)

What role does metalworking have in the development of civilization?

Key Terms for this Section
Bronze Age · Iron Age · Smelting

Stone, Bronze, & Iron | The Three Ages

Stone, then bronze, then iron. The names sound ancient, but they were worked out around 1820 and published in 1836 by a museum curator in Copenhagen, Christian Jürgensen Thomsen (d. 1865), who sorted his collection by the material each tool was made of. His three-age system stuck.

The Greeks had ages of metal of their own. Around 700 BCE, the poet Hesiod described the generations of humankind as metals, each harder and sadder than the last:

…Zeus the Father made a third generation of mortal men, a brazen race… Their armour was of bronze, and their houses of bronze, and of bronze were their implements: there was no black iron. … For now truly is a race of iron, and men never rest from labour and sorrow by day, and from perishing by night…
Hesiod, Works and Days 143–178 (trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-White)

Hesiod’s ages measure virtue, not technology. The Roman poet Lucretius (d. ca. 55 BCE) came closer to Thomsen: first hands and stones, then bronze, then iron (De Rerum Natura 5.1283–1287).

• ca. 3300 BCE | Bronze is first cast in the Near East
• ca. 1323 BCE | Tutankhamun is buried with a dagger of meteoric iron
• ca. 1200 BCE | The Late Bronze Age collapse begins
• ca. 1200 BCE | Iron working spreads from Anatolia

The Bronze Age | ca. 3300–1200 BCE

The Bronze Age is the era when tools and weapons of bronze replaced those of stone.

During the Paleolithic Age, most people had only simple personal weapons made of rocks, shells, sticks, and bones (chipped stone points and spears). In the Neolithic Age, this upgraded to axes and sickles of ground and polished stone. Eventually, it was discovered that some of the materials found in the ground could be melted out of rock in a hot enough fire. This is smelting, heating ore until the metal inside runs free. When Ötzi the Iceman died in the Alps around 3300 BCE, he was carrying an axe of nearly pure copper. Copper came first, in a short prelude archaeologists call the Copper Age. Hikers found him, axe and all, in 1991.

Iron and copper were plentiful, but tin was not. However, copper and tin, if heated together in a fire as hot as a pottery kiln, would melt and form bronze, an alloy of roughly 9 parts copper to 1 part tin. It was much harder than copper alone, far less brittle than stone, and could be shaped into almost anything. After about 3000 BCE, the army that had bronze weapons and sufficient numbers was generally the army that won.

The tin had to come from far away (some of it from as far as Afghanistan). So the Bronze Age was also an age of long-distance trade. Bronze Age warriors skipped over the vast (but un-meltable) iron deposits in favor of the copper mines and the rare tin routes. The art of working iron, which no ordinary fire could melt, would be the greatest technological jump in a thousand years.

It was only a matter of time.

The Iron Age | ca. 1200 BCE

The Iron Age is the era when iron replaced bronze as the working metal of daily life and war.

Iron, oddly, was known long before the Iron Age. It fell from the sky. When the boy-king Tutankhamun (d. ca. 1323 BCE) was buried in Egypt, he wore a dagger forged from a meteorite. Archaeologists found it in his tomb in 1925, and in 2016 its metal was confirmed to come from space. By some accounts, iron was worth more than gold.

Previously, the hottest fires made were the 2,000° F pottery ovens that could melt copper but not iron (iron melts at about 2,800° F). The breakthrough was the bloomery — a furnace of charcoal driven by bellows. It never melted the iron at all. It heated the ore until the iron separated into a glowing, spongy lump (the bloom), which smiths then hammered, reheated, and hammered again.

Then, around 1200 BCE, the great Bronze Age kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean fell within a few decades of one another. Scholars name several causes (drought, famine, earthquakes, raiders called the Sea Peoples), and the tin routes collapsed with them. Iron, found almost everywhere, filled the gap. Now iron weapons and tools could be quickly, plentifully, and cheaply produced. The technique spread throughout Asia, Europe, and North Africa as iron blades and tools spread through entire armies.

Many of the great traditions also took shape across these centuries, most of them sung long before they were written. The Vedas of India, the Iliad of Greece, and the Yi Jing of China all date from between about 1500 and 700 BCE (Secs. 4–6).

Effects of Good Government in the City | Ambrogio Lorenzetti, 1338–39 (cropped)

What do we need to live together?

Key Terms for this Section
Civilization · City-State · Social Stratification

Civis | The Citizen & the City

Let’s take a look at what is meant by “civilization.” The word is of Latin origin, from civis, the citizen. From civis, we get the following modern words:

• Civic | as in Civic Center, where performances happen in a city
• Civil | as in civil suit, a legal proceeding where one citizen sues another
• Citizen | an official member of an ancient city (or modern state)
• Civilian | a citizen who is not officially engaged in a city’s defense
• City | a permanent settlement of citizens

Several cities make a civilization. Put simply, a civilization is a people who have learned to live together in cities, and who have built everything that kind of life requires.

The Greeks had their own word for the city, the polis (hence politics). Its great theorist, the philosopher Aristotle (d. 322 BCE), tutor to Alexander the Great (d. 323 BCE), argued that the city is natural to human beings:

Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. … But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state. Aristotle, Politics 1.2 (trans. Benjamin Jowett)

The Six Attributes

So what does a city need? One common textbook model recognizes a civilization by 6 attributes (not to be confused with the 6 questions of Sec. 1.2):

• Urban Life | In archaeology, urban means a dense settlement of permanent structures (eg. temples, buildings, large monuments). Its people no longer roam as nomadic groups did before them.

• Government | Leaders who control, to one degree or another, what is done in the community. Generally, one leader holds much more power than the rest of the settlement.

• Class Distinctions | People have specialized jobs, just as we do today (hunter, weaver, weapon smith), and some members possess more wealth than others.

• Tools & Trade | Tools and skills lead to production and trade, sometimes with people in distant places.

• Writing | A shared, recordable language. Early writing often developed as a record-keeping tool for traders and tax collectors. It may be the single most important invention in human history.

• Religion | A shared system of ceremonial practices and beliefs, centered on the city’s gods, temples, and rulers.

