Deck 4: First Empires and Common Cultures in Afro-Eurasia, 1250-325 Bce

Question 1

The culture of individual warrior-heroes that emerged in the eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean Islands was evoked in which piece of literature?

A) the Epic of Gilgamesh
B) the Vedas
C) the Book of the Dead
D) the Iliad

Answer 1

the Iliad

Question 2

Which of the following was an indicator of the depth of climate change in Afro-Eurasia around 1200 BCE?

A) The Neo-Assyrians were forced to move their capitol to Uruk.
B) Desperate farmers in the Indus River valley migrated westward, settling in Mesopotamia.
C) New techniques in dry-weather farming flourished in the Nile valley.
D) There was a two-century-long decline in large-scale urban construction and artistic representation.

Answer 2

There was a two-century-long decline in large-scale urban construction and artistic representation.

Question 3

What was one of the key factors shaping human development in the first millennium BCE?

A) religion
B) literacy
C) agriculture
D) war

Answer 3

war

Question 4

Who united the Persian tribes and established the Persian Empire?

A) Cyrus the Great
B) Assurnasirpal II
C) Tiglath Pileser III
D) Darius I

Question 5

Which of the following is evidence of effect of the climate change around 1200 BCE on the lands bordering the eastern Mediterranean?

A) Increased rains led to increased harvests for the Mycenaeans and a high point for their culture.
B) The pharaohs were forced to commit military resources to prevent invasions from Nubia.
C) Hittite rulers dispatched envoys to offer grain to provinces suffering from drought.
D) An Assyrian chronicle spoke of a famine so severe that people ate human flesh.

Question 6

In order to fulfill its agricultural and construction needs, what did the Neo-Assyrian empire do?

A) It relocated large numbers of conquered peoples to areas in which their labor was needed.
B) It obtained large numbers of slaves from Africa and central Asia.
C) It instituted a labor system that required work from all families for a certain number of days per year.
D) It permitted soldiers to regularly rotate back to their homes during planting and harvesting seasons.

Question 7

Which of the following about Assyrian society is correct?

A) Women served as support troops in the military and thereby gained important political and social rights.
B) Inheritance was divided between sons and daughters, so that daughters served as important members in family alliances.
C) Queens wielded considerable power behind the throne due to the independence granted them.
D) Interactions between men and women outside of the family were restricted, in order to be certain of paternity.

Question 8

Though both the Neo-Assyrian Empire and the Persian Empire asserted military power to forge their empires, what was an important difference between them?

A) The Persians did not have to control a multiethnic population.
B) The Persians' ancestors were farmers, not pastoralists.
C) The Persians used infantry exclusively in their army.
D) The Persians asserted imperial power based on persuasion and appeal to common benefit.

Question 9

What was the chief agent of change in overland trade in the first millennium BCE?

A) the ox
B) the horse
C) the donkey
D) the camel

Question 10

Why was the eighth-century BCE Neo-Assyrian ruler Tiglath Pileser III notable?

A) He expanded the rights of the nobles over their property in order to earn their support.
B) He expelled priests and other religious leaders from the state in order to stabilize his power.
C) He established hereditary governors in the provinces who were given wide powers to rule in the king's name.
D) He made several reforms, which increased the amount of property in the Land of Ashur proper.

Question 11

Which of the following characterized the reliance on the military to establish and maintain order in the Neo-Assyrian Empire?

A) the use of bronze weapons and infantry
B) the use of brutality and terror to intimidate opponents
C) the use of a smaller but more versatile military force
D) the destruction of Nineveh by Assyrian forces

Question 12

Which of the following characterized the role of subjects in the Neo-Assyrian empire?

A) People who lived in Assyria proper were heavily taxed and regulated in order to prevent rebellion.
B) People who lived in Assyria proper were forbidden from serving in political offices in order to prevent rival factions from emerging.
C) The conquered people who lived outside of Assyria were ruled directly by officials appointed by the king.
D) The conquered people who lived outside Assyria joined the army on campaigns.

Question 13

Which of the following led to migrations of nomadic populations in the first millennium BCE?

A) religious renewal
B) new shipbuilding technologies
C) radical climate change
D) bronze tools for cultivation

Question 14

Which of the following marks a difference between the way Assyrians and non-Assyrians were treated under Tiglath Pileser III?

A) Assyrian women were allowed moderate control over their own lives, including the right to inheritance.
B) Assyrians enslaved due to debts were permitted to marry free partners and engage in financial transactions.
C) Foreigners enslaved through war were granted rights of marriage and the ability to work for wages.
D) Foreigners who were forcibly relocated were given full civil rights in their new localities.

