321. (B) The Ghana Empire existed from about 800 to 1200 CE. It was located in present-day southeastern Mauritania and western Mali. The introduction of the camel, which preceded Islam by several centuries, brought about a gradual change in trade routes and permitted the resources of western Africa to be sent north for manufacturing. As these routes flourished under Arab and Berber traders, western African states grew around depots for the desert crossings. The Ghana Empire grew rich from the trans-Saharan trade in gold and salt. Jade was associated with distant locations such as China. Trade in ivory and animal skins was more important in the central and eastern regions of sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean. Huge quantities of cowries from the Maldives were introduced to Africa during the period of slave trade after 1500 CE.
322. (D) Africa is extremely rich in natural resources, including minerals, wood, and rubber. However, many rivers are unfavorable to transportation and communication because of falls and rapids. Mountains, deserts, and rainforests also impede economic development. The pervasiveness of insects like mosquitoes (which carry malaria) and the tsetse fly (which carries “sleeping sickness”) have helped destroy the effectiveness of manpower and animals in sub-Saharan Africa.
323. (D) The Kush lived in northeastern Africa in present-day southern Egypt and the Sudan. As early as 2000 to 1500 BCE, the kingdom of Kush may have controlled a 750-mile stretch (from the first to the fourth cataract) of the Nile Valley. After the collapse of the New Kingdom of Egypt, the Kushites invaded Egypt in the eighth century BCE, and Kushite kings ruled as pharaohs of the 25th Dynasty of Egypt for about a century. These pharaohs have been called the “black pharaohs” or the “Ethiopian pharaohs.” The 25th Dynasty was based at Napata (in present-day Sudan) until the Kush were expelled in 656 BCE. The Kush then retreated to their own capital at Meroë (farther south than Napata), which became a center for ironwork and trade. Women apparently played a key role in the government of the Kushite kingdom, a situation almost unique in the ancient world. One of the largest of the Kushite pyramids was built for a woman, Queen Shanakdakheto (170–150 BCE). The kingdom of Kush began to fade as a power in the first and second century CE, sapped by the war with the Roman province of Egypt.
324. (A) Axum (also spelled Aksum) was a powerful, urban, Iron Age kingdom in Ethiopia that flourished from about 400 BCE to about 500 CE. The city of Axum was situated on a plateau about 7,200 feet above sea level. In its prime, Axum’s commercial influence extended to both sides of the Red Sea. The kingdom of Axum had its own written language called Ge’ez and also developed a distinctive architectural style characterized by giant obelisks.
325. (C) Archaeological, linguistic, genetic, and environmental evidence all support the idea of a significant Bantu migration out of western Africa. However, many aspects of this migration, such as attempts to trace the exact route or to correlate it with genetic or archaeological evidence, are disputed. One possible interpretation suggests that about 2000 to 1500 BCE, farmers in the Niger and Benue River valleys in western Africa (the proto-Bantu) began migrating south and east. The earliest speakers settled along rivers and cultivated yams and oil palms. As they migrated, they took along their languages and their knowledge of agriculture and iron metallurgy. These Bantu migrations continued for at least 2,000 years. The evidence for this expansion is mainly linguistic; the languages of southern Africa are similar to each other, and scholars think it unlikely that they began diverging more than 3,000 years ago. The Bantu migration was a slow process, although major movement may have occurred between about 700 and 500 BCE. When a farming settlement could no longer support its population, part of the group left to form a new settlement. Bantu speakers gradually moved into areas occupied by nomads or hunter-gatherers such as the Khoisan (Bushmen) and the Mbuti (Pygmies). Some nomads simply moved on, and some adopted the more sedentary culture of the Bantu.
326. (D) Mansa Musa (fl. 1312–1337 CE) was a famous king (or emperor) of the Malian Empire. He was a devout Muslim, and his famous and extravagant pilgrimage to Mecca made him well known across northern Africa and the Middle East. According to Arab historians, Mansa Musa spent so much gold in Cairo that he inflated the currency for years. His reign probably brought the Malian Empire to its greatest wealth and power. He embarked on a grand building program, raising numerous mosques and madrasas in Timbuktu and Gao. Mansa Musa is especially known for his patronage of the Sankore Madrasa.
327. (B) The Kanem Empire (c. 1000–1380 CE) was located to the northeast of Lake Chad in present-day Chad, Nigeria, and Libya. A later incarnation, known as Kanem-Bornu, lasted as an independent kingdom until about 1900. Kanem’s origins are the subject of dispute. However, in the early 11th century, Kanuri-speaking tribes moved into the area. Some of them may have converted to Islam, but the faith was not popular until the 13th century. Kanem’s wealth came from its ability to control trade in the area from Libya to Lake Chad to Hausaland. Almost all commercial traffic in northern Africa passed through these strategic areas. Kanem’s main exports were ostrich feathers, slaves, and ivory. The people rode horses imported from the north and had a powerful cavalry. Kanem reached the height of its power under the long rule of Mai Dunama Dibbalemi (1210–1248). Dibbalemi declared jihad against surrounding chiefs and began to conquer neighboring areas. However, over the next 100 years, a combination of overgrazing, civil strife, and attacks from neighbors led the rulers of Kanem to move to Borno, a Kanuri kingdom south and west of Lake Chad. This kingdom endured various ups and downs until it collapsed around 1900.
328. (B) Timbuktu is in present-day Mali about 10 miles north of the Niger River (not the Congo). The historic town is located where the Niger flows northward into the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. Timbuktu became a permanent settlement early in the 12th century. After a shift in trading routes, the city flourished from the trade in salt, gold, ivory, and slaves, and it became part of the Malian Empire early in the 13th century. At its peak, Timbuktu’s many Islamic scholars established an important book trade that turned the city into a scholarly center in Africa. Books became more valuable than almost any other commodity, and private libraries grew in the homes of local scholars. Timbuktu soon had three universities and 180 Koranic schools. By the end of Mansa Musa’s reign (c. 1340 CE), the Sankore Madrasa probably had the largest collection of books in Africa (possibly 400,000 manuscripts) since the library at Alexandria. Ibn Battuta, the famous Muslim traveler, visited Timbuktu in 1352 and admired its splendor and lack of crime. In the first half of the 15th century, the Tuareg tribes took control of the city for a short period until the expanding Songhai Empire absorbed it in 1468. It began a long decline after 1600, and today, Timbuktu is an impoverished town of about 60,000.
329. (B) The kingdom of Zimbabwe (c. 1100–1500 CE) dominated a major portion of southeastern Africa to the coast of the Indian Ocean. The archaeological discoveries of glass beads and porcelain from Asia demonstrate trade connections between Asia and Zimbabwe through the Arab port of Sofala. The capital city of Great Zimbabwe was near a trade route that connected the gold mines of central Africa with Sofala. Zimbabwe gained control of this route in the 1200s and prospered by collecting commercial taxes. The most impressive feature of Great Zimbabwe was its massive stone walls, built without mortar; the word Zimbabwe means “stone dwelling” in the Shona language. The ruins at Great Zimbabwe are the largest ancient stone construction south of the Sahara. For 400 years, many scholars believed Indians, Egyptians, or Phoenicians built these impressive structures. They insisted that native dark-skinned people could not have been skillful enough to construct the buildings, carve the sculptures, and mold the pottery. The former white-controlled government of the country (when it was named Rhodesia) supported this view. However, excavations and carbon dating show that the structures were built by the Shona, a native Bantu-speaking group. The dating is unclear, with estimates ranging between the 9th and 15th centuries. Reasons for the decline of Great Zimbabwe in the 16th century are also unclear; internal strife, soil exhaustion, overgrazing, movement of trade routes, famine, and water shortages have all been suggested.
330. (A) The origins and early history of coffee are shrouded in mist. However, botanical researchers speculate that the history of the coffee bean began on the plateaus of central Ethiopia. The Ethiopian ancestors of today’s Oromo people seem to have been the first to recognize the energizing effect of the coffee bean plant. However, the story of the ninth-century Ethiopian goatherd who supposedly discovered coffee did not appear in writing until 1671 and is not considered historical. From Ethiopia, coffee supposedly spread to Yemen, where it has been cultivated since the sixth century CE. The earliest evidence of coffee drinking appears in the mid-1400s in the Sufi monasteries of Yemen. By the 16th century, coffee drinking had spread to Cairo and Mecca and then to Persia, Turkey, and North Africa. As of 2008, Brazil was by far the largest coffee producer in the world (36 percent of total production), but Ethiopia was 4th (5 percent of total production); Uganda was 10th, and the Ivory Coast was 12th.
331. (B) The kingdom (or empire) of Ghana was located in southeastern Mauritania and western Mali, but the modern country of Ghana is named after the ancient kingdom even though there is no shared territory. The kingdom of Ghana (fl. c. 800–1200 CE) grew rich from the lucrative trans-Sahara trade in gold and salt. The ambiguity of the written Arabic sources and the archaeological record have led to several different theories regarding when and how Ghana declined and fell. One possibility is that long-term drought affected the ability of the land to sustain cattle and cultivation. Some historians suggest that Almoravid Muslims invaded Ghana from the north, although others suggest that the Almoravid influence was gradual. In the 11th and 12th centuries, new gold fields were mined at Bure (in modern Guinea) out of the commercial reach of Ghana. At the same time, new trade routes opened up farther east, and Ghana became the target of attacks by the Sosso and the Malinke. By about 1200 CE, Ghana was totally eclipsed by the Malian Empire.
