World History in a Year (Week 32): AD 100s
The AD 100s saw two opposite developments within the Americas: the fall of the Preclassic Maya kingdoms in Mesoamerica, and the rise of the Moche in north-central Peru.
As with the later and more well-known fall of the Classic Maya, the reasons for the fall of the Preclassic Maya are not known, but their society seems to have declined and collapsed during the century, and their cities were abandoned. The process would have occurred over several decades, not immediately. Severe droughts likely played a role, in both the lowland and highland areas. The lake near which Kaminaljuyu was located dried up, possibly due to tectonic movements changing the course of waterways. The fall, however, was not universal; while it spelled the end of Kaminaljuyu and El Mirador, Tikal survived and would be among the main powers of the later Classic Maya.
To the west and northwest, Monte Alban and Teotihuacan remained strong regional powers. Teotihuacan’s population grew further, reaching a peak of around 125,000-200,000 that it would maintain through the next several centuries. This made it possibly the largest city ever in the precolumbian Americas, rivalled only by Aztec Tenochtitlan over a century later. Its Pyramids of the Sun and Moon were further expanded.
Meanwhile, in South America the Moche culture and its capital of Huacas de Moche were rising in the Moche Valley. Like Teotihuacán, it had two pyramid-temples termed the Temple of the Moon and Temple of the Sun; in both cases the names were given by the Spanish and do not reflect the temples’ original purposes and associations. Those of the Moche were made of adobe brick; they were initially constructed in the AD 100s, but like those of Teotihuacán they were expanded over the following centuries. The Pyramid of the Moon was a site for religious rituals, while political rulers lived in elaborate palaces at the top of the Pyramid of the Sun. Between the two stretched a large city home to upper and middle classes, with different sections for aristocrats, potters, stone-carvers, butchers and food processors, weavers, and metalworkers. Moche art included elaborate carvings and multicoloured murals on the temples, fine pottery, and elaborate golden and jewelled ornaments. Use of molds and stamps in pottery enabled large-scale manufacturing of high-quality artistic pieces. Moche metalworking involved advanced applications of chemistry and physics such as electroplating, used to cover the surfaces of other metals with gold gilding.
Photos from Wikipedia: Moche ceramic in the shape of sea lion pup ; Moche gold jewellery.
At the same time as the Moche society was rising, a new empire was expanding on the other side of the world, in Central Asia: the Kushan Empire. This was founded by the Yuezhi people who had been driven to Afghanistan by earlier conflicts in the 100s BC. It began as a state ruling much of Afghanistan in the first century AD, and grew by the second century AD to encompass the Indus and Ganges valleys up to and including the former Mauryan capital of Pataliputra. It was at the heart of the Silk Road trade across Eurasia and also connected to the Indian Ocean trade, importing cloves from as far away as eastern Indonesia.
Its rulers, of whom the most famous was Kanishka, identified themselves with deities from multiple religions, including Hercules, Ahura Mazda (Zoroastrian), Shiva (this was a period when Shiva and Vishnu were just beginning to become prominent in Hinduism), and (presented as a god by the Kushan) Buddha. They issued coins with their ruler’s portrait on one side and images of these gods on the other. The Kushan did not show a particular interest in advocating ethical precepts from religion, as Ashoka had; they invoked these religions to support their power. This is part of a pattern we’ll see across the following centuries: religions like Buddhism and Christianity that had emerged outside and in opposition to existing power structures becoming, as they grew more widespread and popular, incorporated into state structures to support state power.
Buddhism became increasingly common through Central Asia during this period, spread along the Silk Road by merchants and nomadic monks. It was also under the Kushan Empire that Buddhist statuary became common. In general, it was the Mahayana form of Buddhism that spread, with its ideas of bodhisattvas and multiple buddhas, and more spiritual engagement of non-monastic followers.