The third attribute has a name of its own. Social stratification is the division of a society into ranks by wealth, occupation, or status. And the first cities were usually city-states — self-governing cities that ruled the farmland around them.

It’s important to remember that the word “civilized” is not meant to be a value judgment. It’s a descriptive term. When we say a culture is civilized, it means that the evidence shows that its citizens possessed all or at least most of the social qualities listed above, particularly the first two.

Example | Two Towns

Let’s take two famous sites and test them.

Çatalhöyük, in Anatolia (~Turkey), was home to several thousand people around 7000 BCE. Its mudbrick houses were packed wall to wall, with no streets at all. Residents walked across the rooftops and climbed down ladders into their homes. They buried their dead beneath the floors. Yet the houses are nearly all the same size, and some archaeologists read Çatalhöyük as one of the most equal communities ever excavated. There is no palace, no temple district, and no writing. By the six attributes, Çatalhöyük is a remarkable town, but not yet a civilization.

Uruk, one of the first cities of Sumer in Mesopotamia (~Iraq), held tens of thousands of people by about 2900 BCE. It had monumental temples, full-time craftsmen, a ruler, and a city wall nearly 6 miles around. Around 3200 BCE, its scribes pressed some of the world’s earliest writing into clay, and most of those tablets are records of grain, livestock, and workers’ rations. One of the first texts they copied again and again was a list of about 140 job titles, ranked from the highest official down. Its most famous object, the Warka Vase, shows ranked rows of people carrying offerings up to the goddess Inanna. Uruk has all six, and so does every civilization in this course.

Its walls, said to be built by its king Gilgamesh, open the world’s oldest epic (Sec. 2.5).

Plowing with Oxen | Tomb of Sennedjem, Egypt, ca. 1250 BCE

How do you feed more mouths than with hunting alone?

Key Terms for this Section
Neolithic · Agricultural Revolution · Domestication

The Neolithic | 10,000-3300 BCE

Wheat. Barley. Rice. Corn.

All from wild grass!

During the Agricultural Revolution in the Fertile Crescent, grasses were planted and harvested, and then the seeds from the best crops were replanted. Over many generations, this selective breeding process led to the edible grains that still fill our grocery stores. Lentils, peas, chickpeas, and flax (for linen and oil) were tamed from wild plants the same way. Likewise, in Asia, the cultivation of wild grasses led to rice, while in the Americas a scraggly wild grass called teosinte became corn. The grinding down of these grains produces flour. Most of the bread you have ever eaten begins here.

Neolithic. Greek for New (Neo) Stone (Lithos). The Neolithic Age (ie. New Stone Age) lasted from approximately 10,000 to 3300 BCE, when bronze arrives (Sec. 1.6). Farming on a large scale began at this time, and this explosion in farming scale and technique is now known as the Agricultural Revolution.

Its arithmetic is simple. A band of hunters and gatherers needs a great deal of land to feed a few dozen people, and it has to keep moving to do it. A field of wheat feeds far more people from far less ground, and it stays put. Nearly everything in the rest of this course grows out of that change.

• ca. 10,000 BCE | Farming begins in the Fertile Crescent
• ca. 8500 BCE | Wild aurochs are bred into cattle
• ca. 7000 BCE | Maize is farmed in Mexico, rice in China
• ca. 4000 BCE | The ox-drawn plow appears in Mesopotamia

Domestication | The First Partners

Domestication is the slow work of breeding wild plants and animals until they depend on us, and we on them.

Animals have been a part of the human story from the very beginning. The first animals to be domesticated were wolves. Through selective temperament breeding, early man in Eurasia slowly bred dangerous wolves into loyal dogs thousands of years before the invention of writing. Dogs provided security at night, cleaned animal scraps from the ground (which kept other animals and disease-carrying bugs away from the camp), and were loyal hunting companions. So, an early man with a dog was generally better off than the man without one.

The farmers of the Neolithic followed with a whole barnyard:

• Sheep | from the wild mouflon, with its huge horns
• Pigs | from the wild boar
• Cattle | from the aurochs, the great wild bull painted at Lascaux (Sec. 1.3), now extinct
• Donkeys | from the African wild ass

Both the cow and the donkey enabled Neolithic communities to farm and build on an unprecedented scale. An ox can pull a plow through ground no human arm could break.

Granaries, Water, & Walls

The large farmlands of the Agricultural Revolution required lots of water, and natural rainfall wasn’t always sufficient to cover the needs of the grain fields. So Neolithic farmers invented a way to bring river water to the plants called irrigation. Rodents, snakes, and other vermin soon became a constant threat to the storehouses of grain (called granaries). To combat the rodent problem, Neolithic settlers domesticated small wildcats into the now common house cat. The cat became so respected in agricultural Egypt that the death of an Egyptian family’s cat was often mourned like a member of the household.

Greek historian Herodotus (d. 425 BCE) recorded the custom after he was in Egypt:

…in whatever houses a cat has died by a natural death, all those who dwell in this house shave their eyebrows only… Herodotus, Histories 2.66 (trans. G. C. Macaulay)

A granary also changes what a village is. Stored grain is a surplus — food beyond what anyone needs today. A surplus means not everyone has to farm. Some can make pots, weave cloth, keep the stores, or settle disputes over the water. That division of labor is the seed of the city (Sec. 1.5).

It is also a target. With the rise of Neolithic settlements came the first organized military battles between settlements. After all, why spend a year growing crops when you can take someone else’s in a day? But competing settlements didn’t take this lying down. In fact, the competition for better weapons helped drive an explosion of technology now known as the Bronze Age (Sec. 1.6).

Aurochs & Horses | Lascaux, France, ca. 15,000 BCE
Photo Credit: Eline13Viki+ via Wikimedia Commons, CC0

Why did people paint animals deep in caves where no one lived?

Key Terms for this Section
Prehistory · Paleolithic · Sacred

Prehistory | Before 3200 BCE

In September 1940, as the story usually goes, four teenagers in southwestern France went looking for a dog named Robot and found a hole in the hillside instead. They squeezed through it with a lamp. What they found on the walls is now called Lascaux.