332. (C) The cause of the Bantu migrations is disputed. Some possible causes include population increase or the introduction of new crops (such as the banana), which allowed more efficient food production. It is possible that the expansion was caused by the increasing sophistication of proto-Bantu culture, such as developments in agriculture, the making of ceramics, and the use of iron, which allowed new ecological zones to be exploited. Another theory is that climate changes made the present-day Sahara Desert too dry to live in. People moved south out of the Sahara and into the proto-Bantu’s homeland, which in turn pressured the proto-Bantu to move to the forests of central Africa. However, scholars believe that the Bantu did not know livestock husbandry until after their migrations began; they apparently learned it from other people they met in eastern and southern Africa, and they in turn passed the knowledge on to hunter-gatherers. Herding practices reached the far south of Africa several centuries before any Bantu-speaking migrants.
333. (E) Sonni Ali (born Ali Kolon) reigned from about 1464 to 1492 CE as the first great king of the Songhai Empire. He was the 15th consecutive ruler of the Sonni Dynasty (begun in 1335) to rule Songhai, which was centered around its capital city of Gao on the Niger River. Under Sonni Ali’s rule, Songhai expanded to cover a great portion of the Niger River area and gained control of crucial trading cities such as Timbuktu (captured in 1469) and Djenne (captured in 1475). Sonni was noted for his repressive policy against the scholars of Timbuktu, as well as a fleet he built to patrol the Niger River. He mixed an unorthodox observance of Islam with traditional African animism. His historical legacy is disputed; Muslim historians called Sonni Ali “the Celebrated Infidel” or “the Great Oppressor,” while Songhai oral tradition painted him as the righteous ruler of a mighty empire.
334. (E) The kingdom of Kongo (c. 1400–1914 CE) was located in western central Africa in parts of present-day Angola, the Republic of the Congo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometime after 1000, the settled Bantu people began to create centralized states. The kingdom of Kongo was already a highly developed state at the center of a vast trading network when the first Portuguese explorers reached it in 1483. The kingdom was rich in natural resources, such as ivory, and manufactured and traded copperware, iron goods, cloth, and pottery. Early Portuguese travelers described the capital, Mbanza-Kongo, as perhaps the largest city in sub-Equatorial Africa. By 1600, the city had a population of about 100,000, almost 20 percent of the kingdom. This concentration permitted resources, soldiers, and surplus food to be available easily at the request of the king. At its greatest extent, the kingdom reached from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Kwango River in the east and from the Congo River in the north to the Kwanza River in the south.
335. (B) The Swahili coast is a stretch of east African coastline in present-day Kenya and Tanzania. It has been the site of cultural and commercial exchanges between eastern Africa and the outside world since at least the second century CE. Early coastal communities were formed by Bantu-speaking people who farmed and fished in the rivers. Between 500 and 800, they shifted to a sea-based trading economy and began to migrate south by ship. The incredible wealth generated by the trade in goods from the African interior—gold, ivory, and slaves—led to the development of powerful kingdoms and market towns such as Mogadishu, Sofala, Shanga, Kilwa, and Mombasa. By about 900, Africans, Arabs, and Persians who traded on the coast had developed Swahili, a language based on the Bantu language Sabaki that uses Arab and Persian loanwords. By the 1400s, many of the old mud-and-wood outposts had become fortified cities with stone and coral mosques, public buildings, and international residents. These cities had different fates. Mombasa, now the second-largest city in Kenya, has almost a million people. Shanga (Kenya), Kilwa (Tanzania), and Sofala (Mozambique) are little more than historic sites or archaeological ruins. (Abidjan is the largest city in the Ivory Coast [in West Africa] and, with 5 million people, the fourth-largest French-speaking city in the world.)
336. (D) The Songhai Empire ruled much of western Africa from the early 15th to the late 16th century CE. It was one of the largest Islamic empires in history, replacing the Malian Empire that had ruled the same general area from about 1200 to 1400. The Songhai Empire included three of the greatest trading cities on the Niger: Gao (the capital), Timbuktu, and Jenne (present-day Djenne). All three had once been part of the Malian Empire. This gave the Songhai Empire effective control over the lucrative Niger River trade of gold, kola, grain, and slaves. The cities also belonged to the important trans-Saharan trade route system, which brought caravans of salt and copper, as well as goods from the Mediterranean coast. However, when the Portuguese established trading posts on the African coast, the importance of the trans-Saharan trade declined. The Songhai eventually fell in 1591 to a Moroccan force that used gunpowder and cannons.
337. (E) All four answer choices are African rivers with lengths of more than a thousand miles that are in the top 100 longest rivers in the world. The Zambezi (mostly in Zambia) and the Limpopo (mostly in South Africa) are the two longest African rivers that drain into the Indian Ocean. The Zambezi’s most spectacular feature is Victoria Falls. The Orange River is the longest river in South Africa and, like the Limpopo, forms part of South Africa’s international boundary. The Kasai River is a lengthy tributary of the Congo River, located in central Africa around Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Most of the Kasai River’s watershed consists of equatorial rainforest.
338. (A) Originally, the Bantu were organized into agricultural communities based on family and kinship groups. These stateless societies of several hundred individuals were led by a family member who served as leader of the clan. Eventually, many of these villages came to be ruled by chiefs with varying degrees of power and authority. Within Bantu society, there were also age sets (or age grades), a type of cohort group that could sometimes have a great deal of political or military power. In general, rulers and religious leaders were the elite of Bantu society. Private property was an unknown concept to the Bantu; all property was held in common. Most Bantu were animistic and believed that spirits inhabited the features of the natural world; they especially revered the spirits of their ancestors. Tribal traditions were passed on orally through storytellers (sometimes called griots). Because much of the African topsoil layer was extremely thin and easily eroded, the land wore out frequently, necessitating frequent migration. Among the Bantu, both men and women might share the duties of planting and harvesting, but there were gender distinctions between various tasks. Traditionally, despite their important economic and social responsibilities, women’s roles were subordinate to those of men.
339. (E) African converts to Islam did not totally give up their tribal beliefs. For example, Sonni Ali, the ruler of the Songhai Empire, mixed an unorthodox observance of Islam with traditional African animism. In general, the sub-Saharan elite were more interested in converting to Islam than the common people. Rulers were aware that acceptance of Islam was a commercial advantage; the Mali and Songhai were both Islamic empires. Contacts with Islam were generated by Indian Ocean and Mediterranean (not transatlantic) trade. Many African women had more privileges than Islamic women; this probably slowed sub-Saharan conversions to Islam.
340. (B) The Akan people are an ethnic group of more than 20 million in western Africa. Most Akan peoples live in Ghana, where they settled in migratory waves beginning in the 11th century CE; others live in the eastern part of the Ivory Coast and parts of Togo. From the 15th to the 19th century, the Akan people dominated gold mining and trade in the region. They were especially noted for the crafting of bronze or brass gold weights, which were created using the lost-wax technique. Akan gold weights were used as a system for weighing gold dust; the weights were made of brass, not gold. Each weight had a known measurement that ensured merchants traded fairly with each other. The status of a man increased if he owned a complete set of weights. Geometric weights are the oldest forms, dating from about 1400, while those made in the images of people, animals, and buildings first appeared around 1600.
341. (B) Axum was a powerful, urban kingdom in Ethiopia that flourished from about 400 BCE to about 500 CE. During the first century CE, it rose to prominence by trading through the port of Adulis to the Red Sea trade network and then to the Roman Empire. Trade through Adulis also connected Axum to India, Ceylon, Persia, and Arabia, making the kingdom an intermediary between Rome and Asia. The Axumites exported gold, ivory, rhinoceros horn, hippopotamus hide, and slaves. In exchange, they imported cottons; silks; knives; swords; drinking cups; metal for local manufacture; and luxury goods such as gold and silver plate, military cloaks, olive oil, and lacquerware. Axum reached its apogee under King Ezana in the fourth century CE. Around that time, the king and most of the population converted to Christianity. Ezana apparently expanded Axum to the north and east, conquering Kush and burning the Nile Valley city of Meroë. He constructed much of the monumental architecture of Axum, including a reported 100 stone obelisks (or steles), the tallest of which was 98 feet and weighed 517 tons. Axum flourished until about the sixth century; it declined in importance when the rise of the Persian Empire and then Islam redrew the trade routes.
342. (C) A fetish is an object of magic or a man-made object that has power over others. The concept is very important in African culture and art, although the term is considered outdated. The word fetishism was first used by the Portuguese sailors who landed in western Africa in the 16th century CE; it described the so-called primitive African culture’s religion as the worship of inanimate things and animals. The word fetish derives from the French, via the Portuguese, and Latin; it has no root in any African language. For the next few centuries, Europeans often discussed African art and artifacts as the creations of “uncivilized” people. The term fetish is often used condescendingly in reference to a belief in superstitions and the sense that Europeans are above Africans in the scale of human progress. Some people would now consider the term derogatory. Instead, they suggest using descriptive terms such as “dance staff” and “fertility figure” to better address the functions of objects formerly known as fetishes. Nonetheless, even if the term is discarded, the concept is important. African art objects were rarely constructed solely as decoration or for display; their context and function is crucial to understanding them. Ironically, the term fetish has shifted from a derogatory description of African art to a term with extremely complex Freudian and Marxist applications.