Question 15

Which of the following innovations characterized the early empires that emerged in the first millennium BCE?

A) New imperial ideologies and beliefs were elaborated to support claims of political legitimacy.
B) Rulers allowed regional governors to establish laws.
C) New techniques for agriculture were imposed by the invaders.
D) Respect for newly conquered peoples ended involuntary deportation and resettlement.

Question 16

Which of the following about the Sea Peoples is correct?

A) They were migrants from southern Africa who adopted boats as a primary means of transportation.
B) They disrupted the social order of the Minoans on the island of Crete.
C) They settled in northern Africa, from where they dominated the western Mediterranean Sea.
D) They became known as the Carthaginians.

Question 17

What do the architectural decorations of the Persian Empire indicate?

A) The empire was a homogenized state of people who adopted Persian culture.
B) The Persians preserved their nomadic culture.
C) The empire was a society of diverse, obedient peoples.
D) The empire used terror to control local peoples.

Question 18

Which of the following is correct about the Persian Empire?

A) Cyrus the Great relocated the Jews from Jerusalem to Babylon.
B) Darius I instituted a bureaucratic system based on central control in order to unify his realm.
C) Cyrus the Great claimed to liberate conquered peoples from the oppression of their own kings.
D) Darius I forced Persian traditions and customs on subject peoples.

Question 19

Which of the following was an important Persian building project?

A) a fifty-mile canal linking the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea
B) a network of ports on the Indian Ocean to facilitate trade and commerce
C) open irrigation canals through the desert to improve agriculture
D) the Royal Road, for use by merchants, government couriers, and the military

Question 20

Which of the following best describes Zoroastrianism?

A) It was based on animistic nomadic beliefs.
B) It treated humans as capable of choosing between good and evil.
C) It emphasized the rule of twelve gods, named for the lunar months, over the affairs of humans.
D) It required that corpses be buried in bare earth so that they would decompose quickly and be reunited with nature.

Question 21

Which of the following was a way in which the Zhou asserted political power?

A) The ruler's power was transmitted through clan networks.
B) They copied the Shang patrimonial state, centered on ancestor veneration.
C) They paid tribute to pastoralists to keep them from invading.
D) They claimed descent from the First Emperor.

Question 22

For the Vedic people, which of the following is correct about the four-group division system?

A) It was uniformly enforced throughout South Asia.
B) It was a way to stratify an increasingly agricultural and settled world.
C) It provided for equal land distribution among all four castes.
D) It originated with the Vedic people's nomadic life on the central Asian plains.

Question 23

Who were the Brahmans in Vedic society?

A) They rejected the older culture of the Aryans that represented their nomadic past.
B) They rejected all beliefs and practices other than their own when they wrote the Vedas.
C) They frequently challenged the authority of the political leaders by claiming spiritual authority.
D) They were priests who performed rituals.

Question 24

For what major public works project did the Zhou dynasty take over responsibility?

A) the network of roads
B) the Great Wall
C) dikes and irrigation systems
D) the wall of the capital city

Question 25

The Upanishads teach that all people are part of a cosmic universe called what?

A) Upanishads
B) Manu
C) Brahma
D) Vedanta

Question 26

Which of the following about the emergence of monotheism among the Israelites is correct?

A) It was universally encouraged by the priestly elite, who hoped to expand its power by developing a single ethnic community worshipping a single deity.
B) It was rejected by the prophets, who broke off to form splinter groups.
C) It unified a people who had long rejected all outside cultural influences.
D) It came after a period of henotheism, in which one god has power and ascendancy over other spirits and deities that still exist.

Question 27

Which of the following about the Phoenicians is correct?

A) They were Greek sailors who settled in North Africa.
B) They developed seaworthy crafts from the massive cedar trees.
C) They were politically ambitious to establish a maritime empire throughout the Indian Ocean.
D) They did not produce manufactured or agricultural goods themselves, but only acted as traders.

Question 28

In what way did the Vedas promote cultural unity?

A) by creating common ritual practices and supporting the hereditary raja states
B) by creating the Kshatriyas to memorize and interpret the Vedic works
C) by incorporating the religious beliefs of the Harappan people
D) by making movement between social classes possible

Question 29

How did the Zhou rulers seek to legitimize their takeover of the Shang dynasty?

A) by appealing to astronomical occurrences to verify that the gods supported them
B) by promoting agricultural prosperity
C) by establishing social stability with the defeat of various bandits
D) by asserting moral superiority

Question 30

Which of the following correctly characterizes what scholars know about the Israelites' origins?