Bulls, horses, stags, and bison. Some 600 paintings and nearly 1,500 engravings, the largest bull about 17 feet long. All of it made about 17,000 years ago, in the dark.

Historians call this earliest period of humanity prehistory because it comes before recorded history (before there was a written record of events). Everything in this lesson was made by people who could not write. Even though there are no “prehistoric texts,” we can still look to the record of archaeological evidence for clues to their stories. A single tool or ornament can reveal much about the priorities and customs of its original community, even when no written language exists to explain its purpose.

The longest stage of prehistory is the Paleolithic. Greek for Old (Paleo) Stone (Lithos). The Paleolithic Age (ie. Old Stone Age) ends around 10,000 BCE. That’s twelve thousand years before today, which means even the end of the Paleolithic is six times older than Christianity! Prehistory itself ends with writing. By archaeologists’ dating:

• ca. 38,000 BCE | The Lion Man is carved in Germany
• ca. 32,000 BCE | The burials at Sungir in Russia
• ca. 28,000 BCE | The Venus of Willendorf is carved in Austria
• ca. 15,000 BCE | The cave of Lascaux is painted
• ca. 3200 BCE | Writing appears in Sumer (Sec. 1.5)

Lascaux & the Painted Cave

Paleolithic people lived near cave mouths and under rock overhangs, where there was daylight and a way out. The paintings are not there. They are deep inside, in passages that had to be lit with stone lamps burning animal fat (archaeologists have recovered more than a hundred of them at Lascaux). In one gallery, sockets cut into the rock held a wooden scaffold so the painters could reach the ceiling. The colors came from the earth itself — red and yellow ochre (iron-rich clay), and black from charcoal and manganese.

So why do it? Scholars have offered three main answers. Some read the paintings as hunting magic, a way of calling the herds. Others see the work of ritual specialists who went into the dark on purpose, to meet the animals there. Still others read the walls as a record of seasons and migrations.

Here’s the wrinkle: the bones left behind at Lascaux are mostly reindeer. It’s what the painters actually ate. Yet among hundreds of animals on the walls, there is only one reindeer. Hunting magic alone does not explain that. The cave itself closed to the public in 1963, because visitors’ breath was damaging the paintings. Today’s tourists walk through a full-size copy.

The Sacred | Figures & Graves

In early cultures, certain items were reserved for use in places like graves, social gathering places, or the homes of leaders. These objects were understood to be significant in ways that went beyond their practical usefulness. They were considered sacred (from the Latin sacer, dedicated to the gods and set apart from ordinary use).

The oldest of them is a creature no one had ever seen. The Lion Man stands about 12 inches tall, a man’s upright body with a lion’s head, carved from a mammoth tusk with stone tools and found in hundreds of broken pieces in a German cave in 1939, on the eve of a war that would delay its reassembly for decades. By one estimate, it took more than 300 hours to carve with stone tools. Nothing in nature looks like it.

The Venus of Willendorf (sometimes rendered “Lady of Willendorf”) is another. She is a small limestone figure of a woman, just 4 inches tall, found in Austria in 1908. Her face is hidden beneath rows of carved bands (braids, perhaps, or a woven cap), and she still carries traces of red ochre. Scholars have long read her as a figure of fertility and abundance. She fits in the palm of a hand.

The Paleolithic Age is also when we see the earliest indications of ceremonial burial. Bodies were placed in dugout graves, often with tools, weapons, ochre, and jewelry. At Sungir, east of modern Moscow, one man was buried with nearly 3,000 beads of mammoth ivory sewn into his clothing. Archaeologists estimate that each bead took about an hour to make. That is nearly 3,000 hours of work, placed in the ground with one man.

A cave painted where no one lived. A figure small enough to carry. A grave filled with beads. Long before anyone could write the word, the people of the Paleolithic were already setting things apart.

Imaginary View of the Grande Galerie of the Louvre in Ruins | Hubert Robert, 1796

How do you learn from the past?

Key Terms for this Section
Culture · Primary Source · BCE & CE

An Introduction to this Series

This is a survey of the humanities of the ancient and medieval world: the art, architecture, literature, music, religion, and philosophy of the civilizations of the ancient and medieval world. No foreknowledge of any civilization or any of their languages is required. Assigned readings come from Culture & Values (Ch. 1 for this section). This course is made of 15 sections divided into 4 modules. Each section’s theme will be divided into 6 lessons (eg. Sec. 2.1 through 2.6).

The four modules of this course are:

• I. Early Civilizations
• II. The Greco-Roman Traditions
• III. The Abrahamic Traditions
• IV. The Rise of Europe

After Section 1, we begin in Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE and end in Florence around 1500 CE. That’s 5,000 years in 15 weeks!

Culture & the Six Questions

This is not a World History course.

A history course asks what happened: who won the war, which king fell, where the border moved. Those facts matter here. But this course then asks a second question. What did a people make out of what happened to them, and why?

Culture is social information that is transmitted from one generation to the next.

Think of it as everything from how people cook their food to the stories they tell around the campfire. A war is history. The Iliad, sung about that war for centuries before anyone wrote it down, is culture.

For this series, we will ask 6 basic questions of each civilization:

• History & Politics | Where and how did folks feed, defend, and govern themselves?

• Religion | What did they hold sacred, and what did their tradition ask of them?

• Literature & Drama | What stories did they tell, and how did they last?

• Art & Architecture | What did they build, carve, and paint, and for whom?

• Music | How did they sound together, and for what occasions?

• Philosophy | How did they think and teach how a person ought to live?

You will see these six questions answered in every civilization we study. They are the course’s standard model, and an excellent template for your own notes.

Every section after this one opens with History & Politics. After that, the order follows each civilization’s own story. In India the hymns of the Vedas were sung for centuries before anyone wrote them down, so Music comes early (Sec. 4.2). In the Renaissance, Religion comes last, because the Gutenberg Bible (ca. 1455) sets the stage (Sec. 15.6) for the Reformation that opens Humanities II.

Every lesson also opens with a Central Problem: one line naming the thing that people needed to solve. Sec. 3.1, for example, opens on “Who answers when the river does not rise?” Hold the problem in mind as you read.