343. (B) The banana originated in southeastern Asia; some scholars believe it was probably first domesticated in Papua New Guinea before 5000 BCE. Bananas were transported by Malayan sailors across the Indian Ocean to the island of Madagascar off the southeastern coast of Africa. This has been established by the similarities in the languages of Malaysia and Madagascar, although the date of the movement is disputed. From Madagascar, the banana spread north and west across Africa, probably following in reverse the path of the migratory Bantu. The arrival of the banana provided the additional calories and nutrients that caused an increase in the population of the Bantu. In modern times, bananas are among the most widely consumed foods in the world.
344. (D) Nok is a small village in present-day central Nigeria. The discovery of ancient terra-cotta figures there gave the name to Nok culture, which flourished from about 500 BCE to 200 CE. Nok terra-cottas are the oldest-known figurative sculpture south of the Sahara. Most Nok sculpture is hollow and coil-built like pottery, and it appears to be portrait heads and bodies. Nok head fragments are so unique that they were probably sculpted individually rather than cast from molds. However, there are certain common styles such as triangular eyes; bold, abstracted features; and elaborately detailed hairstyles and jewelry. The sophistication of Nok terra-cottas has led some scholars to believe that an older, as yet undiscovered tradition must have preceded Nok terra-cotta arts. Some pottery figures appear to depict subjects suffering from sicknesses such as elephantiasis and facial paralysis. These “diseased” faces may have been intended to protect against illness, but like the rest of Nok sculpture, their actual meaning is unknown. Nok culture was also one of the earliest African centers of ironworking. Yet it seems to have mysteriously vanished around 500 CE. Some scholars have speculated that the society eventually evolved into the later Yoruba kingdom of Ife.
345. (D) There are two species of camels: the dromedary, or Arabian camel, has a single hump, and the Bactrian camel has two humps. Camels were probably domesticated in the third millennium BCE. They appeared in the Sahara region in the second millennium BCE but seem to have disappeared around 900 BCE. The Persian invasion of Egypt under Cambyses (c. 525 BCE) reintroduced domesticated camels to the area. These Persian camels were not well suited to travel over the desert; rare trans-Sahara journeys were made in horse-drawn chariots. The stronger and more durable dromedaries first began to arrive in northern Africa in about the third century CE. However, it was not until the Islamic conquest of North Africa that these camels became common. Dromedaries were well suited to long desert journeys and could carry a great deal of cargo. This allowed substantial trade across the Sahara for the first time. By the late 700s, Islamic traders used camels to transport goods across the Sahara. Soon, some oases in the desert along the trans-Sahara trade routes began to turn into cities and towns. New occupations, including camel dealers and caravan traders, appeared.
346. (C) Feudalism is a political and economic system based on the holding of all land in fief, or fee. In this type of system, vassals and tenants owe their lords homage as well as legal and military service. If they fail to provide these things, they risk forfeiting their land. Spain was part of the Islamic Empire and did not experience the extreme governmental disintegration that caused the rise of feudalism in other parts of medieval Europe. Japan developed a feudal political system from about 1100 to 1600. Japanese feudalism, with its code of Bushido (chivalry) and its daimyo (lords) and samurai (knights), was similar in many ways to feudalism in medieval western Europe.
347. (A) From 1378 to 1417, the Roman Catholic Church had two different popes at the same time. The popes disagreed over whether the papacy should be located in Avignon or Rome and how independent it should be of the rising French state. The Great Schism seemed impossible to solve until several scholars at the University of Paris came up with a new idea. They claimed that popes were not supreme in the Roman Catholic religion but had to obey the wishes of general councils. This was called the conciliar theory or conciliarism. The Council of Pisa (1409) deposed both popes—Gregory XII in Rome and Benedict XIII in Avignon—and chose a third pope, Alexander V, who died 10 months after his election. John XXIII (reigned 1410–1415) followed him. Now there were three popes, each with his own supporters and Sacred College of Cardinals. In 1414, after difficult negotiations, the Council of Constance forced Gregory XII to resign, deposed John XXIII and Benedict XIII, and elected yet another new pope, Martin V (reigned 1418–1431). When Martin V moved the papacy back to Rome in 1420, the Great Schism finally ended. This schism weakened the power of the pope and the prestige of the papacy, and it delayed reforms in the Catholic Church. This would play a part in the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s. (The term Great Schism is also sometimes used to describe the split between eastern and western Christianity in 1054.)
348. (C) The word monasticism comes from the Greek word monos, meaning “single” or “solitary.” Christian monasticism began in Egypt during the fourth century when communities of men and women withdrew from everyday society to lead lives of self-denial. Monks initially lived alone but then began to form communities to provide mutual support in their quest for holiness. The first community of monks, or coenobitic monastery, was organized by Pachomius in Egypt in about 323 CE. The concept spread to western Europe, where it became popular after the creation of the moderate Rule of Saint Benedict in the sixth century. Christian monks and nuns often worked among the poor and needy of their communities, and they were famous for copying books by hand during the Middle Ages. Both monks and nuns are found in Buddhist monasteries.
349. (C) The Black Death probably originated in central Asia and entered Europe via Constantinople in 1348. The plague was recorded in China in 1331, and from Asia, it was carried west along trade routes by merchants and Mongol soldiers during the era of Pax Mongolica. Plague-infected fleas probably hitched rides in the manes of horses, on the hair of camels, or on black rats that snuck into cargoes or saddlebags. The Black Death is estimated to have killed about one-third of China’s population and 25 to 50 percent of Europe’s population. The effect in Europe varied widely by area, and population decline probably preceded the arrival of the plague. However, successive waves of plague spread across Europe in 1362, 1374, 1383, 1389, and 1400. Scholars estimate that the population of England in 1400 was only about half of what it was in 1300. Between 1340 and 1450, the population of Germany and Scandinavia is estimated to have declined from 11.5 million to 7.5 million and the population of France, Belgium, and Holland from 19 million to 12 million. These population declines led to labor shortages, social unrest, and a resulting rise in wages. Because of the social turmoil, the strict hierarchy of feudal society became somewhat more flexible.
350. (A) The concept of chivalry flourished in western Europe between about 1150 and 1500. The word is derived from the French cheval, meaning “horse,” and it was applied primarily to aristocratic fighting men. Chivalry developed its basic institutions and conventions in the 12th and 13th centuries. The code was influenced by the church and popularized by artwork, music, poetry, and epics such as the Song of Roland and Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. Above all, the code of chivalry was about loyalty; a knight swore on his honor to serve his lord on earth and his lord in heaven. Initially, Christianity had a tremendous impact on chivalry, softening the virtues of ferocity, bravery, and courage in battle by preaching a degree of respect for human life and dignity. However, chivalry soon emphasized the secular attributes of the ruling military aristocracy in ceremonies such as the dubbing of the knight and the adoption of distinguishing emblems. The tournament became the iconic institution of the chivalric world, and it flourished despite the disapproval of the church. Because women attended tournaments, the ideas of courtly love and service to women also became entangled with the notion of the ideal warrior. Ultimately, chivalry slowly (and incompletely) softened the rude and violent European military society of the early Middle Ages.
351. (A) Ibn Rushd (1121–1189), known in Europe as Averroes, was a Muslim philosopher, physician, and astronomer. Averroes is most famous for his commentaries on Aristotle and his attempt to separate the domains of faith and reason in Islam. Ironically, he was more influential in European Christian and Jewish circles, where he was known simply as the Commentator. At the University of Paris in the 1260s and 1270s, Siger de Brabant, Boethius of Dacia, and some other scholars identified themselves with the Aristotelian philosophy presented by Ibn Rushd. Later known as Averroists, these Christian philosophers sparked a controversy in the Roman Catholic Church about the relationship between philosophy and theology, and reason and faith. The quotation is an attack on Siger de Brabant by Thomas Aquinas in about 1270. Averroist doctrines on personal immortality and the eternity of the world were eventually condemned by Christian authorities.
352. (B) The Saxons lived in ancient times in present-day northern Germany. From there, they expanded to the south and the west as far as present-day France and England. The Saxons were first mentioned in Roman writings in the second century CE. They were excellent farmers and warriors, and they built tentlike huts in forest clearings or near rivers. Saxon society was divided into nobles, free people, and serfs, and they held a regular meeting of all freemen who were able to carry arms. The Saxons followed the nature religion of the Germanic tribes of western Europe and Scandinavia; they believed in many gods, demons, and giants. Charlemagne, the famous king of the Franks, fought a bloody war with the Saxons from 772 to 804. In the end, Charlemagne defeated them, forced the people to convert to Christianity, and incorporated them into the Christian Frankish kingdom.
