1. Social Structure and Family Life
1.1. Shang/Zhou
1.1.1. 1. Family relations were arranged by marriage with no kinship link existed.
1.1.2. 2. To guard against flooding by the Yangtze or Yellow River, the ancient Shang Zhou developed complex forms of irrigation and flood control.
1.1.3. 3. The Shang Zhou created a social pyramid with the king on top, flooded by the military nobility, priests, merchants, and lastly farmers.
1.1.4. 4. As time went on, kinship ties loosened and the local rulers became less identified with the Zhou king and more with their allocated territories which became stronger in large peripheral states.
1.2. Sumerians
1.2.1. 1. Most of the population in ancient Mesopotamia were farmers, that worked on small plots of land.
1.2.2. 2. The bottom of society were beggars and they were usually war captives, fallen into debt, or that have been born into slavery.
1.2.3. 3. Most marriages were monogamous, especially in wealthy families or when the wife was unable to have children.
1.2.4. 4. The father of a child has complete control of their life and can sell them into slavery. The child is under the control of their father until they get married.
2. Economy and Trade
2.1. Shang/Zhou
2.1.1. 1. All goods circulated mostly through tribute or gift rather than trading through cities.
2.1.2. 2. Rulers could no longer afford to hire their miners on the basis of their birth dates as talent became far more important in hiring people for jobs.
2.1.3. 3. The Warring States Period, beginning in 476 B.C.E.,where seven states were the chief contenders that fought for the unification and control of China.
2.1.4. 4. The supremacy of the states of Qin, Qi, and Chu were so great that it seemed China would be divided into three, so there would be one section for each state. Then Qin concurred the other two sections and China began the Qin dynasty.
2.2. Sumerians
2.2.1. 1. A city- state was viewed as a household of a patron God which gave the temple an immense degree of control over economic activity.
2.2.2. 2. The long - distance trade caravans were organized and supplied by the temple, and the traders were typically temple servants.
2.2.3. 3. The king took on economic power through taking land from the temple, diverting work of scribes, overseers, and craftsman.
2.2.4. 4. In Mesopotamia's early history food surplus and craft goods were exchanged for mineral resources.
3. Arts and Education
3.1. Shang/Zhou
3.1.1. 1. The Shang Zhou was the first culture in China to have a fully developed writing system.
3.1.2. 2. Art generally had a functional or ritual purpose and was primarily within tomb and burial contexts.
3.1.3. 3. Later in the Zhou period, remebered as an intellectual adventurism, as new philosophical schools, such as confucianism, Daoism, and legalism that was flourished in abundance.
3.1.4. 4. The Shang dynasty is the earliest period in China for which textual and archaeological both exist, and early historical Chinese texts identify the Xia dynasty as the first dynasty.
3.2. Sumerians
3.2.1. 1. The Sumarians developed a writing system whose wedged - shaped strokes would influence the style of scripts.
3.2.2. 2. All the diverse writing systems which made both logohonetic, consonantal alphabetic, and symbolic systems became know as cuneiform.
3.2.3. 3. Before writing was used in Mesopotamia, they used small clay objects in abstract shapes, called clay tokens and were used to count agriculture and manufactured goods.
3.2.4. 4. The Sumerian's writing system in early periods was constantly in flux, which went from top to bottom, and changed over time to going from the left to right.
4. Science and Technology
4.1. Shang/Zhou
4.1.1. 1. The Shang Zhou mastered bronze technology, and introduced the horse - drawn chariot.
4.1.2. 2. By the 7th century B.C., the advancements in iron production allowed for new and stronger weapons and tools for farming.
4.1.3. 3. Shang Zhou domesticated animals and seeds to create better animals and seeds to create better animals for labor and food for better nutrition.
4.1.4. 4. The Shang Zhou had many types of healing methods to cure sicknesses. For example, they used healing methods like acupuncture and moxibustion.
4.2. Sumerians
4.2.1. 1. The Sumerians developed an impressive body of scientific knowledge through close observations of the natural world.
4.2.2. 2. Mesopotamian priests produced astronomical tables and predicted eclipses and solstices using a twelve month calendar based on cycles of the moon.
4.2.3. 3. The Sumerians developed theroms on how to measure the area of several shapes and solids. However, they came very close to having an accurate measure of the circumference of a circle.
4.2.4. 4. Disease was seen as a sign of the gods displeasure with a person, and the doctors would prescribe the healing ceremony to heal the disease.
5. Government/Leaders
5.1. Shang/Zhou
5.1.1. 1. Labor - intense bronze production was on an symbolic of ruling authority at ritual and burial traditions.
5.1.2. 2. The Shang Zhou developed a system of government that gave hereditary power to local leaders, including relatives of the royal family, trusted subordinates, and loyal local chiefs.
5.1.3. 3. Before the Shang Zhou would select ministers and court members based by their birth dates rather than their talent.
5.1.4. 4. The last king of the Shang dynasty, Shang Chou, was a cruel man that was known for his ways of torture. The dynasty had been weakened by repeated battles with nomads and rivaling tribes in China.
5.2. Sumerians
5.2.1. 1. There are indications that are the common people brought what they grew to the temple, underachieved back what they needed from the priest to live.
5.2.2. 2. The first bureaucracies in history emerged so scribes and accountants were needed to keep track of what was being brought into and what was being sent out of temple store houses.
5.2.3. 3. The farmers too were temple employees working the God's land and under the authority of the temple's priests and overseers.
5.2.4. 4. During the early third millennium B.C. kingship arose in all city - states, and in subsequent centuries became gathered more and more power and brought status to themselves.
6. Religion
6.1. Shang/Zhou
6.1.1. 1. The society had an emphasis on ancestor worship and had a belief in a phantom of Gods headed by the supreme of Di.
6.1.2. 2. The responses of the Shang Zhou to the living's questions about war, hunting , and harvesting were relayed through divinations on oral bones.
6.1.3. 3. Many believed in ritual ceremonies where they could talk to the underworld to contact their ancestors that have passed.
6.1.4. 4. As Buddhism gained popularity, it occasionally clashed with another religion called Shinto. However, Buddhism didn't replace this religion but they just over lapped each other and complemented each other very nicely.
6.2. Sumerians
6.2.1. 1. Mesopotamia religion was polytheistic and there's over two thousand Gods and Goddesses that have been identified.
6.2.2. 2. Every household, village, and city has its own God, so everything on Earth has a divine dimension to it.
6.2.3. 3. The overriding purpose of a man was to serve the Gods and this meant to feed and provide them with any material item they needed.
6.2.4. 4. The chief of the Gods varied from each period but for the Sumerians it was Enlin, the Sky God.
7. Geography and Agriculture
7.1. Shang/Zhou
7.1.1. 1. Around 1500 BC, the Shang Zou inhabited the land along th Yellow River.
7.1.2. 2. During the course of several centuries, the Zhou moved away from all of the Barbarian presures.
7.1.3. 3. The Shang Zhou began to develop a Shang- Style agriculture, and they also built a city in an area named Plain of Zhou
7.1.4. 4. Later on, the Shang Zhou court extended its power over the eastern Plain, and started making more land for cities and farming.
7.2. Sumarians
7.2.1. 1. Each Sumerian city formed its own city - state, that were fiercely independent from one another and warfare between them was frequent.
7.2.2. 2. Mesopotamia is a vast, dry plain through which two great rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris River flow.
7.2.3. 3. The land in Mesopotamia is too dry to farm so many people that live here heard sheep and goats instead.
7.2.4. 4. A dense population grew up here along the Tigris and Euphrates River and their branches in the centuries after 5000 B.C. but by 3500 B.C.cities had appeared.