Evidence, Dates, & Religion

The best evidence for a civilization is a primary source — a text or object made by the people we are studying (a law code, a hymn, a temple, a painted pot). A secondary source is what later scholars say about them.

The Greek general Thucydides (d. ca. 400 BCE) wrote his history of the Peloponnesian War, a war he had fought in, and he said plainly why he bothered:

…if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 1.22

Scholars generally use BCE (before the common era) in the place of BC (before Christ) and CE (common era) in the place of AD (Anno Domini: Latin for In the Year of Our Lord) when denoting years. It is a sign of respect between Christian and non-Christian scholars. In this way, we retain the historical facts without pushing a particular agenda in a public inquiry open to all faiths. That being said, the “CE” is generally dropped after the beginning of the medieval period (ca. 500s).

The numbers themselves do not change: 2026 CE is 2026 AD.

Every section carries a lesson on religion, and one rule governs all of them: We are here to study religion, not to practice or prosecute religion. The material is far more interesting than any verdict I could render on it.

Cicero Denounces Catiline | Cesare Maccari, 1882–88

Why study what people made, when AI can make it now?

Key Terms for this Section
Humanities · Humanitas · Sapere Aude

Why study the Humanities?

Well, that’s a silly question. Because you already live in the humanities. The song in your earbuds, the flag over the courthouse, the way your grandmother tells a story. None of it fell from the sky. Every bit of it was made by people who had a reason, and the reasons go back thousands of years.

The humanities are the study of what human beings have made
in order to say who they are.

Humanities is not the study of nature (that’s science), nor is it a form of technical study (technical comes from techné in Greek, meaning a craft). Learning the violin is a techné. Running a cash register is also techné. While techné is a kind of knowledge, promising us methods and facts, the study of culture offers us a road to wisdom (another kind of knowledge) about humanity through the tools of analysis and evaluation. In this Humanities course, we’ll put the same 6 questions to every civilization from the first cities of Iraq to the studios of Florence. By the end, you will be able to walk into a museum, a cathedral, or a courtroom and read the room.

If it helps, think of this as learning to read a second time.

Humanitas | The Word & Its Travels

The word “humanities” has a famous early champion. In 62 BCE, the Roman senator Cicero (d. 43 BCE) stood up in court to defend a Greek poet named Archias, whose citizenship was in dispute. His defense rested on the poet’s education, the studia humanitatis (lit. the studies of humanity), and what those studies had done for Rome:

…these studies are the food of youth, the delight of old age; the ornament of prosperity, the refuge and comfort of adversity; a delight at home, and no hindrance abroad; they are companions by night, and in travel, and in the country.
Cicero, Pro Archia 16 (trans. C. D. Yonge)

The verdict of that case is lost, but the speech survived. In 1333, Petrarch (d. 1374) found a forgotten copy, and by the late 1400s the teachers of its curriculum (grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy) were nicknamed the humanists.

That curriculum is the ancestor of this Humanities course.

The Latin underneath is humanitas — the quality of being human. The Roman writer Aulus Gellius (d. ca. 180 CE) complained in his Attic Nights that people used it to mean simple kindness (Gr. philanthrōpia), when its proper sense was education (Gr. paideia). English kept both. We call a person humane and a course of study the humanities.

Sapere Aude | AI & the Courage to Think

Your phone probably has a generative AI that can write an essay about Gilgamesh, paint a ziggurat in the style of Monet, and compose a hymn in the manner of Bach before you finish reading this paragraph.

The machine can produce the humanities because we produced them first. Every sentence it writes is built from sentences human beings wrote, over 5,000 years, for reasons the machine does not have. At present, artificial intelligence does not possess consciousness, self-awareness, or moral understanding. It does not suffer, care, or deliberate about the good. So it cannot tell you why Gilgamesh wanders the earth after his friend dies (Sec. 2.5).

An AI system that simulates conversation or empathy does not thereby possess it. Confusing simulation with possession is a common philosophical error.

The deeper worry is older than computers. In 1784, the Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant (d. 1804) was posed a question. What is enlightenment?

Enlightenment, Kant wrote, is our exit from self-incurred immaturity (Ger. Unmündigkeit, lit. not yet of age), the inability to use one’s own understanding without someone else’s guidance. The cause is not a lack of intelligence. It is a lack of courage. Kant then chides his readers to Sapere Aude! Dare to know!

It is so convenient to be immature. If I have a book that understands for me, … a doctor who judges my diet for me, and so on, then I need not trouble myself at all. I have no need to think, so long as I can pay. Others will readily take over the tiresome business for me. Kant, What Is Enlightenment? (1784)

Now read that again with a chatbot in mind.

The cost can be measured. In one study in 2025, 15 of the 18 students who wrote an essay with ChatGPT could not correctly quote a single sentence from it afterward. The students who wrote on their own nearly all could. Automation does not merely replace human labor. It replaces human judgment.

The task is therefore not to eliminate this technology, but to impose principled limits on its use. Artificial intelligence should extend human agency without replacing moral responsibility.

Over the next 15 sections, we will spend time with the people who invented cities, alphabets, law, tragedy, the arch, and polyphony. Somewhere around Sec. 8 or 9 you may start to notice something no chatbot will notice on your behalf:

These people were talking to you.