353. (C) The Rule of Saint Benedict is a book of guidelines written by Saint Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–553) for monks living together under the authority of an abbot. From about the seventh century, it was adopted by communities of women. For the last 1,500 years, it has been the leading guide in European Christianity for monastic living. Benedict’s rule was heavily influenced by the writings of John Cassian in the east (c. 360–435) and is similar to the so-called Rule of the Master from the sixth century. However, Benedict tried to find a middle ground between individual zeal and strict regulation. The spirit of Saint Benedict’s rule is summed up by pax, ora, et labora (meaning “peace, pray, and work”). His monastic code prescribed the monks’ daily routine of prayer, scriptural readings, and manual labor. The rule divided the day into seven parts, each with a compulsory service for prayer and lessons. The required worship for each part of the day was called the office. Benedict’s code did not isolate the monks from the outside world or deprive them of sleep, adequate food, or warm clothing. Instead, it established order, helped people live together in a community, and provided a system to support and strengthen a person’s spiritual growth. Saint Benedict is sometimes regarded as the founder of European monasticism.
354. (A) The Carmina Burana is a collection of Latin songs attributed to students and wandering scholars of the 12th and 13th centuries. The collection was compiled by an anonymous editor in the mid-1200s, possibly at the abbey of Benediktbeueren in Bavaria. The songs poke fun at the existing order; rejoice in the poetry of love; and express delight in nature, youth, and student life. The work of the Archpoet (c. 1135–1165), one of the finest poets of the Middle Ages, is known through this collection. The poems are a famous product of the 12th century, revealing the vigor of urban communities and the enthusiasm of groups of students gathered around the schools and new universities of western Europe.
355. (E) Craftspeople and others involved in commerce formed guilds to protect their products and trades. Guilds were local collective organizations of artisans who usually worked in the same trade. These organizations served the economic, religious, and even social needs of their members. Guilds might maintain chaplains, pay for prayers for the dead, or serve as welfare institutions for sick and poor brethren and their families. Some began as prayer associations, but they evolved into organizations that guaranteed each member a place in the market by controlling production. Guilds did not eliminate competition between artisans, but they did regulate a member’s work hours, materials, prices, and quality standards to prevent one artisan from gaining an unfair advantage over another. By the 13th century, guilds had become complex corporations defined by statutes and rules. Women did not ordinarily join them, even though mothers, wives, daughters, and female apprentices often knew how to make shoes, weave cloth, or sell goods.
356. (D) Henry II (1133–1189) attempted to assert royal authority by destroying the castles of English barons and confiscating their lands. He also extended monarchal power by expanding the royal system of courts. He enlarged the role of the crown in both criminal and civil cases through a system of judicial visitations called eyres. Under this system, royal justices made regular trips to every locality in England. Henry declared that some crimes, such as rape, murder, and arson, were so heinous that they came under the king’s jurisdiction no matter where they were committed. The strongest opposition to Henry’s system of royal courts came from the church, which had had a separate system of trial and punishment available to the clergy for centuries. The punishments for crimes given by these clerical courts were usually quite mild, so churchmen naturally refused to submit to Henry’s courts. The ensuing contest between Henry II and his appointed archbishop, Thomas Becket (1117–1170), became the greatest battle between church and state of the 12th century. Eventually, Henry’s nobles murdered Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, accidentally turning him into a martyr. Although Henry’s role in the murder is unclear, he did public penance for the deed, and Becket’s tomb at Canterbury became a national shrine. Ultimately, however, the royal courts continued to expand.
357. (A) The Fourth Lateran Council was an important ecumenical council held in 1215 and called by Pope Innocent III to reform clerical and lay discipline. One canon required Christians to attend Mass and to confess their sins to a priest at least once a year; another proclaimed marriage a sacrament. The Eucharist was declared to truly contain Christ’s body and blood, even though it looked like bread and wine on the altar. The final canons stated that Jews and Muslims should wear special clothing so they could be distinguished from Christians. The longest canons dealt with heresy; the council laid down the mechanism of persecution and created a range of sanctions against those convicted. The sanctions originally designed for heretics were now adapted for use against Jews, lepers, homosexuals, prostitutes, and other minority groups that did not fit with the orthodox view of society. (Gutenberg’s printing press dates from the 1440s. The Hundred Years’ War began in 1337. The First Crusade occurred from 1096 to 1099. Thomas Becket was murdered in 1170.)
358. (C) Clovis (c. 466–511) was king of the Franks from 480 to 511 and is recognized as the founder of the French monarchy. During his rule, he won crucial victories over the Alemanni and the Visigoths and controlled most of Gaul, except for the Mediterranean coast. His power was enhanced by his conversion to Catholic Christianity at a time when most of the Germanic tribes were Arian Christians. Clovis combined elements of both the Germanic and Roman traditions. His law code, reflecting many traditional practices, was published in Latin and is known as the Salic law. Clovis’s code promoted social order through clear penalties for specific crimes. He created a system of fines to defuse vendettas between individuals and clans. The most famous part of this system was the wergild, the payment a murderer had to make as compensation for his crime. Most of the money was paid to the victim’s kin, but the king received about a third of the amount. The fine depended on the status of the person murdered: murdering a woman of childbearing age cost 600 gold coins, while a freeborn male was valued at 200, and ordinary slaves at 35. No distinction was made between murder and manslaughter until the Holy Roman imperial law in the 12th century. Payment of the wergild was gradually replaced with capital punishment around the 9th century; by the 12th century, the wergild had disappeared.
359. (C) In the Carolingian period, landlords began reorganizing their estates to run more efficiently. Heavy plows that could turn the thick northern soils came into wider use. Horses, which were more effective than oxen, often were harnessed to pull the plows. Most important was the transition from a two-field system to a three-field system. In the three-field system, farmers planted one third of the arable land with a winter crop, one third with a summer crop, and left the final third fallow to restore its fertility. The fields were rotated, so that land use was repeated only every three years. At any given time, two-thirds of the arable land was producing crops, as opposed to the two-field system, in which only half the land was used. The result was higher yields, surplus food, and a better standard of living for nearly everyone. From the end of the Middle Ages to the 20th century, European farmers practiced a three-year rotation of rye or winter wheat, followed by spring oats or barley, and then let the soil lie fallow.
360. (A) Musicians developed new musical forms in the 13th and 14th centuries that bridged the sacred and the secular. These innovations are most obvious in the spread of the motet, an example of polyphony (music that consists of the simultaneous performance of two or more melodies). By about 1000, vocal polyphony was used in church to add ceremonial importance to specific moments of the liturgy. Before 1215, most polyphony was sacred, and secular polyphony was not common before 1300. The motet originated in Paris and typically has three melody lines (or voices). The lowest, usually from a liturgical chant melody, has no words and may be played on an instrument rather than sung. The remaining melodies have different texts, whether Latin or French (or one of each), which are sung simultaneously. The Latin texts are usually sacred, whereas the French ones are secular, dealing with themes such as love and the seasons. The motets used the music of ordinary people, such as the calls of street vendors and the songs of students. In turn, polyphony influenced every form of music from the Mass to popular songs. Yet the church was not pleased to have secular music merging with the sacred. Certain instruments and types of music were actually forbidden in the church because they were related to secular music. Pope John XXII banished polyphony from the liturgy in 1322 and warned in his 1324 bull, Docta sanctorum patrum, against the unbecoming elements of this musical innovation.
361. (B) The absurdly named “Gothic” style of architecture began around 1135 with the project of Abbot Suger to remodel the Church of Saint Denis in Paris. By the mid-1200s, this style was adopted across Europe (with regional variations), and it lasted until the 16th century. Gothic was an urban architecture centered on the big cathedrals and did not rely on monastic patronage. The large, jewel-like, stained-glass windows and the soaring spires reflected the pride and confidence of wealthy urban merchants, artisans, and bishops. Gothic techniques included ribbed vaulting, which gave a sense of precision and order; the pointed arch, which produced a feeling of soaring height; and flying buttresses, which took the weight off the walls. The buttresses permitted much of the wall to be cut away and the open spaces filled with glass. Gothic sculpture, which decorated the cathedral, evolved from the stiff and elongated style of Romanesque into a spatial and naturalistic feel in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. Romanesque sculptures were carved on flat surfaces, whereas Gothic figures were sculpted in the round, turning, moving, and interacting with one another. Gothic sculpture often depicted complex stories or scenes. Nicola Pisano (c. 1220–c. 1284) was an Italian sculptor who is considered the pivotal figure between Gothic and Italian Renaissance sculpture. His most famous work was the pulpit of the Pisa baptistery. Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) was the greatest naturalist sculptor of the Italian baroque style.
362. (D) The most profound challenge to papal authority in the late Middle Ages came from Bohemia. John Huss (c. 1369–1415) was a Czech religious reformer who preached in Czech at the University of Prague. Huss was concerned with the moral reform of the church, but he did not support a break with Rome. He attacked the sale of papal indulgences and challenged papal claims to head the church. The reform movement attracted support from most Czech-speaking social groups but opposition from the German minority. Huss was given safe conduct to attend the Council of Constance; there, he was arrested, condemned for heresy, and burned in 1415. The resulting scandal led to a revolt of his followers on both religious and nationalist grounds. The Hussites gathered at Mount Tabor in southern Bohemia and began to restructure their community according to the Bible, practicing communal ownership and collecting tithes from peasants. Taborite leaders were radical priests who ministered to the community in the Czech language, exercised moral and judicial leadership, and even led people into battle. The Taborite army, led by military genius Jan Zizka (c. 1360–1424), repelled five attacks by “crusader” armies from neighboring Germany. Zizka pioneered the use of new military technology and strategy, and the Hussite infantry defeated larger armies and helped change medieval warfare. The Czechs eventually gained some autonomy until they were defeated at the battle of White Mountain in 1620.
