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Cahokia’s success bred its downfall and as woodlands fell to the axe and the soil lost its nutrients, timber and food became scarce. Soon the creeks that fed its water system could not keep up with demand, engineers changed their course, but to now avail. By 1350, the city was practically empty
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The Mali king Mansa Musa made a celebrated hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, in 1324-1325, traveling through Cairo and impressing crowds with the size of his retinue including his soldiers, wives, consorts and as many as 12,000 slaves and his display of wealth, especially many dazzling items made of gold.
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the Mali king that made a pilgrimage through Cairo
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By the thirteenth century ce, the Islamic heartland had fractured into three regions. In the east, (Central Asia, Iran, and eastern Iraq), the remnants of the old Abbasid state persevered with a succession of caliphs claiming to speak for all of Islam yet deferring to their Turkish military commanders.
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By 1300, Islam’s influence spanned Afro-Eurasia and reached multitudes of non-Arab converts. While Arabic remained the primary language of religious devotion, Persian became the language of Islamic philosophy and art and Turkish the language of the Islamic Law and administration. Islam attracted city dwellers and rural peasants alike, as well as its original audience of desert nomads. Islam’s extraordinary universal appeal generated an intense cultural flowering around 1000 ce.
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Of all Afro-Eurasian societies in 1300, the Chinese were the most advanced in their use of printing, book publishing and circulation, in part due to the invention of a movable type printing press by the artisan Bi Sheng around 1040.
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By 1300, Mande speaking merchants had followed the Senegal River to its outlet on the Atlantic coast and then pushed their commercial frontiers further inland and down the coast. Thus, even before European explorers and traders arrived in the mid-fifteenth century, West African peoples had created dynamic networks linking the hinterlands with coastal trading hubs.
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In the late 1270s two Christian monks, Bar Sawma and Markos, voyaged from what is now Beijing into the heart of the Islamic world.
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Hulagu reached Abbasid Baghdad in 1258, he encountered a feeble foe and a city that was a shadow of its former glorious self.
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a French chronicler of Louis X of France who led the Seventh Crusade, marveled at the order within the sultan’s camp and the role of musicians in calling the Muslim forces to hear the Sultan’s orders.
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Kublai Khan seized southern China from the Song Dynasty in the 1260s
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Over time, the Crusades drew together a range of peoples from varied walks of life in common purpose
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Spiritual founder of the Mevlevi Sufi order, which became famous for the ceremonial dancing of the whirling devotees.
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The Mongol expansion began in 1206 under a united cluster of tribes. These tribes were unified by a gathering of clan heads who chose one of those present, Temujin, as Khan, or Supreme ruler.
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A Turkish-Muslim regime in Northern India that, through its tolerance for cultural diversity, brought political integration without enforcing cultural homogeneity. The most powerful and enduring of the Turkish Muslim regimes of Northern India. Rulers brought political integration but also strengthened the cultural diversity and tolerance that were already a hallmark of the Indian social order
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The Christianity for post-Roman Europe had been a religion of monks and its most dynamic centers were great monasteries. Members of the laity were expected to revere and support their monks, nuns, and clergy, but not to imitate them. By 1200, all this had changed, the internal colonization of Western Europe, the clearing of woods and founding of villages ensured that parish churches arose in all but the wildest landscapes. Now the clergy reached more deeply into the private lives of the laity.
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Emerged an order of preachers who brought a message of repentance. Franciscans encouraged the laity from the poorest to the elite to feel remorse for their wrongdoings to confess their sins to local priests and to strive to be better Christians.
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By 1100, ranks of learned men had accumulated sufficient power to become China’s new ruling elite. This expansion of the civil service examination system was crucial to a shift in power from the still significant hereditary aristocracy to a less wealthy but more highly schooled class of scholar-officials.
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In the late eleventh century, Western Europeans launched the Crusades, a wave of attacks against the Muslim world.
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By the eleventh century, Mande-speaking peoples were spreading their cultural, commercial and political hegemony from the savanna grasslands southward into the woodlands and tropical rain forests stretching to the Atlantic Ocean
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The city of Timbuktu founded around 1100 as a seasonal camp for nomads, it grew in size and importance under the patronage of various Mali kings. By the fourteenth century it was a thriving commercial, intellectual, and religious center famed for its large three mosques, which are still standing.