Sapere aude.

as taught at Tyler Junior College

MODULE I – Early Civilizations

Sec 1 • In the Beginning

1.1 Why the Humanities Matter
1.2 How to Read a Civilization
1.3 Before Writing
1.4 A Revolution in Food
1.5 What is Civilization?
1.6 The Bronze & Iron Ages

Sec 2 • Ancient Mesopotamia

2.1 History & Politics • Between the Rivers
2.2 Sacred Life • Temple & Priest-King
2.3 Art & Architecture • The Ziggurat of Ur
2.4 Music • The Lyres of Ur
2.5 Literature & Drama • Gilgamesh & the Enuma Elish
2.6 Philosophy • An Eye for an Eye

Sec 3 • Ancient Egypt

3.1 History & Politics • The Gift of the Nile
3.2 Sacred Life • Ra, Osiris, & Isis
3.3 Music • Hathor & the Sistrum
3.4 Art & Architecture • The Pyramids of Giza
3.5 Literature & Drama • The Book of the Dead
3.6 Philosophy • Ma’at & the Weighing of the Heart

Sec 4 • Ancient India

4.1 History & Politics • The Indus Valley & Ashoka
4.2 Music • Singing the Vedas
4.3 Sacred Life • Dharma & the Four Noble Truths
4.4 Philosophy • The Middle Way
4.5 Literature & Drama • The Mahabharata & the Gita
4.6 Art & Architecture • Stupas & the Image of the Buddha

Sec 5 • Ancient China

5.1 History & Politics • The Mandate of Heaven
5.2 Sacred Life • Heaven & the Ancestors
5.3 Literature & Drama • The Daodejing
5.4 Music • Bronze Bells & Confucius
5.5 Philosophy • Confucius & the Five Relationships
5.6 Art & Architecture • The Terracotta Army & the Great Wall

MODULE II – The Greco-Roman Traditions

Sec 6 • Early Greece

6.1 History & Politics • The Polis & the Birth of Democracy
6.2 Literature & Drama • Homer’s Iliad & Odyssey
6.3 Sacred Life • The Olympians & Athena’s City
6.4 Music • The Lyre & the Doctrine of Ethos
6.5 Philosophy • The Presocratics
6.6 Art & Architecture • From Geometric Pots to the Kritios Boy

Sec 7 • Hellenistic Greece

7.1 History & Politics • Pericles, the Peloponnesian War, & Alexander
7.2 Art & Architecture • The Acropolis & the Parthenon
7.3 Sacred Life • Delphi, Dionysus, & the Mysteries
7.4 Music • The Tragic Chorus & the Greek Modes
7.5 Literature & Drama • Tragedy, Comedy, & Thucydides
7.6 Philosophy • Socrates, Plato, & Aristotle

Sec 8 • The Romans

8.1 History & Politics • From Republic to Empire
8.2 Religion • Household Gods & the Imperial Cult
8.3 Literature & Drama • Virgil’s Aeneid & Roman Satire
8.4 Art & Architecture • Aqueducts, Arches, & the Colosseum
8.5 Music • The Water Organ & the Arena
8.6 Philosophy • Stoicism & Roman Law

MODULE III – The Abrahamic Traditions

Sec 9 • Ancient Israel

9.1 History & Politics • The Promised Land & the Kingdom of David
9.2 Religion • Covenant, Shabbat, & the Mitzvot
9.3 Art & Architecture • The Ark & the Temple in Jerusalem
9.4 Music • The Psalms of David
9.5 Literature & Drama • The Tanakh & the Talmud
9.6 Philosophy • Justice, Lovingkindness, & Repentance

Sec 10 • Early Christendom

10.1 History & Politics • From the Apostles to Constantine
10.2 Literature & Drama • The Gospels & the Letters of Paul
10.3 Religion • Nicaea & the Creed
10.4 Music • Hymns of the Early Church
10.5 Philosophy • St. Augustine
10.6 Art & Architecture • From the Catacombs to Hagia Sophia

Sec 11 • Early Islam

11.1 History & Politics • Mecca, Medina, & the Caliphate
11.2 Literature & Drama • The Qur’an & the Hadith
11.3 Philosophy • The House of Wisdom
11.4 Religion • The Five Pillars
11.5 Music • The Call to Prayer & Qur’anic Recitation
11.6 Art & Architecture • The Mosque, Calligraphy, & the Arabesque

MODULE IV – The Rise of Europe

Sec 12 • The Holy Roman Empire

12.1 History & Politics • Charlemagne & Feudal Europe
12.2 Literature & Drama • Beowulf & the Heroic Code
12.3 Religion • Monks, Popes, & Canon Law
12.4 Philosophy • The Trivium & the Carolingian Renaissance
12.5 Art & Architecture • Romanesque Churches & the Book of Kells
12.6 Music • Gregorian Chant

Sec 13 • The High Middle Ages

13.1 History & Politics • The Great Schism & the Crusades
13.2 Literature & Drama • The Song of Roland & the Troubadours
13.3 Religion • Monastic Reform & St. Francis
13.4 Music • Hildegard & the School of Notre Dame
13.5 Art & Architecture • The Gothic Cathedral
13.6 Philosophy • Aquinas, Maimonides, & Scholasticism

Sec 14 • The Late Middle Ages

14.1 History & Politics • Famine, War, & the Black Death
14.2 Religion • Avignon & the Great Western Schism
14.3 Philosophy • William of Ockham & the Razor
14.4 Music • Ars Nova & Machaut
14.5 Art & Architecture • Giotto & the Dance of Death
14.6 Literature & Drama • Dante, Boccaccio, & Chaucer

Sec 15 • The Renaissance

15.1 History & Politics • Florence & the Medici
15.2 Philosophy • Pico, Erasmus, & Humanism
15.3 Art & Architecture • Brunelleschi’s Dome & Leonardo
15.4 Music • Josquin & the Art of Polyphony
15.5 Literature & Drama • Petrarch, Machiavelli, & Shakespeare
15.6 Religion • The Gutenberg Bible & the Eve of Reform

MODERN HUMANITIES | HUM2230

as taught at Florida State University

MODULE I – The Rebirth (1454-1603)

Sec 1 • Defining the Modern

1.1 Modus & Modo: The Method & the Way
1.2 Optimism & the Promise of Progress
1.3 Reason, Secularism, & the Individual
1.4 Mapping the Modern: 4 Ages in 15 Weeks

Read: Jervis, Exploring the Modern
Art: Duccio’s Madonna & Dürer’s Self-Portrait
Listen: Hildegard’s chant & Josquin’s polyphony

Sec 2 • Renaissance & the Printing Press

2.1 Rebirth: The Medici, Humanism, & the Dignity of Man
2.2 Genius: Leonardo, Michelangelo, & Raphael
2.3 1454: Gutenberg & the First Information Age
2.4 Machiavelli: Politics without Heaven

Culture & Values chs. 12–13
Read: Machiavelli, The Prince (sel.)
Art: Botticelli, Birth of Venus & Raphael, School of Athens
Listen: Josquin, Ave Maria… Virgo serena