In China, the 100s BC saw the first translations of Buddhist texts into Chinese by a collaborative process involving a multinational and multilingual team. The use of Daoist terms as approximate translations for Indian concepts, like wuwei for nirvana and dao for dharma, led to differences in how these concepts were understood. Daoism was also changing under the influence of Buddhism, becoming more religion than philosophy, with a textual canon, worship of Laozi, and rituals at his birthplace. It gained currency as frustrations with political factionalism and corruption spurred a desire for a simpler life and a back-to-nature movement in poetry.
The spread of these ideas was enhanced by continuing increases in upper-class literacy and by expansion of the use of paper, first invented a couple centuries earlier. A very early form of printing was also developed, with the Five Classics (including the Book of Odes and the I Ching) being engraved on stone tablets from which rubbings could be made. The increased use of paper also facilitated scientific writing. Xu Shen produced the first linguistic analysis of written Chinese. The polymath Zhang Heng invented a seismograph and an improved water clock, correctly identified moonlight as reflected sunlight, and was skilled in calligraphy, an art considered a necessary part of a cultivated education from this point through the rest of Chinese imperial history.
Returning to the matter of empires and religions, relations between the two could also be strongly conflictual. Material hardship among the peasantry combined with Daoist utopianism in inspiring two rebellions in the AD 180s which were harshly repressed by Han China: the Yellow Turbans and the Five Pecks of Rice movement. (The latter was named for its annual dues, not, as I initially thought, for an objective à la “truth, justice, and a hard-boiled egg.”) These were part of a general upheaval within the Han Dynasty in the late 100s, which was by this time on its last legs.
On the other side of Eurasia, the Roman Emperor Hadrian incited the last of the Jewish revolts, the Bar Kokhba Rebellion, by attempting to establish a Roman soldiers’ colony on the ruins of Jerusalem and rename it Aelia Capitolina. The revolt lasted from 132 to 135, and estimates of deaths from Rome’s repression of it range from hundreds of thousands to over half a million. It ended with Rome’s expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem and large parts of the surrounding area.
Hadrian was part of a new system of Roman imperial succession that basically amounted to less of a hereditary monarchy than an appointed monarchy. Adoption of adults was an established part of Roman society, and various emperors in the 100s adopted adults – usually successful generals or officials – and designated them their heirs. This was the case with Hadrian, adopted by his predecessor Trajan shortly before Trajan’s death. Hadrian likewise adopted his successor, Antoninus Pius, who adopted his successor, Marcus Aurelius. This neatly avoided issues of childless emperors, child rulers, or unfit successors – up until the time when Marcus Aurelius was succeeded by his 19-year-old son Commodus, another of the noted ‘mad’ Roman emperors like Nero and Caligula in the previous century. Commodus’ overthrow marked the end of Roman emperors who were even distantly related to Julius and Augustus Caesar, and the start of a new dynasty under Septimus Severus.
The 100s were the peak of Roman power; they fought regularly with the Parthians and early in the century temporarily conquered as far as parts of present-day Iraq. They also captured Petra, giving them control of the overland trade between the Red Sea and Mediterranean. These conquests tied into other shifts in power throughout the region. Parthia was declining, both because of Roman attacks and because of commercial competition from the Kushan Empire, which stood between them and China and preferred gold over Parthia’s silver currency. Meanwhile in the Red Sea trade, Meroë in Sudan was declining as the kingdom of Aksum in Ethiopia displaced it as a trading hub between the regions of Africa further south and the Red Sea. By this time, then, global trade stretched throughout Eurasia, North Africa, and East Africa. Farming completed its spread through Africa, with Bantu expansion introducing millet and sorghum, along with iron, to Mozambique and South Africa.
In short, by a little over 2000 years ago, most of Eurasia, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa were connected in a substantial global trade network and most people in those areas were living within states. Agriculture and/or animal-herding was the norm in most of the world – most of Eurasia, most of Africa, parts of the Pacific Islands, most of South America and Mesoamerica, and what is now the eastern and southwestern United States. Northern Eurasia and northern North America – the boreal forest and tundra, unsuited for farming – were (along with Australia) the biggest stretch of land where hunter-gatherer lifestyles predominated. We’re still in “ancient” history, but compared to 3000 BC when the earliest states had emerged in a few small locations, the world has been transformed.