363. (B) Pope Gregory I (540–604), also known as Gregory the Great, was pope from 590 until his death. He was the first pope to come from a monastic background and is known for his merging of spiritual and temporal power. During his reign, the pope became the greatest landowner in Italy. Gregory organized the defenses of Rome and paid for its army. He heard court cases, made treaties, and provided welfare services. He sent a missionary expedition to England and worked to convert the Visigoths from Arianism. He also simplified the ideas of church fathers like Saint Augustine and made them accessible to a wider audience. Pastoral Rule, his practical handbook for the clergy, was matched by practical reforms within the church. He tried to impose regular elections of bishops and clerical celibacy in Italy. Gregory the Great is often depicted as a transitional figure between the Roman and Germanic worlds and between the ancient and medieval eras.
364. (A) L’Anse aux Meadows on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland is the only known site of a Norse village in Canada. The site is notable for possible connections with the attempted colony of Vinland, established by Leif Ericsson around 1003. The Vikings made their first historical appearance in about 790; they did not take part in the invasions of Rome. They first settled Iceland in 874, and Iceland has been occupied ever since. The Vikings also traded with Kievian Rus around 900. Apart from two or three representations of ritual helmets, no depiction of Viking Age warriors’ helmets, and no preserved helmet, has horns.
365. (E) The climate of Europe in the Middle Ages was generally warmer than the so-called Little Ice Age that followed (c. 1590–1850). However, there was a major weather change between 1310 and 1330. During this time, northern Europe saw some of the worst periods of bad weather in the entire Middle Ages, characterized by severe winters and cold, rainy summers. Usually, medieval food production and distribution could sustain the population in peacetime. It was not until after 1300 that protracted famine occurred in western Europe. Two general causes have been suggested: climate change and overpopulation beyond what the economy could support. From 1000 to 1300, the population of Europe had exploded, reaching levels not matched again in some places until the 1800s. During the Great Famine (1315–1317), the price of bread tripled in a month in many northwestern European cities, and thousands starved to death. Estimates place the death toll at 10 to 25 percent of the population of many cities and towns. The Black Death (1349) and subsequent outbreaks of plague exacerbated the problems. The Great Famine marks a clear end to the early medieval period of growth and prosperity.
366. (C) The church condemned some groups, not on doctrinal grounds, but because they allowed their lay members to preach. This challenged the authority of the church hierarchy. The Waldensians, or Vaudois, were followers of a Christian movement of the later Middle Ages that preached the benefits of poverty. According to the most widely accepted story, the sect received its name in Lyon in the 1170s when a rich merchant named Peter Waldo decided to take Matthew 19:21 seriously: “If you wish to be perfect, then go and sell everything you have and give to the poor.” The same message had inspired countless monks and would later be the basis for Saint Francis’s preaching. Waldo’s followers lived in poverty but refused to retire to monasteries. They also preached the Gospel in the vernacular so everyone would understand it. Pope Alexander III examined Waldo and his followers at the Third Lateran Council, and although their way of life found approval, they were forbidden to preach without permission from the local bishop. The members of the group were declared schismatics in 1184 in France and then heretics by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. This radicalized the Waldensians, and they began rejecting the authority of the clergy. They wandered to Languedoc, Italy, northern Spain, and the Moselle Valley (Germany), where they were almost wiped out in the 1600s. However, active congregations still exist in Europe, South America, and North America.
367. (D) The great English peasant revolt of 1381 is one of the best-documented peasant revolts. The Black Death (1349) and subsequent epidemics caused a population decline that affected peasant-landowner relations. Peasants resented the Ordinance of Laborers (1349), a reactionary labor law that attempted to freeze wages and tie workers to lords. Religious dissent based on the preaching of John Wycliffe (c. 1328–1384) also stirred unrest; the radical priest John Ball was an example of the many common priests who supported the revolt. Peasants also complained about the English government, especially unpopular advisers; the costly war with France; taxes such as the poll tax passed by Parliament in 1377; and the administration of justice. Government action against tax evasion sparked the uprisings, with Wat Tyler, a soldier who had served in France, emerging as the leader. The rebels entered London unopposed and met with Richard II, who agreed to their demands, including the abolition of serfdom. Tyler was then killed by the mayor of London, the rebels dispersed, and Richard revoked his concessions. The uprising of 1381 began a century of regional unrest, including Jack Cade’s revolt in 1450 and the Cornish revolt of 1497. Although these peasant revolts failed, they did help to limit taxation, reduce military expenditures, and trigger resistance to serfdom in England.
368. (B) At a great ceremony in Rome on Christmas Day in 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor of the Romans. This signified an important link between Charlemagne’s Frankish kingdom and the old Roman Empire. Leo III’s action exalted a European king and downgraded the authority of the Byzantine emperor. The pope was effectively reviving the western Roman Empire and nullifying the legitimacy of Empress Irene of Constantinople, whom Leo did not consider a legitimate claimant to the Byzantine throne because she was a woman. The Byzantines thought this was outrageous, especially since they viewed Charlemagne as an upstart barbarian. The coronation also implied a privileged position of power for the pope as an “emperor maker.” Charlemagne may have been displeased because he feared offending the Byzantines or perhaps because he did not like the idea that the pope held a position of authority higher than his own.
369. (C) In Spain, the Visigoth king Leovigild (reigned 569–586) established his rule through military might. However, he still could not attain the support of the powerful landowners and bishops. His son, Reccared, converted to Catholic Christianity, and at the Third Council of Toledo (589), most of the bishops also converted from Arianism. Afterward, Visigoth kings gave bishops and churchmen the freedom to establish their own hierarchy. In return, the bishops supported the Visigoth king. They anointed the king in a ritual that paralleled the ordination of priests, and rebellion against the king became synonymous with rebellion against Christ. The great landowners also supported the king by supplying him with troops. Ironically, this centralization of power helped bring down the Visigoths. When the Arabs invaded in 711, they only had to defeat a single army and kill the king to achieve victory. The situation in Spain differed from the situation in northern Italy, where the Lombards had to deal with a hostile papacy and fiercely independent dukes.
370. (E) Pope Boniface VIII (c. 1235–1303), was pope from 1294 until his death. He put forth some of the strongest claims to temporal and spiritual power of any pope. Yet at the same time, both France and England began to tax the clergy to finance their ongoing wars against each other. Boniface viewed this taxation as an assault on traditional church rights and issued the bull Clericis laicos (1296), forbidding secular taxation of the clergy without the pope’s approval. Philip IV retaliated by denying the exportation of money from France to Rome, funds that the church needed to operate. The feud between the two peaked in 1302, when Boniface issued Unam sanctam, one of the most important papal bulls in Catholic history. It declared officially that both spiritual and temporal powers were under the pope’s jurisdiction and that kings were subordinate to the power of the church. Boniface declared that it was “absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman pontiff.” It is ironic that this extreme statement of papal supremacy should be issued at a time when the monarchies of France and England were beginning to build strong state systems with close control over their respective churches. Boniface had overreached, and French reaction to Unam sanctum was quick and brutal: the pope was captured, roughly handled at Anagni, and died from the harsh treatment he received in 1303.
371. (E) Joan of Arc (1412–1431), sometimes called La Pucelle (“the maid” or “the virgin”) d’Orléans, is the national heroine of France and a Catholic saint. She was a peasant girl from eastern France who claimed to have received mystical instructions from heaven that ordered her to rally the French armies and recover her homeland from English domination in the Hundred Years’ War. The uncrowned king Charles VII sent her to the siege of Orléans as part of a relief mission, and her presence and leadership helped lift the siege in nine days. Several swift victories followed, and she stood next to Charles VII at his coronation in Rheims in 1429. This strengthened Charles’s legitimacy and settled the disputed succession to the throne. The following year, she was captured by the Burgundians, sold to the English, tried by an ecclesiastical court for heresy and witchcraft, and burned at the stake (1431). She was 19 years old. To the lasting shame of Charles VII, he did nothing to help her. Twenty-five years later, Pope Callixtus III pronounced her innocent and declared her a martyr. After Joan’s death, the English position slowly crumbled. The duke of Burgundy recognized Charles VII as king of France, and Charles entered Paris in 1437. The English were eventually driven from France, retaining only the port of Calais when hostilities ceased in 1453.
372. (B) Gregory of Tours (c. 540–594) wrote the Historia Francorum, a chronicle that covered the history of the world from creation to 591 CE but contained many details about sixth-century affairs. Bede (632–735) wrote The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which relates the story of the conversion of England to Christianity and the history of the English church until the time of his writing in 731. Bede popularized the dating of events from the birth of Christ. Einhard (c. 770–840) was a Frankish scholar and court official during the Carolingian renaissance who is best known for his biography of his friend Charlemagne. Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1100–1154) was famous for his Historia Regum Britanniae (1136–1138), which freely mixed material from Welsh legend and early British sources. Despite its lack of historical accuracy, the book was popular in the Middle Ages and provided the basis for the later tradition surrounding characters such as King Arthur and Merlin the wizard.
