World History in a Year (Week 21) - 800s BC
The 800s BC brought the adoption of iron on a larger scale across Western Asia and Egypt, and with it rise of imperial power greater than had been seen in the previous Bronze Age. The first such empire was Assyria â the Neo-Assyrian Empire, as historians call its Iron Age iteration.
This was not a positive development for people of West Asia who lived outside Assyria's northern Mesopotamian heartland. The principal role of an Assyrian king was war; they dated their reigns by their military campaigns and led them personally, generally in summer when men were less needed for agriculture (as opposed to planting in spring and harvesting in fall) and terrain was easier than in winter. The Assyrians used terror as a weapon to a degree that appears to have been unprecedented at the time. Assyrian kings made inscriptions, and carved scenes in their temples and palaces, boasting of mass slaughter, of cutting off the hands, feet, noses, lips, and ears of conquered populations and flaying captives alive. They engaged in massacres of towns and mass destruction of farmland. This brutality was intended to induce rapid surrender and payment of tribute, and avoid costly and difficult sieges of cities. Through these methods, Assyria extracted massive amounts of wealth and treasure from other areas of Western Asia.
The Neo-Assyrian Empireâs first period of expansion was under Assurnasirpal II (r. 883â859) and Shalmaneser III (r. 858â824). Under these kings Assyria conquered the whole area of northern Mesopotamia and eastern Syria, roughly restoring its Late Bronze Age borders, and intervened in a Babylonian civil war. Beyond this region, particularly in western Syria and the Levant, they launched invasions, looted, and extracted heavy tribute from many small kingdoms, but did not annex additional territory. They also attacked the borders of another major state, Urartu in the south Caucasus (founded around the mid-800s BC), but found its mountainous terrain too difficult to fight in. Starting in the 820s BC internal political conflicts reduced Assyriaâs power, and Assyria's neighbours had a reprieve.
The Phoenicians were among the groups in the Levant from whom Assyria levied tribute. The need for increased sources of wealth to meet Assyrian demands may have played a role in Phoenician maritime expansion during this century. Over the course of the 800s BC the Phoenicians set up colonies ranging from Cyprus (rich in copper, and in fact named for it) to as far away as Cadiz in Spain, beyond the straits of Gibraltar, a source of gold and silver. Around the end of the century they established the colony of Carthage in North Africa. The scale of this expansion was likely enabled by the invention of the keel (the ridge down the bottom of a boat), giving ships greater stability. The Phoenicians also had cultural influence on neighbouring kingdoms: Israelâs king Ahab and his wife Jezebel are infamous in the Bible for introducing the worship of the Phoenician god Baal during this period.
The Phoenicians were not the only group engaged in seafaring expansion in the 800s BC: around this century, the Lapita people explored further into Polynesia, discovering and settling the islands of Samoa and Tonga. After this their expansions ceased; it would be centuries before Polynesian voyages of discovery resumed, and by that time their art and culture had changed from the forms characteristic of the Lapita.
In Peru, as in Western Asia, the scale of regional power dynamics was increasing, but here the change was religious and cultural rather than military. The last and largest phase of construction of the temple at ChavĂn de HuantĂĄr in the Andes was completed. This incorporated a large plaza flanked by size buildings, leading to a monumental archway composed of round black pillars and white rectangular stone slabs. Through the archway, one reached a round plaza surrounded by a U-shaped temple. This temple incorporated elements from widely dispersed areas: the U-shape and plazas were characteristic of earlier coastal structures, and worship used large numbers of trumpets made from shells brought from the coast; but the artistic carvings throughout the temple, of figures combining features of humans, jaguars, caiman, harpy eagles and snakes, drew their motifs from the Amazon rainforest to the east.Â
The temple appears to have been a pilgrimage site, in the following centuries drawing people and offerings from all around northern and central Peru. Its design had elements that would have been used in impressive ceremonies for visiting dignitaries or initiates: ventilation and water systems drew air and water through the temple in ways that would have created eerie sounds like those of large animals in core sanctuaries, the ventilation also used light and darkness in evocative ways, and the entire ceremonial experience may have been heightened by use of psychoactive plants. In the main sanctuary areas were large and elaborately engraved pillars with images of deities.
The rise of ChavĂn was tied up with the fall of earlier coastal polities like the Manchay and SechĂn: after about 200 years of decline, their monumental settlements were abandoned around 800 BC. This could have been the consequence of reduced rainfall in the highlands leading to less river water for irrigation in these desert areas, destabilizing and collapsing the larger polities. People dispersed into smaller, less architecturally elaborate settlements.Â
Many of these new settlements, as well as other settlements in the Peruvian highlands, adopted the ChavĂn religion, emulating the imagery and artistic styles seen in the temple at ChavĂn de HuantĂĄr. Over time this appears to have strengthened both the status of the ChavĂn settlement, which grew from hundreds of people to a few thousand, as well as the status of local elites. From around 800 to 400 BC, new techniques in decorative metalwork developed, and leaders of communities were buried with these and other rich grave goods.
Another technological change was the increased use of alpaca wool in textiles and of llamas for transportation â the latter, in facilitating long-distance travel, could have contributed to ChavĂnâs scale of influence and role as a pilgrimage centre, in around the same period as camels were similarly facilitating increased desert travel in Western Asia.
In contrast to the spread of powers over larger regions in Western Asia and Peru, the Zhou Dynasty in China declined in the 800s BC, and power became less centralized. The noble families to whom the Zhou had delegated regional power grew stronger, and some began to disregard the king and write their own bronze inscriptions presenting themselves as independent rulers. This also indicates that literacy was becoming more widespread, if regional nobles had the ability to read these and had officials and craftsmen who could create them, rather than literacy being exclusive to the court in the capital. The writing of the earliest Chinese classical texts, like the Book of Odes (Shijing) and Book of Documents (Shujing), may have begun around this time, although they were written on more perishable materials and we do not have any copies from this period.Â