A) Judah served as a trader-state with special status, controlling trade with Egypt under Assyrian authority.
B) The Israelites were a pastoral nomadic people who moved into Judah from the Arabian desert and established dominance.
C) Judah was a hybrid society that merged aspects of the states of South Asia with its own traditions.
D) Material signs of a local regional culture began to emerge around 1200 BCE, culminating in the emergence of a kingdom under kings David and Solomon.

Question 31

Which of the following about the Zhou dynasty is correct?

A) It geographically extended its power slowly as regional aristocracies joined a hierarchical system under its rule.
B) It centralized its authority as it crushed numerous intrigues and attacks from local rulers.
C) It used religious rituals and ideas to unify political rivals.
D) It established a unified realm organized through appointed provincial governors.

Question 32

The Phoenicians developed which groundbreaking innovation?

A) ships with stern-post rudders
B) monotheism
C) water-powered irrigation systems
D) the alphabet

Question 33

What was the Zhou doctrine that legitimated the rule of a dynasty called?

A) the divine sanction
B) the mandate of heaven
C) the divine right of kings
D) the duty of kingship

Question 34

Which of the following is correct about the decline of the Zhou dynasty?

A) The Zhou family attacked the people of the steppe to try to demonstrate its military power.
B) The Zhou expanded its family rituals in order to retain the appearance of power.
C) The Zhou managed to hold on to power until a peasant revolt drove the Zhou from their capital.
D) The Zhou dynasty was soon discredited as a failed regime and became a model of the errors of a territorial state.

Question 35

Which of the following is a valid comparison between the Zhou and other Afro-Eurasia states?

A) Like the Neo-Assyrians, the Zhou state became a regional superpower, dominating nearby principalities.
B) Like the Persians, the Zhou expected regional lords to keep the provinces in line.
C) Like the Neo-Assyrians, the Zhou used terror and intimidation to control the provinces.
D) The Zhou, unlike the Vedic people, used religion as a means to forge unity.

Question 36

Which of the following is the primary reason that the Zhou made efforts to perfect their astronomical system?

A) They were strong believers in astromancy.
B) They needed to be able to date the reigns of Zhou rulers.
C) They needed to provide work for unemployed scholars who might otherwise write satires about the Zhou court.
D) Since the Zhou ruled by the will of the heavens, they needed to create an accurate calendar for agricultural and religious events.

Question 37

In contrast to the societies of Southwest Asia and North Africa, where empires provided political integration, what happened in South Asia?

A) A single ethnic group provided cultural and political unity.
B) A loose confederation of trading states provided political stability.
C) No stable methods of governance arose.
D) The common Vedic culture and beliefs provided the unifying bond.

Question 38

To what does the word mahajanapada refer?

A) the sixteen "great communities" that occupied the Ganges River basin
B) the ritual of sacrificing horses
C) the earliest holy book of the Vedic people
D) the lowest social group in the Vedic caste system

Question 39

What happened to China's growing wealth under the Zhou dynasty?

A) It was concentrated in the cities, leaving the countryside relatively poorer.
B) It permitted the Zhou kings to reduce tax rates.
C) It was creating severe inflationary pressure that disrupted the political system.
D) It was so large that nomadic people from the north were starting to become dependent on trade with China.

Question 40

Zoroastrian teachings and the Vedic texts both drew their religious ideas from their pastoral and tribal roots.

Question 41

For centuries after its founding, the Zhou dynasty's authority went unchallenged and reforms were unnecessary.

Question 42

How did migrating peoples affect the Afro-Eurasian empires after 1200 BCE? Discuss the origins of these migrating peoples, the states they disrupted, and the ways in which they aided cultural integration.

Question 43

In the Vedic tradition, atman refers to the eternal being that governs the process of reincarnation.

Question 44

What relationships developed between larger states and peripheral societies in the Aegean and the Levant? What was the impact of the peripheral societies?

Question 45

Compare the Zhou state to the Neo-Assyrian state and Persian Empire. How did they form different types of states? How did each try to integrate its realm?

Question 46

The Phoenicians' most iconic trade item was an expensive purple dye.

Question 47

The battle at Salamis marked the beginning of a reversal for the Persian military, who continued to lose ground to the Greeks.

Question 48

Compare the ways the new states in Southwest Asia and East Asia used public works as a way to assert legitimacy and integrate their empires.

Question 49

Discuss the social, religious, and political structure of Vedic society in South Asia. Of what importance was the state to the process of cultural integration?