373. (D) Frederick II (1194–1250) was Holy Roman Emperor from 1220 to 1250, German king from 1212, and king of Sicily (1198–1250) and Jerusalem (1225–1228). He was the son of Emperor Henry VI and Constance of Sicily and the grandson of Frederick Barbarossa. Frederick II inherited Sicily and Germany and tried to control both places. In 1215 and 1220, he promised to go on crusade but delayed until Pope Gregory IX excommunicated him. He finally went on the Sixth Crusade (1227–1229), secured Jerusalem and other important places through negotiations instead of warfare, and returned triumphantly to Italy. In 1231, he promulgated the Constitutions of Melfi for Sicily, a group of laws that established a system of salaried governors who worked according to uniform procedures. The constitutions called for most law cases to be heard by royal courts, standardized commercial privileges, and established a system of taxation. At the same time, Frederick’s involvement in the affairs of northern Italy in the 1230s brought him into conflict with Gregory IX (who called him the Antichrist) and then Innocent IV, who excommunicated and deposed him at the Council of Lyons (1245). Frederick was one of the most controversial men of the Middle Ages; Matthew Paris called him stupor mundi (“the amazement of the world”). He spoke six languages, was an enthusiastic patron of science and poetry, and wrote a book on falconry.
374. (A) Innocent III (c. 1160–1216) was a zealous church reformer and one of the strongest medieval popes. During his reign (1198–1216), he consistently claimed that the pope had the right to intervene in any issue where sin might be involved. He presided over the Fourth Lateran Council, which tried to regulate all aspects of Christian life for both the laity and the clergy. One canon required Christians to attend Mass and to confess their sins to a priest at least once a year; another proclaimed marriage a sacrament. The Eucharist was declared to truly contain Christ’s body and blood, even though it looked like bread and wine on the altar. The Fourth Lateran Council also blasted heretics and ordered Jews to wear badges to indicate their religion. Innocent III’s Lateran Council marked a high point of papal prestige in the Middle Ages. He supported the Franciscans and Dominicans despite noting the similarities between their teachings and some heresies. He worked to separate Germany from Italy, keep northern and southern Italy apart, and protect the power of the Papal States. He preached the crusade against the Albigensians in Languedoc; this was the first time a pope offered warriors fighting an enemy in Christian Europe the same spiritual and temporal benefits as Crusaders to the Holy Land. Innocent also preached the Fourth Crusade that sacked Constantinople in 1204.
375. (E) The Magna Carta was a royal charter, sealed and issued by the English king John at Runnymede on the Thames near Windsor in 1215. It was the result of more than two years of negotiations between the king and his barons. Initially, it consisted of 63 relatively brief and often unrelated clauses, but several reissues omitted certain clauses. The barons intended the Magna Carta to be a conservative document defining the “customary” obligations and rights of the nobility and forbidding the king from breaking these customs without consulting his barons. It also maintained that all freemen in England had certain rights in common and that the king must uphold those customs and rights. The most important rights were the vaguely worded statements against oppression of all subjects that later generations interpreted as guarantees of trial by jury and of habeas corpus (but are not explicit in the Magna Carta itself). In the Middle Ages, the barons invoked the Magna Carta whenever they felt the need to oppose royal tyranny. Eventually, as the definition of freemen expanded to include all the king’s subjects, the Magna Carta became a milestone in the movement toward government by law.
376. (E) Renewed religious fervor in Europe in the 1100s led to new movements that stimulated individual piety for both laywomen and laymen. Some women joined convents, a few became recluses, and others joined new lay sisterhoods. The Beguines formed in northern Europe at the end of the 1100s. They were laywomen who lived in religious community houses (béguinages) but without permanent vows or an established rule. In this way, they imitated the convent lives of nuns but did not submit to male clerical control. They chose to remain celibate and devoted their lives to philanthropy, such as the care of lepers, the sick, and the poor. They later became influential in the weaving of cloth. Although their daily occupations were prosaic, the Beguines’ internal lives were often emotional and ecstatic. For example, the renowned Mary of Oignies (1177–1213) envisioned herself as a pious mother entrusted with the Christ child. The Beguine movement spread along the trade routes of northwestern Europe, and in the 1300s, béguinages sprang up throughout the urban areas of Belgium, Holland, and the Rhineland. The movement represented the desire of many urban women to achieve salvation through piety and good works. They became closely connected with the Franciscans, but their relations with the institutional church were uneasy throughout the Middle Ages. The Beguines were often suspected of heresy but never officially declared heretical. Their male equivalents were known as Beghards.
377. (A) Lollardy was a name given to opponents of the established order within the English church at the end of the 1300s. They professed to be followers of John Wycliffe (c. 1330–1384), who rejected the ecclesiastical hierarchy in On the Church (1378) and denied the doctrine of transubstantiation in On the Eucharist (1379). Lollardy combined intellectual dissent, social unrest, and nationalist sentiment into a powerful anticlerical movement. Wycliffe and his disciples actively promoted the use of English in religious writings and attempted to translate the Bible into English and popularize it by reading it to all ranks of society. In the opening years of Henry IV’s reign, the government took savage action against the Lollards under the terms of the statute De Heretico Comburendo (1400). A rebellion led by Sir John Oldcastle after Henry V’s accession in 1413 was cruelly suppressed. However, Lollardy seems to have survived to provide some independent religious experience in which the emphasis was on studying the scripture in the vernacular and the rejection of priestly authority. Lollard beliefs resurfaced in the convulsive religious conflicts of the 16th century known as the Reformation.
378. (D) The Hanseatic League was a federation of north German towns formed to protect their mutual trading interests. German expansion along the coast in the 12th and 13th centuries enabled German merchants to establish a monopoly over the Baltic Sea trade. This trade, centered on the island of Gotland, dealt in fur, wax, and luxury goods from the east and helped to stimulate older trading links with England and Flanders. At first, Baltic towns negotiated small-scale agreements; then they formed a more powerful union in 1356 when some German towns met to try to resolve common trading problems in Flanders. The Hanseatic League reached its peak in the late 14th century, with more than 70 members and a network of rich trading routes hinging on the Kontors (foreign trading centers) in London, Novgorod, Bergen, and Bruges. The league was created to protect commercial interests and privileges granted by foreign rulers in cities and countries visited by the merchants. The Hanseatic cities had their own legal system and furnished their own protection and mutual aid. The town of Lübeck usually took the lead in Hanseatic affairs, generally summoning the council (Hansetag) and using its seal on behalf of the league. The Hanseatic League began to decline during the 15th century because of challenges in the Baltic by non-Hanseatic merchants and the growing threat of territorial rulers.
379. (E) The Magyars (Hungarians), nomadic latecomers to Europe, arrived about 899 in the Danube basin. Until then, the region had been primarily Slavic, but the Magyars came from the east and spoke a language unrelated to any other in Europe except Finnish. From their bases in present-day Hungary, the Magyars raided far to the west, attacking Germany, Italy, and even southern Gaul. The battle of Lechfeld (955) is often viewed as the crucial event for stopping Magyar raids into western Europe. Fought south of Augsburg on a flood-plain that lies along the Lech River, the German king Otto I (reigned 936–973) decimated a Magyar raiding party in the battle. This increased Otto’s prestige (he would eventually become Otto the Great) and made him a hero to his contemporaries. The victory also contributed to the establishment of a settled Hungarian kingdom. However, some historians believe the containment of the Magyars had more to do with their internal transformation from nomads to farmers than with their military defeat.
380. (C) The troubadours were poet-musicians of the courts of southern France. William IX of Aquitaine (1071–1127), widely considered the first troubadour, wrote songs that ranged from bawdy to sensual and refined. There are different ideas regarding the beginning of the troubadour tradition; the most commonly held theory is that it had Arabic origins. The notions of love for love’s sake and exaltation of the beloved lady have been traced back to Arabic literature of the 9th and 10th centuries. Famous European troubadours included Jaufre Rudel (who developed the theme of love from afar); Bernart de Ventadorn (who established the classical form of courtly love poetry); the Comtessa de Dia (a noted female troubadour); Bertran de Born (who reveled in bloody warfare); Peire Cardenal (of whose works, almost 100 survive); and Guiraut Riquier (who wrote songs in praise of the Virgin Mary). Troubadours varied their rhymes and meters to dazzle their audiences with brilliant originality. They celebrated the doctrine of fin’amors (courtly love), the glorification of women, and the cult of true love. Eleanor of Aquitaine and other aristocratic women patronized the troubadours, but both men and women appreciated troubadour poetry, which recognized and praised women’s power even as it eroticized it. Troubadour music was always sung, typically by a jongleur (musician). No troubadour music existed before 1200, but by the 13th century, music was written on four- and five-line staves. Troubadours exerted a profound influence on the lyric poetry and literature of Europe and even on its social attitudes.
381. (C) Charlemagne’s son and successor, Louis I the Pious (reigned 814–840) was also crowned emperor by the pope. After his death, a period of family alliances and tragedies led to the Treaty of Verdun (843), which partitioned Charlemagne’s empire among Louis’s three sons. Louis the German received the eastern portion (later Germany); Charles II (Charles the Bald) became king of the western portion (later France); and Lothair I received the central portion (Belgium, Holland, Lorraine, Alsace, Burgundy, Provence, and most of Italy) and also kept the imperial title. The Treaty of Verdun represented the breakup of Charlemagne’s empire into political units that foreshadowed the nations of western Europe.