Sec 3 • Reformation & the New Heavens

3.1 Luther & the Fracturing of Christendom
3.2 Trent & the Counter-Reformation
3.3 1543: Copernicus & the De-Centered Cosmos
3.4 Elizabeth & Shakespeare: Hamlet’s Modern Mind

Culture & Values ch. 14
Read: Luther, Reformation Writings (sel.)
Read²: Shakespeare, Hamlet (sel.)
Art: Dürer’s prints; Holbein, The Ambassadors
Listen: Dowland, “Come Again” & Luther, “Ein feste Burg”

MODULE II – Early Modern Philosophy (1604-1775)

Sec 4 • Baroque & the New Science

4.1 Splendor & Shadow: Bernini, Caravaggio, & Rome
4.2 The Dutch Golden Age: Rembrandt, Vermeer, & the Market
4.3 1633: Galileo & the New Science on Trial
4.4 Newton’s Clockwork: The Mechanical Cosmos

Culture & Values ch. 15
Read: Galileo, Starry Messenger (sel.)
Art: Caravaggio, The Calling of St. Matthew & Bernini, Ecstasy of St. Teresa
Art²: Rembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson & Vermeer, The Astronomer
Listen: Bach & Handel

Sec 5 • Leviathan: The State & Social Contract

5.1 Hobbes after the Civil War
5.2 Locke: Property, Toleration, & the Blank Slate
5.3 Versailles: Absolutism as Theatre
5.4 Rousseau & the General Will

Culture & Values ch. 15 (cont.)
Read: Hobbes, Leviathan (sel.), & Locke, Second Treatise (sel.)
Art: the Leviathan frontispiece & Rigaud, Louis XIV
Listen: Lully at the Sun King’s court & Purcell

Sec 6 • The Enlightenment & Its Shadows

6.1 Sapere Aude: Philosophes, Salons, & the Encyclopédie
6.2 Candide: Voltaire Against Optimism
6.3 First Nations: The Americas & Enlightenment’s Others
6.4 The Classical Style: Mozart, Haydn, & the Age of Elegance

Culture & Values chs. 16 & 19
Read: Voltaire, Candide (sel.); Kant, “What Is Enlightenment?”;
Read²: Waters, American Indian Thought (sel.); Stannard, American Holocaust (sel.)
Art: Fragonard, The Swing; the Templo Mayor & the codices
Listen: Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro (sel.)

MODULE III – Nationalism & Industry (1776-1913)

Sec 7 • The Age of Revolutions

7.1 1776: Common Sense & the Rights of Man
7.2 1789: Paris, the Terror, & the Marseillaise
7.3 Athens on the Potomac: Neoclassicism & the New Republics
7.4 Goya & Napoleon: The Birth of Nationalism

Culture & Values chs. 19-20
Read: Paine, Common Sense (sel.); Hutchinson & Smith, Nationalism (sel.)
Art: David, Oath of the Horatii & Death of Marat; Goya, The Third of May 1808
Listen: “La Marseillaise” & Beethoven, Eroica (and the torn dedication)

Sec 8 • Romanticism & Modern Science

8.1 Sturm und Drang: Goethe & the Sorrows of the Self
8.2 The Sublime: Friedrich, Turner, & Beethoven
8.3 Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus
8.4 Questioning Progress: Romanticism Against the Machine

Culture & Values ch. 20
Read: Shelley, Frankenstein (novel #1) & Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (sel.)
Art: Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog & Turner’s storms; Fuseli, The Nightmare
Listen: Schubert, Erlkönig; Beethoven’s No. 5; Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique

Sec 9 • Industry & Empire

9.1 The Machine Age: Coal, Rail, & the Crystal Palace
9.2 Metropolis: Picturing the Industrial City
9.3 Europeans Seize the World: Africa & the Colonizer’s Model
9.4 Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Abolition & the Sentimental Weapon

Culture & Values chs. 17-18, 20
Read: Mudimbe, The Idea of Africa (sel.) & Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (sel.)
Read²: Dickens, Hard Times (rec.)
Art: the Crystal Palace; Turner, The Slave Ship; the camera goes to the colonies
Listen: spirituals — “Go Down Moses”
Screen (first film): Metropolis

Sec 10 • Marx & the Age of Oil

10.1 1848: The Manifesto & the Specter of Revolution
10.2 Alienation: The Self on the Assembly Line
10.3 The Prize: Rockefeller & the Age of Oil
10.4 Realism: Courbet, Daumier, & Painting the Poor

Culture & Values chs. 20-21
Read: Marx, The Communist Manifesto (sel.); Yergin, The Prize (sel.)
Read²: Economides, The Color of Oil (sel.); Huxley, Brave New World (sel. — “Our Ford”)
Art: Courbet, The Stone Breakers & Daumier, Third-Class Carriage;
Art²: Millet, The Gleaners & Menzel, The Iron Rolling Mill
Listen: Joplin’s ragtime — music for a mass age
Screen (brief selection): Modern Times

Sec 11 • Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, & the Fin de Siècle

11.1 The Present Age: Kierkegaard Against the Crowd
11.2 Zarathustra: Nietzsche & the Death of God
11.3 The Painted Moment: Impressionism & Its Rebels
11.4 The Nervous Age: Darwin, Freud, & Mahler’s Hammer

Culture & Values ch. 21
Read: Kierkegaard, The Present Age (sel.); Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (sel.)
Art: Monet, Impression, Sunrise; Van Gogh, The Starry Night
Art²: Cézanne & Hokusai & Japonisme
Listen: Debussy, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
Listen²: Mahler, Symphony No. 6 in A Minor (1906) and its hammer blows!