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Around 1100, Great Zimbabwe stood supreme among the Shona. Built on the fortunes made from gold, its most impressive landmark was a massive elliptical building made of stones fitted so expertly that they needed no grouting
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Western Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Franks became the unchallenged rulers after the collapse of Charlemagne’s empire, yet they oversaw a somewhat fragmented manor-based economy and social structure. The peasantry’s subjugation to this knightly class was at the heart of a system scholars have called feudalism but a more accurate term for it was manioralism.
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Between 1100 and 1200 and as many as 200,000 pioneering peasants emigrated from present-day Belgium, Holland, and northern Germany to the frontiers of Europe ( now Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and the Baltic states)
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Starting in 1097, an armed host of around 60,000 men set out from northwestern Europe to seize Jerusalem. The crusading forces included knights in heavy armor as well as people drawn from Europe’s impoverished masses, who joined the movement to help besige cities and construct a network of castles as the Christian knights drove their frontier forward
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The First Crusade began in 1095 when Pope Urban II appealed to the warrior nobility of France to put their violence to good use: they should combine their role as pilgrims to Jerusalem with that of soldiers in order to free the Christian “holy land” from Muslim rule. Such a just war, the clergy proposed, was a means for absolution, not sin
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A learned Syrian leader, describes his shock at the Frankish Crusaders’ backward medical practices and the freedom they offered their wives, in addition to well meaning exchanges such as particular Frank’s confusion about the direction in which Muslims pray.
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Beginning with the capture of Toledo in 1061, the Christian kings of northern Spain slowly pushed back the Muslims.
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When the Seljuk warriors ultimately took control of Baghdad in 1055, they established a nomadic state in Mesopotamia over a once powerful Abbasid State that now lacked the resources to defend its lands and its peoples, weakened by famines and pestilence
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When the Seljuk Turks flooded the Iranian plateau in 1029, they contributed to the end of the magnificent cultural flourishing of the early eleventh century.
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By 1000 ce, Islam had originally founded as a radical religious revolt in the small corner of the Arabian peninsula had grown into a vast political and religious empire.
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By the year 1000 ce, then, there were two Christianities, the new and confident “borderland” Roman Catholicism of Western Europe and an Ancient Greek Orthodoxy.
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In South India, the Chola dynasty supported the port of Quilon which was the nerve center of maritime trade between China and the Red Sea and the Mediterranean
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By the tenth century ce, sea routes were becoming more important than land networks for long distance trade, Improved navigational aids, better map making, refinements in shipbuilding, and new political support for shipping made seaborne trade easier and slashed its cost. These developments also fostered the growth of maritime commercial hubs (called anchorages), which further facilitated the expansion of maritime trade.
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By 1000 ce, the Shona had founded up to fifty small religious and political centers, each one erected from stone to display its power over the peasant villages surrounding it.
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Mesoamerica had seen the rise and fall of several complex societies, including Teotihuacan and the Maya. Caravans of porters bound the region together, working the intricate roads that connected the coast of the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific and the southern lowlands of Central America.
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During the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth centuries India became the most diverse and in some respects, the most tolerant region in Afro-Eurasia. India in this era arose as an impressive but fragile mosaic of cultures, religions and ethnicities.
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Europe from 1000 to 1300 ce was a region of strong contrasts. Intensely localized power was balanced by a shared sense of Europe’s place in the world, especially with respect to the Christian identity. Some inhabitants even began to believe in the existence of something called “Europe” and started to refer to themselves as Europeans.
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From 1000-1300 ce, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas became far more internally integrated culturally, economically and politically than before. Islam’s spread and the growing trade in gold, slaves and other commodities brought Sub-Saharan Africa more fully into the exchange networks of the Eastern hemisphere, but the Americas remained isolated from Afro-Eurasian networks for several more centuries.
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Commercial exchange contributed significantly to greater integration in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas from 1000-1300 ce, slaves, gold, salt, and ivory in Sub-Saharan Africa, and urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa and at Chan-Chan, Tula, and Cahokia in the Americas. By 1300, trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean exchange had brought Africa into full-fledged Afro-Eurasian networks of exchange.
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launched many expeditions from the Afghan heartland into northern India and eager to win status with Islam, made his capital, Ghanzi, a center of Islamic learning which later became known as the Ghaznavid Empire.
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By 982 ce, the Vikings even reached continental North America and established a settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows on the Labrador coast.
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The Fatimids set themselves against the Abbassid caliphs of Baghdad, refusing to acknowledge their legitimacy and claiming to speak for the whole Islamic world.
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In 960 ce, Zhao Kuangyin a military general, ended the fragmentation, reunified China and assumed the Mandate of Heaven for the Song Dynasty.