382. (A) Saint Francis (c. 1182–1226) founded the famous orthodox religious movement named after him. He was a spellbinding preacher who advocated the benefits of poverty, simplicity, and helping others. Franciscan friars often sought town life, sleeping in dormitories on the outskirts of cities. They became part of urban community life, preaching to crowds and begging for their daily bread. Saint Francis converted both men and women; in 1212, his teaching particularly inspired an 18-year-old noblewoman named Clare (1194–1253). As a result, she assembled a community of pious women that eventually became the Orders of the Sisters of Saint Francis (Poor Clares). At first, the women worked alongside the friars, but Francis and the church disapproved of their activities in the world. Soon, Franciscan women were confined to cloisters under the Rule of Saint Benedict. Although they were an enclosed order, the Poor Clares lived a life of great poverty and austerity and became extremely popular in the 1200s and early 1300s. Franciscan nuns, unlike their male counterparts, lived in strict seclusion. Yet they ministered to the world by taking in the sick. Francis died in 1226 and was canonized by 1228. The rapid growth (and wealth) of the medieval Franciscans has been viewed as both the fulfillment and the abandonment of his ideals.
383. (E) In the early Middle Ages, slavery was widespread throughout Europe. It was inherited as an institution from both Roman and German sources and common in the neighboring Byzantine and Islamic states. The attitude of the Christian church was ambivalent. Jesus once said, “Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them, for this is the law.” But Jesus never actually spoke out against slavery. A famous passage from the Bible told slaves to “be obedient to those who are your earthly masters, with fear and trembling.” The early Christian church did not oppose Roman slavery. Instead, it preached that slaves could look forward to freedom in heaven. Until then, they should follow the example of Jesus, who suffered in silence rather than using force to fight back. Paul’s letter to Philemon, the shortest book of the New Testament, exemplified Christianity’s ambivalence toward slavery. The medieval church opposed the sale of Christian slaves to non-Christians but accepted slavery as a result of humanity’s sinful nature. Eventually, the rise of a manorial economy favored the use of serfs over slaves. The Vikings sold Slavs at slave markets and helped give the term slave to Europe. By 1100, however, most of the Scandinavian and Slavic people had been Christianized. Although chattel slavery persisted in some areas in the 1100s, the enslavement of Christians by other Christians became increasingly regarded as unethical and unprofitable.
384. (D) In the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 23:20 stated, “You shall not deduct interest from loans to your countryman, whether in money or food or anything else that can be deducted as interest.” Jews interpreted this to mean that interest could be charged to strangers but not to other Jews. The early church opposed any payment of interest (which it called usury) in principle. However, the commercial revolution of the 11th and 12th centuries spread the use of contracts for sales, exchanges, and loans and increased the need for flexible capital. Because Christians forced Jews out of most professions, Jews were pushed into marginal occupations such as moneylending. Thomas Aquinas believed that usury was a violation of natural moral law, because all things are created for their natural end, but money is not an end but a means of buying goods and services. Lending money to generate more money was therefore unnatural and evil; it made something that should be sterile into something productive. Canon 29 of the Catholic Council of Vienne (1311) stated, “If indeed someone has fallen into the error of presuming to stubbornly insist that the practice of interest is not sinful, we decree that he is to be punished as a heretic.” As a result, interest in western Europe was often disguised as a penalty for late payment under the rules of a contract. Interest of any kind is forbidden in Islam, forcing the creation of specialized banking rules for investors wishing to literally obey the Koran.
385. (D) The Mabinogion is a collection of 11 prose stories from medieval Welsh manuscripts of the 1300s. The tales draw on pre-Christian Celtic mythology, international folktales, and early medieval historical traditions. The first four tales, which are collectively called “The Four Branches of the Mabinogi,” are roughly based on the story of Prince Gwri (Pryderi). In the first tale, he is born and raised, inherits the kingdom, and marries; in the second, he is barely mentioned; in the third, he is imprisoned by enchantment and released; and in the fourth, he falls in battle. Five of the subsequent stories are early examples of legends involving King Arthur.
386. (D) The papal reform movement is most closely associated with the controversial Gregory VII (c. 1020–1085). He began as a lowly cleric and rose slowly through the hierarchy. His anxiety over the moral state of the church was the motivating force for most of his actions. He was always a passionate advocate of papal primacy and unafraid to clash with the German emperor Henry IV (1050–1106) in the Investiture Controversy. However, this was only part of larger reforms Gregory promulgated, including the celibacy of the clergy (which would distance European clerics even further from their Byzantine counterparts), the end of simony, and the autonomy of the church from secular leaders. In 1074, Gregory published an encyclical absolving people from obedience to bishops who allowed married priests. The next year he enjoined them to take action against married priests and deprived these clerics of their revenues. Both the campaign against priestly marriage and that against simony provoked widespread resistance. Gregory also emphasized the importance of the sacraments and the special nature of the priest, whose chief role was to administer them. Not until the 1100s did people regularly come to be married by a priest in church, and churchmen began to stress the sanctity of marriage. The reform movement also proclaimed the special importance of the Mass.
387. (B) The Inquisition was a Catholic court that tried to eliminate heresy (beliefs that contradicted Catholic teachings). The foundation of the papal Inquisition can be attributed directly to Pope Gregory IX’s bull Excommunicamus (1231), which established inquisitorial courts answerable directly to the pope and laid down procedures by which professional inquisitors were to be sent out to trace heretics. Inquisitors, aided by secular authorities, rounded up virtually entire villages and interrogated everyone. The judges assigned relatively lenient sentences to those who were unaware that they held heretical beliefs or those who quickly recanted. However, unrepentant heretics were given to secular powers to be burned at the stake. In the 13th century, long-term imprisonment also became a tool to repress heresy, even if the heretic confessed. Inquisitors used imprisonment to force people to recant, to give the names of other heretics, or to admit to a conspiracy against the church. In 1252, Innocent IV permitted the use of torture to obtain a confession. The Inquisition’s reputation suffered from the squalid actions taken against the Knights Templars in France in the early 1300s and against the Spiritual Franciscans. One of the most famous inquisitors was Bernard Gui (1261–1331), who worked to eradicate heresy in southern France from 1308 to 1323. The Inquisition was not effective against later reforming movements, but it was reactivated in Spain under Isabella and Ferdinand, who used it as a tool of the national government.
388. (A) Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) was a multitalented writer, music composer, philosopher, and mystic. She was elected a magistra (abbess) by her fellow nuns in 1136, and she founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg (1150) and Eibingen (1165). At a time when few women wrote, Hildegard produced major works of theology and visionary writings. Her Scivias (1140s) denounces vice in almost apocalyptical terms. She wrote treatises about natural history and the medicinal uses of plants, animals, trees, and stones. She is perhaps the first composer of music with a known biography. One of her works, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama. Hildegard was consulted by and advised famous men such as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and Frederick Barbarossa. In her old age, she wrote Liber de Operatione Dea, which attempted to explain the inner motivations of humans and reconcile the physical and the spiritual.
389. (D) The Seljuk Turks were a Turco-Persian dynasty that ruled parts of central Asia and the Middle East from the 11th to the 14th centuries. The Seljuks entered Baghdad in 1055 and, under Alp Arslan, crushed the Byzantine army at Manzikert (1071) and occupied Anatolia. They also captured Jerusalem in 1071 and Antioch in 1085; the Seljuk expansion was the direct cause of the First Crusade (1096–1099). In 1095, the Byzantine emperor Alexius I appealed for help to Pope Urban II, hoping to get new mercenary troops for a fresh offensive. The pope chose to interpret this request differently. At the Council of Clermont (in France) in 1095, he moved outside and addressed the crowd, saying, “Oh, race of Franks … race beloved and chosen by God … Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulcher; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourself.” The crowd reportedly responded with one voice, “God wills it.” Although historians disagree on Urban II’s motives, the goal was to reclaim the Holy Land from the Muslims. In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem, massacred many Christian and Jewish inhabitants, and established the Crusader states (Outremer) of the kingdom of Jerusalem, the county of Tripoli, the principality of Antioch, and the county of Edessa.
390. (C) At Christmas 1085, 20 years after his conquest of England, William I ordered a massive survey and census of England, popularly known as the Domesday Book. It received its name (from doomsday, meaning “day of judgment”) in the 12th century because there was supposed to be no appeal against its judgment. One of the main purposes was to determine what taxes had been paid under Edward the Confessor. The Domesday Book was the most extensive inventory of land, livestock, taxes, and population that had ever been completed in Europe. The king’s men conducted local surveys by consulting Anglo-Saxon tax lists and taking testimony from local jurors. From these inquests, scribes wrote voluminous reports filled with statements from villagers, sheriffs, priests, and barons. The reports were then summarized in the two-volume Domesday Book. The survey provided the king and his officials with information about land and revenue, especially regarding the Danegeld. One of the interesting findings of the Domesday Book is that chattel slavery was an important institution in England; it is estimated that slaves formed between 2 and 10 percent of the country’s population.
