ancient civilizations (need help)?

Question

1. How do the institutions of relighion, government, and the economy shape the development of civilizatin?
2. How did the role of religion in society change with the rise of the major world religions and ethical systems of Hinduism, Judaism, Confucianism, and Buddhism?
3. How did writing influence the ancient civilizatins?

Answer 1

Historians don't always agree and when they do, they aren't always right. You can give your own opinion too, if you have sources with whom you agree or disagree and historical references. The real idea is to get information about history as well as commentary and interpretations. Everything in life works together, so the different factors you mentioned work off each other. An agrarian society is likely to have a much different form of government and religion than a trading economy. You can imagine the religion of sailors and farmers would emphasize different things. A sailor would come across new ideas, cultures, forms of govenment and religions. This cultural diversity is thought to cause wars throughout history as well as great advances at first, when cultures came together. Education, the arts and enlightened government would be expected in a prosperous economy trading economy. Religion, government and money are used to control and dominate peoples. Money does make it easier to buy and sell without dragging a cow along. Religion and government are used to unite and divide people, whichever the one with the power wants, while ignorant people tend to be more warlike. And yet large governments make large scale war possible. It may be that greed, unsound cultural ideas, mindsets and emotions dominate and manipulate the other factors instead of vice versa. Some argue that unique and powerful personalities are the dominant factors in history.

As to the major religions arising, they tended to absorb tribal religions and unite large numbers of people, with good and bad consequences, as the founders became more and more misunderstood with time. The major religions where regional with the more spiritual ones being in the East and right brained, while the literal left brained peoples went West. That seems strange. That led to more technology in the West, with greater killing due to technology and a more cold logical attitude about killing, while the Mid-Easterners are both more reasoning and violent or more balanced, whichever way they went at that period of history. Frankly I don't think the words of a religion or any words dominate over peoples emotions. 'Reason' so often is really rationalization. The West always has 'reasons' and then they can commit any sort of atrocities. Emotional peoples us anger as their only necessary reason, although you see ego in Hinduism with one class 'better' than another. Whether a culture is considered reasoning or emotional, they both are really moved by emotions. Religion becomes an excuse and government enforces the inequity, while economics in the East has always been bad, due to lack of emphasis on science and technology as we see even in the West of that day. Of course that's changing radically now. The religions did offer a type of education, but with mixed results considering it's misuse. When religion became bigger, people also tended to unite under larger governments.

Writing helps people deal with events from a more global perspective and see the results of certain policies over a period of time and in other cultures. It helped in commerce with letters of credit, treaties and contracts. It lent something concrete to and consistency in beliefs. Someone could compare their culture with another and pass scientific information around to become a sort of collective mind with the accumilation of ideas building on each other and more people were reached with education. Better descisions can be made with more information and a people can be more on the same page, until the written word became an excuse to divide people. It would seem a lower human nature, again, has more effect overall than ideas. As does the higher consciousness, to which religion and philosophy can lead. Any power, it would seem gets used for good and bad or even both at the same time in the same location. Writing and ideas seem to have a slower effect than ignorance and passion.

Answer 2

The whole idea of montheism began with the Persians, the tradition of Zoasterianism. It goes back to about the beginning of the Bronze Age. The ability to make metal meant the ability to make weapons, so suddenly war and conquest became possible in a way it hadn't been before. Zoroaster reacted to this by promoting one 'spirit' to being God, the one God. Ahura Mazda, the Spirit of Wisdom. Zoroasterianism was the first religion to have good vs. evil, a God who expected us to behave in a certain way, heaven and hell, a judgement day, etc. etc. In fact, prophesy isn't found in the Jewish scriptures until the book of Daniel. This book was written during a period called 'the great exile', when Judea was occupied by Babylon and the Hebrews were forced to scatter to as far away as Persia. It's thought some Jewish priests came in contact with Zoroasterians and that's where Jewish prophesy came from in the first place! And Zoroasterianism still exists today, in parts of India, the Parsi religion.

Answer 3

Check this out...it will help for the hinduism bit

http://www.hinduwisdom.info

go the "history" section.