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Zhao Kuangyin or Emperor Taizu himself administered the final test for all who had passed the highest-level palace examination. As well, discussed in timespan, he reunified China from splintered kingdoms.
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From 950 to 1050 ce, it appeared that Shiism would be the vehicle for uniting the Islamic world. The Fatimid Shiites had established their authority over Egypt and much of North Africa and the Abbasid state in Baghdad was controlled by a Shiite family, the Buyids.
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A devout Muslim who believed in the importance of pre-Islamic Sassanian traditions. In the epic poem, Sha Namah he celebrated the origins of Persian culture and narrated the history of the Iranian highland peoples from the dawn of time to the Muslim conquest
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Abd-al-Rahman brought peace and stability to a violent frontier region where civil conflict had disrupted commerce and intellectual exchange.
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After, misrule, court intrigues, economic exploitation, and popular rebellions weakened the empire, but the dynasty held on over a century until the northern invaders toppled it in 907 ce.
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By the mid-ninth century, the Tang state openly persecuted Buddhism. Daoist and Confucian leaders felt threatened by the growing influence of Buddhist monks and nuns, and they argued that Buddhism’s values conflicted with native traditions.
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By the ninth century ce, the picture of the pope had changed, believers from the distant north saw only one papa left in Western Europe: Rome’s pope. Christians in northern borderlands wanted to find a religious leader for their hopes, and the Catholic Church of Western Europe united behind the symbolic center of Rome and its popes.
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In the ninth century ce, the Vikings set their ships on both courses, they sacked the great monasteries along the coasts of Ireland and Britain and overlooking the Rhine and Seine Rivers.
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Important Vedic and Buddhist kingdoms emerged in Southeast Asia, the most powerful and wealthy of these kingdoms were the Khmer Empire, with its capital at Angkor, in present-day Cambodia. One of the greatest temple complexes in Angkor (Angkor Wat) exemplified the Khmer’s heavy borrowing from the Vedic Indian architecture and the revival of the Hindu pantheon within the Khmer royal state, Kingdoms like the Khmer empire functioned as political buffers between the strong states of China and India.
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In 860 ce, more than 200 Viking longships gathered ominously beneath the walls of Constantinople in the straits of Bosporus. What they found was not a broken down state, they found a city with a population exceeding 100,000 protected by well-engineered late-Roman walls.
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By 838 ce, the delicate balance of power among throne, eunuchs, and civil officials had evaporated. Eunuchs became an unruly political force in late Tang politics , and their competition for influence produced political instability.
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Empress Wuzong closed more than 4,600 monasteries and destroyed 40,000 temples and shrines.
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When Al-Rashid’s elephant died in 813 ce, the Franks viewed it as an omen of coming disasters and it was indeed.
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Under Emperor Xianzong, eunuchs actuated as a third pillar of the government, working alongside the official bureaucracy and the imperial court.
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In 802 ce, Harun al-Rashid sent the gift of an elephant to Charlemagne, already the King of the Franks for three decades and recently crowned by the pope in Rome as “ Holy Roman Emperor”. The Franks interpreted the gift as an acknowledgment of Charlemagne’s power, Rashid more likely sent the rare beast as a gracious reminder of his own formidable sway.
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By 800 ce, most regions of Northern Europe held great monasteries, many of which were far larger than the local villages.
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Charlemagne, in 800 ce, went out of his way to celebrate Christmas Day by visiting the shrine of Saint Peter at Rome. There, Pope Leo III acclaimed him as the “ new emperor of the west”.
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ruler of the Franks, expanded his Western European kingdom through constant warfare and plunder.
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The Abbasid coalition trounced the Umayyad ruler in 750 ce which would soon last 500 years
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After the Muslims conquered the Sindh, the crop innovations pioneered in Southeast Asia made their way to the west.
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Not all Tang power brokers were men, the wives and mothers of emperors wielded influence in the court, usually behind the scenes, but sometimes publicly. The most striking is Empress Wu. As a young child, Wu mastered the Chinese classics , she was very intelligent and witty, Wu was recruited before the age of 13 to Li Shimin’s court and became his favorite concubine. Wu enjoyed heightened political power. Wu became administrator of the court and expanded the military and was very pro-feminine.
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The Nakatomi Kinship group seized the throne and eliminated the Soga and their allies. The Nakatomi became the new spokesperson for the Yamato tradition.