MODULE IV – The End of Modernity (1914-1960s)

Sec 12 • The World at War

12.1 1914: Machine Guns, Mustard Gas, & All Quiet
12.2 The Modernist Rupture: Dada, Duchamp, & The Rite
12.3 The Grapes of Wrath: Depression & the New Deal
12.4 Night: The Holocaust & the Break in Civilization

Culture & Values ch. 22
Read: Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (sel.) & Wiesel, Night (sel.)
Read²: Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (sel.) & Freud, Civilization & Its Discontents (sel.)
Art: Otto Dix’s war prints; Duchamp, Fountain; Dalí;
Art²: Lange, Migrant Mother; Picasso, Guernica
Listen: Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring; Shostakovich, Symphony No. 5 in D Minor
Screen (sel.): All Quiet on the Western Front (1930); Night and Fog

Sec 13 • Aftermath: The Bomb & the Absurd

13.1 By the Bomb’s Early Light: Hiroshima & the Atomic Imagination
13.2 Existentialism: Sartre, Beauvoir, & Freedom After Auschwitz
13.3 The Stranger: Camus & the Colonial Absurd
13.4 New York Steals Modern Art: Pollock, Rothko, & Bebop

Culture & Values ch. 23
Read: Camus, The Stranger (novel #2) & Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light (sel.)
Read²: Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism (sel.) & Beauvoir, The Second Sex (sel.)
Art: Pollock’s drips & Rothko’s fields
Listen: Parker’s bebop; Cage, 4′33″

Sec 14 • The Culture Industry & the Cold War

14.1 Manipulation: Adorno & the Culture Industry
14.2 One-Dimensional Man: Marcuse, Madison Avenue, & Suburbia
14.3 Strange Fruit to Selma: Civil Rights & the Counterculture
14.4 Dr. Strangelove: The Binary World

Culture & Values ch. 23
Read: Adorno & Horkheimer, The Culture Industry (sel.) & Marcuse, 1-Dem. Man (sel.)
Read²: Engelhardt, The End of Victory Culture (sel.) & MLK, Ltr from Birmingham Jail
Art: Warhol’s soup cans, Lichtenstein’s pop art, & Levittown through the lens
Listen: Holiday, Strange Fruit, Bob Dylan, & Hendrix’s Star-Spangled Banner
Screen (sel.): Dr. Strangelove

Sec 15 • The Postmodern Critique

15.1 The Postmodern Condition: Lyotard & the End of Grand Narratives
15.2 Simulacra: Baudrillard, Warhol, & Hyperreality
15.3 The 21st Century & Its Discontents
15.4 Do Androids Dream?: Blade Runner, AI, & the Inhuman

Culture & Values ch. 23
Read: Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (sel.) & The Inhuman (sel.)
Read²: Baudrillard, Sim & Simul. (sel.) & Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (sel.)
Art: Venturi & Gehry — architecture after modernism
Art²: Nam June Paik’s screens & the machine-made image (2020s)
Listen: Glass & Reich’s minimalism; Kraftwerk, Computer World; sampling as pastiche
Screen (film #2): Blade Runner

MODULE I – The Rebirth (1454-1603)

Sec 1 • Defining the Modern

1.1 Modus & Modo: The Method & the Way
1.2 Optimism & the Promise of Progress
1.3 Reason, Secularism, & the Individual
1.4 Mapping the Modern: 4 Ages in 15 Weeks

Read: Jervis, Exploring the Modern
Art: Duccio's Madonna & Dürer's Self-Portrait
Listen: Hildegard's chant & Josquin's polyphony

Sec 2 • Renaissance & the Printing Press

2.1 Rebirth: The Medici, Humanism, & the Dignity of Man
2.2 Genius: Leonardo, Michelangelo, & Raphael
2.3 1454: Gutenberg & the First Information Age
2.4 Machiavelli: Politics without Heaven

Culture & Values chs. 12–13
Read: Machiavelli, The Prince (sel.)
Art: Botticelli, Birth of Venus & Raphael, School of Athens
Listen: Josquin, Ave Maria… Virgo serena

Sec 3 • Reformation & the New Heavens

3.1 Luther & the Fracturing of Christendom
3.2 Trent & the Counter-Reformation
3.3 1543: Copernicus & the De-Centered Cosmos
3.4 Elizabeth & Shakespeare: Halmet’s Modern Mind

Culture & Values ch. 14
Read: Luther, Reformation Writings (sel.)
Read²: Shakespeare, Hamlet (sel.)
Art: Dürer's prints; Holbein, The Ambassadors
Listen: Dowland, “Come Again” & Luther, “Ein feste Burg”

MODULE II – Early Modern Philosophy (1604-1775)

Sec 4 • Baroque & the New Science

4.1 Splendor & Shadow: Bernini, Caravaggio, & Rome
4.2 The Dutch Golden Age: Rembrandt, Vermeer, & the Market
4.3 1633: Galileo & the New Science on Trial
4.4 Newton’s Clockwork: The Mechanical Cosmos

Culture & Values ch. 15
Read: Galileo, Starry Messenger (sel.)
Art: Caravaggio, The Calling of St. Matthew & Bernini, Ecstasy of St. Teresa
Art²: Rembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson & Vermeer, The Astronomer
Listen: Bach & Handel

Sec 5 • Leviathan: The State & Social Contract

5.1 Hobbes after the Civil War
5.2 Locke: Property, Toleration, & the Blank Slate
5.3 Versailles: Absolutism as Theatre
5.4 Rousseau & the General Will

Culture & Values ch. 15 (cont.)
Read: Hobbes, Leviathan (sel.), & Locke, Second Treatise (sel.)
Art: the Leviathan frontispiece & Rigaud, Louis XIV
Listen: Lully at the Sun King's court & Purcell

Sec 6 • The Enlightenment & Its Shadows

6.1 Sapere Aude: Philosophes, Salons, & the Encyclopédie
6.2 Candide: Voltaire Against Optimism
6.3 First Nations: The Americas & Enlightenment's Others
6.4 The Classical Style: Mozart, Haydn, & the Age of Elegance

Culture & Values chs. 16 & 19
Read: Voltaire, Candide (sel.); Kant, "What Is Enlightenment?";
Read²: Waters, American Indian Thought (sel.); Stannard, American Holocaust (sel.)
Art: Fragonard, The Swing; the Templo Mayor & the codices
Listen: Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro (sel.)

