Читать книгу World History For Dummies - Peter Haugen - Страница 79

Over the thousands of years since the first cities and civilizations rose and spread in the Middle East and Asia, many other cultures in the following areas took significant strides. Here are just a few examples:

 Africa: In what’s now northern Nigeria, the Nok people cleared tropical rainforest for farmland, using iron-bladed axes and hoes, around 600 BC. The Nok were also sculptors, making realistic figurines of terra cotta.

 Ireland, Scotland, Denmark, France, and Spain: Hundreds of years before the first pyramids in Egypt, people in Western Europe built communal graves out of stone and earth. Surviving examples date back to 3500 BC; some particularly good ones remain in Orkney, a group of islands off the coast of Scotland, and at Newgrange, Ireland. Europeans of the late Stone Age also left entire villages built of stone. More spectacular yet are the huge stone circles called megaliths (or “big rocks”) that these people erected. Stonehenge, the most famous, was raised in southern England between 3000 and 2000 BC.

 Japan: People lived in small villages on the mountainous islands that would become Japan as early as 9000 BC, mostly near the ocean and along rivers. They transitioned from a hunter–gatherer lifestyle to agriculture, first growing vegetables and millet. These people were potters, too, and their cord-pattern pots give the period its name, Jomon. By the end of the Jomon era, around 300 BC, Japanese potters showed a broader view of the world as they borrowed Chinese-style decorations. Another Chinese innovation, rice growing, also spread to Japan.