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The Quran itself was compiled during the caliphate of Utman (according to Muslim traditions)
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In 643 ce, the Chinese Buddhist Xuanzang brought back Chang’an, an entire library of Buddhist scriptures that he had collected on a pilgrimage to Buddhist holy sites in South Asia
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Muhammad passed away but Islam remained vibrant thanks to the energy of its early followers especially Muhammad’s first four successors, the “rightly guided caliphs’. These caliphs ruled over Muslim peoples and the expanding faith. They institutionalized the new faith and they set the religion on the pathway to imperial greatness by linking religious uprightness with territorial expansion, empire building, and an appeal to all peoples.
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Muslim solders embarked on military conquests and sought to found a far reaching territorial empire. This expansion of the Islamic state was one aspect of the struggle that they called jihad, between dar-al-Islam and dar-al-harb
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Muhammad and a small group of followers, opposed by Mecca’s leaders because of their radical religious beliefs, escaped to move to Medina
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Muhammad was on a spiritual retreat in the hills near Mecca, he believed that God came to him as a vision and commanded him to recite a series of revelations
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Persian forces under Khusro the second conquered Egypt and Syria and even reached Constantinople before being defeated in northern Mesopotamia
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Gaul and Italy had only 320 monasteries in 600 ce, rather in 400 ce, China had over 1,700 monasteries and about 80,000 monks
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The period from 600-100 ce demonstrated that religion, reinforced by prosperity and imperial resources, could bring peoples together in unprecendented ways.
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After 587 ce, the Soga kinship group- originally from Korea but by 500 ce a minor branch of the Yamato imperial family-became Japan’s leading family and controlled the Japanese court through intermarriage.
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Soon the Soga kinship group was attributing their cultural innovations to their own Prince Shotoku of Soga and Yamato Descent
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Born into Mecca, into a respected tribal family
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His name implied the strong, model ruler, (Khusro of the righteous soul)
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The last Roman emperor of the west , Romulus Augustulus resigned to make way for a so-called barbarian king. The Western Roman Empire has completely succumbed to barbarians.
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The regent for Emperor Xiaowen. Attempted progressive land reforms in China that offered land to all men whether Han or Wei
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The Tuoba royal family adopted the Chinese family name of Yuan and required all court officials to speak Chinese and wear Chinese clothing in order to try and make the government more “Chinese”
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The Goths settled in southwest Gaul as a kind of local militia to fill the absence left by the contracting Roman authority.
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By 400 ce, China had more than 1,700 Buddhist monasteries and about 80,000 monks and nuns.
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Western emperors could no longer raise enough taxes to maintain control of the provinces
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Emphasize the political and cultural continuities between Rome and its successor states, especially in the eastern Mediterranean, and the new dynamic institutions that arose in Rome’s wake. Scholars favor the term “Dark Ages” because it stresses what they see as a sharp, cultural, political and economic decline accompanying the Roman Empire’s fall especially in the Western Mediterranean.
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Valens intended to teach the Goth’s some obedience so he marched against them in Andrianople, yet the Gothic Calvary was too much for the Romans and they were completely trampled by the Goths
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Valens encouraged the Goth’s entrance into Roman territory but mistreated them, causing them to turn against him.
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A renowned Buddhist scholar and missionary, was the right man, at the right place, at the right time to spread Buddhism in China where it co-existed with other faiths
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Constantine calls all bishops to Nicea to bring unity to the diversity of beliefs within Christian communities
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After 312 ce, the large churches built in every major city, signaled Christianity growing strength.
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Around 300 ce, people in the central plateau and the south eastern districts of Mesoamerica where the dispersed villages of Olmec culture had risen and fallen began to gather in larger settlements. Soon political and social integration led to city-states. Teotihuacan became the heart of the fertile valley of Central Mexico.
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From 300-600 ce, the entire Afro-Eurasian landmass experienced a surge of political activity.
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Byzantine Empire, Sogdians, Sassanian Empire, Gupta Empire, Qi Empire, Ethiopia, Jewish Homeland, Northern Wei Dynasty
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Buddhism spread throughout the Silk Roads (Buddhist monks spread through missionaries), at Bamiyan stood two gigantic statues of the Buddha
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During this period, the ancient Brahmanic Vedic religion spread widely in South Asia. Refashioned Brahmanic religion emerged as the dominant faith in the Indian society in what we call today “Hinduism”
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Priests and intellectuals were well versed in the Sanskrit language and literary and religious texts. Their most influential code of morality was the Code of Manu.
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The Maya were able to establish hundreds, possibly thousands of agrarian villages scattered across the diverse ecological zones of present-day southern Mexico to western El Salvador.
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Cleared the way for the Han empire and created the institutional foundations and solidified the ideological bases for the Han and subsequent dynasties
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