MODULE III – Nationalism & Industry (1776-1913)

Sec 7 • The Age of Revolutions

7.1 1776: Common Sense & the Rights of Man
7.2 1789: Paris, the Terror, & the Marseillaise
7.3 Athens on the Potomac: Neoclassicism & the New Republics
7.4 Goya & Napoleon: The Birth of Nationalism

Culture & Values chs. 19-20
Read: Paine, Common Sense (sel.); Hutchinson & Smith, Nationalism (sel.)
Art: David, Oath of the Horatii & Death of Marat; Goya, The Third of May 1808
Listen: “La Marseillaise” & Beethoven, Eroica (and the torn dedication)

Sec 8 • Romanticism & Modern Science

8.1 Sturm und Drang: Goethe & the Sorrows of the Self
8.2 The Sublime: Friedrich, Turner, & Beethoven
8.3 Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus
8.4 Questioning Progress: Romanticism Against the Machine

Culture & Values ch. 20
Read: Shelley, Frankenstein (novel #1) & Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (sel.)
Art: Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog & Turner's storms; Fuseli, The Nightmare
Listen: Schubert, Erlkönig; Beethoven’s No. 5; Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique

Sec 9 • Industry & Empire

9.1 The Machine Age: Coal, Rail, & the Crystal Palace
9.2 Metropolis: Picturing the Industrial City
9.3 Europeans Seize the World: Africa & the Colonizer's Model
9.4 Uncle Tom's Cabin: Abolition & the Sentimental Weapon

Culture & Values chs. 17-18, 20
Read: Mudimbe, The Idea of Africa (sel.) & Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (sel.)
Read²: Dickens, Hard Times (rec.)
Art: the Crystal Palace; Turner, The Slave Ship; the camera goes to the colonies
Listen: spirituals — “Go Down Moses”
Screen (first film): Metropolis

Sec 10 • Marx & the Age of Oil

10.1 1848: The Manifesto & the Specter of Revolution
10.2 Alienation: The Self on the Assembly Line
10.3 The Prize: Rockefeller & the Age of Oil
10.4 Realism: Courbet, Daumier, & Painting the Poor

Culture & Values chs. 20-21
Read: Marx, The Communist Manifesto (sel.); Yergin, The Prize (sel.)
Read²: Economides, The Color of Oil (sel.); Huxley, Brave New World (sel. — "Our Ford")
Art: Courbet, The Stone Breakers & Daumier, Third-Class Carriage;
Art²: Millet, The Gleaners & Menzel, The Iron Rolling Mill
Listen: Joplin's ragtime — music for a mass age
Screen (brief selection): Modern Times

Sec 11 • Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, & the Fin de Siècle

11.1 The Present Age: Kierkegaard Against the Crowd
11.2 Zarathustra: Nietzsche & the Death of God
11.3 The Painted Moment: Impressionism & Its Rebels
11.4 The Nervous Age: Darwin, Freud, & Mahler's Hammer

Culture & Values ch. 21
Read: Kierkegaard, The Present Age (sel.); Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (sel.)
Art: Monet, Impression, Sunrise; Van Gogh, The Starry Night
Art²: Cézanne & Hokusai & Japonisme
Listen: Debussy, Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
Listen²: Mahler, Symphony No. 6 in A Minor (1906) and its hammer blows!

MODULE IV – The End of Modernity (1914-1960s)

Sec 12 • The World at War

12.1 1914: Machine Guns, Mustard Gas, & All Quiet
12.2 The Modernist Rupture: Dada, Duchamp, & The Rite
12.3 The Grapes of Wrath: Depression & the New Deal
12.4 Night: The Holocaust & the Break in Civilization

Culture & Values ch. 22
Read: Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (sel.) & Wiesel, Night (sel.)
Read²: Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (sel.) & Freud, Civilization & Its Discontents (sel.)
Art: Otto Dix's war prints; Duchamp, Fountain; Dalí;
Art²: Lange, Migrant Mother; Picasso, Guernica
Listen: Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring; Shostakovich, Symphony No. 5 in D Minor
Screen (sel.): All Quiet on the Western Front (1930); Night and Fog

Sec 13 • Aftermath: The Bomb & the Absurd

13.1 By the Bomb's Early Light: Hiroshima & the Atomic Imagination
13.2 Existentialism: Sartre, Beauvoir, & Freedom After Auschwitz
13.3 The Stranger: Camus & the Colonial Absurd
13.4 New York Steals Modern Art: Pollock, Rothko, & Bebop

Culture & Values ch. 23
Read: Camus, The Stranger (novel #2) & Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light (sel.)
Read²: Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism (sel.) & Beauvoir, The Second Sex (sel.)
Art: Pollock's drips & Rothko's fields
Listen: Parker's bebop; Cage, 4′33″

Sec 14 • The Culture Industry & the Cold War

14.1 Manipulation: Adorno & the Culture Industry
14.2 One-Dimensional Man: Marcuse, Madison Avenue, & Suburbia
14.3 Strange Fruit to Selma: Civil Rights & the Counterculture
14.4 Dr. Strangelove: The Binary World

Culture & Values ch. 23
Read: Adorno & Horkheimer, The Culture Industry (sel.) & Marcuse, 1-Dem. Man (sel.)
Read²: Engelhardt, The End of Victory Culture (sel.) & MLK, Ltr from Birmingham Jail
Art: Warhol's soup cans, Lichtenstein’s pop art, & Levittown through the lens
Listen: Holiday, Strange Fruit, Bob Dylan, & Hendrix's Star-Spangled Banner
Screen (sel.): Dr. Strangelove

Sec 15 • The Postmodern Critique

15.1 The Postmodern Condition: Lyotard & the End of Grand Narratives
15.2 Simulacra: Baudrillard, Warhol, & Hyperreality
15.3 The 21st Century & Its Discontents
15.4 Do Androids Dream?: Blade Runner, AI, & the Inhuman

Culture & Values ch. 23
Read: Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (sel.) & The Inhuman (sel.)
Read²: Baudrillard, Sim & Simul. (sel.) & Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (sel.)
Art: Venturi & Gehry — architecture after modernism
Art²: Nam June Paik's screens & the machine-made image (2020s)
Listen: Glass & Reich's minimalism; Kraftwerk, Computer World; sampling as pastiche
Screen (film #2): Blade Runner