391. (D) Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340–1400) was one of the greatest English writers and poets. This excerpt is from the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (written after 1386). Chaucer was also a businessman and active in the court under the patronage of John of Gaunt. He traveled widely, especially to Italy in the 1370s. He chose to write in Middle English at a time when the triumph of English over French was uncertain. Using a blend of realism and imaginative insight, Chaucer painted an ironic and critical portrait of English society at the end of the 14th century. The Canterbury Tales is told by a party of pilgrims, a cross-section of contemporary society, on the journey from Southwark to the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury. Chaucer’s work borrowed from Boccaccio’s Decameron, but Chaucer populated his tales with “sondry folk” rather than Boccaccio’s fleeing nobles. In the Prologue, Chaucer describes not the tales to be told but the people who will tell them. In this way, he hints to the reader that the book’s structure will depend on the characters rather than a general theme or moral.
392. (D) The Cistercians (known as the “white monks”) were one of the new orders (such as the Carthusians) that appeared in the early 1100s in response to calls for greater asceticism. They were founded in 1098 by Robert, the abbot of Molesme, and the movement took its name from the location of its first house in Citeaux, France. The Cistercians aimed to live exactly according to the Rule of Saint Benedict. Their greatest expansion took place under Saint Bernard (c. 1090–1153), the abbot of Clairvaux. By 1200, there were more than 500 Cistercian houses throughout Europe, including Norway, Sicily, and Romania. The Cistercians accepted two separate classes of monks: choir monks, many of whom were well-educated priests, and lay brothers who tilled the fields. In this way, they provided an opportunity for ordinary men from nonaristocratic backgrounds to lead monastic lives. The Cistercians developed a spirituality of intense personal devotion and emphasized Christ’s and Mary’s humanity. The Cistercian God was approachable, protective, and even nurturing. The order’s monastic buildings had little or no decorative details and were often similar to each other in construction; they lacked wall painting and sculpture and were much plainer than those of the contemporary Benedictines. To resist worldly temptations, the Cistercians chose secluded spots for their abbeys. Thus, they played a crucial economic role in settling marginal European lands and turning them into productive agricultural tracts.
393. (A) By 1000, most Jews lived in cities, many in the flourishing commercial region of the Rhineland. Under Henry IV, the Jews in Speyer and elsewhere in the empire received protection from the local bishop in exchange for paying a tax. Within these cities, Jews lived in their own tightly knit communities. Although officials occasionally spoke out against them, they were not persecuted systematically until the First Crusade. In his chronicle of that crusade, Solomon bar Simson wrote, “At this time … Frenchmen and Germans, set out for the Holy City [Jerusalem] … as they passed through the towns where Jews dwelled, they said to one another, … Here, in our midst, are the Jews—they whose forefathers murdered and crucified [Christ] for no reason. Let us first avenge ourselves on them and exterminate them… . On the eighth day of Iyar, on the Sabbath, the foe attacked the community of Speyer and murdered 11 holy souls who … refused to defile themselves by adopting the faith of their foe.” Jews were killed in many Rhineland cities such as Metz, Speyer, Worms, Mainz, and Cologne. The First Crusade marked a milestone in the late medieval hostility against the “other”—Jews, witches, heretics, lepers, and homosexuals. After the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and the establishment of the Inquisition, all these groups suffered much greater hostility and legal persecution.
394. (A) Investiture is the ceremony in which a churchman is given his office. Before the Investiture Controversy, the ruler gave a church appointee his office by symbolically investing the priest or bishop with the church and lands that accompanied that office. The Concordat of Worms was an agreement reached between Pope Callixtus II and Holy Roman Emperor Henry V in 1122 near the city of Worms. This agreement ended the first phase of the power struggle between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire. It was a compromise that relied on a conceptual distinction between the spiritual and the secular parts of investiture. The ceremony would be divided between clerical and secular authorities. A member of the clergy would give the church appointee the spiritual signs of his office (a ring and a staff), while the emperor or his representative would give him the symbols of material goods. Elections of bishops in Germany would take place “in the presence” of the emperor. In Italy, they would take place before the pope. In the end, secular rulers continued to have a part in choosing and investing churchmen, but few people claimed the king was the head of the church. The Investiture Controversy was an early milestone on the way to the separation of church and state.
395. (B) The Investiture Controversy and the subsequent civil war (1075–1122) strengthened the German princes and weakened the kings. This situation changed under Frederick Barbarossa (1122–1190), the king of Germany from 1152 until his death. Frederick affirmed royal rights, even when he handed out duchies and allowed others to name bishops. He expanded his theoretical power by requiring princes to concede formally and publicly that they held their rights and territories from him as their lord. By making them vassals, Frederick defined them as powerful yet personally subordinate to him. Historians often date the origin of the so-called Holy Roman Empire to his reign, even though the term was first used in 1254. Frederick dreamed of restoring the empire to its former glory, and this required constant conflict with Italy. He invaded Italy six separate times, alternately fighting and negotiating with the cities in the north, especially Milan. On his fifth try, he met disaster at the battle of Legnano (1176), where he was defeated by the forces of the Lombard League. The battle marked the triumph of the city over the crown in Italy, which would not have a centralized government until the 1800s. Frederick finally won a foothold in Italy by marrying his son Henry to Constance, heiress to the kingdom of Sicily. Frederick supported the Third Crusade and drowned in the Saleph (now Goksu) River in Turkey on his way to fight against Saladin.
396. (E) Hakata Bay is famous for its role in the Mongol invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281. Both invasions were undertaken by Kublai Khan to conquer Japan after he had already reduced Korea (Goryeo) to the status of a puppet state. The failure of these invasions limited Mongol expansion, and the memory of them remains a major part of Japanese self-definition. One of the reasons for the Japanese success were the huge damages the Mongol invasion fleet suffered both times as a result of major storms. The invasions are therefore the earliest events for which the word kamikaze (“divine wind”) is widely used. The Mongols’ failed invasions were the closest that Japan had come to being conquered by a foreign power until its occupation in 1945 at the end of World War II. The destruction of the Mongol fleets guaranteed Japan’s independence but also created a power struggle in the Japanese government that eventually led to the military’s control of the emperor.
397. (A) The Yuan Dynasty developed from the Mongol invasion of China in the 1200s. During this period, the territory, economy, and trade routes of China expanded greatly. Although China generally flourished under Yuan rule, the Mongols essentially established a caste system that left the native Chinese (especially the southern Chinese) with little opportunity for advancement. In 1368, Yuan rule ended after a successful Chinese uprising.
398. (D) Karakorum was the capital of the Mongol Empire in the early 13th century. Its ruins lie on the Orhon River in present-day north-central Mongolia. In 1220, Genghis Khan established his headquarters at Karakorum and used it as a base from which to invade China. However, until 1235, Karakorum was little more than a yurt town. In that year, Ogodei, Genghis Khan’s son and successor, surrounded Karakorum with walls and built a huge palace. At its height, the city included many brick buildings, 12 shamanistic shrines, and 2 mosques. Karakorum was also noted for its sculpture, especially its great stone tortoises. Under Ogodei and his successors, the city became a major site for world politics. Mongke Khan had the palace enlarged and a great stupa temple completed. William of Rubruck, a papal envoy to the Mongols, visited Karakorum in 1254 and described the town as cosmopolitan and religiously tolerant. The silver tree he described as part of the palace has become the symbol of Karakorum. In 1272, Kublai Khan moved the capital to Khanbaliq (present-day Beijing), and Karakorum became a provincial backwater of the Yuan Dynasty. The city briefly revived as capital of the Northern Yuan in the 14th and 15th centuries but then declined until it became nothing more than ruins.
399. (A) The battle of Ayn Jalut in 1260, although a relatively small battle, had extremely large consequences. In 1258, Genghis Khan’s grandson, Hulagu, sacked Baghdad and then conquered Aleppo and Damascus in 1260. He was aiming for Jerusalem and Egypt when he received the news that Mongke the Great Khan had died. Although advised by his generals not to return to Mongolia, Hulagu departed, leaving a greatly reduced army behind. This Mongol force was confronted by the Mamluks (Egyptian soldiers of slave origin) under the command of the wily Baibars. The two forces met at Ayn Jalut (Goliath’s Well), about halfway between Jerusalem and Acre (present-day Israel) in 1260; the number of soldiers on both sides is disputed. The Mamluks defeated the Mongols and checked their advance, essentially the first Mongol defeat in history. The establishment of the Mamluk Dynasty following the battle revitalized Islam after the disaster at Baghdad. Complicated political maneuverings followed Ayn Jalut, but a united Mongol force never again threatened Egypt.
400. (A) The precise causes of the Mongol expansion in the early 1200s are not clear. In the late 12th century, various nomadic tribes of mixed ethnic origins lived in the north Mongolian plateau; these tribes never seemed to stop fighting each other. Genghis Khan (c. 1162–1217), the brilliant Mongol leader, united the varied ethnic tribes and established the Mongol khanate in 1206. He fused the nomadic tribes into an aggressive army, creating a cavalry so powerful it seemed invincible. Recently, some scholars have speculated that climate changes had reduced the grasslands that sustained the Mongols’ animals and their nomadic way of life. In the 13th century, they began to migrate from the steppes of central Asia to better grazing lands in the south and southwest. If that were the case, economic necessity impelled the Mongols to expand. However, their advance out of Mongolia also represented the definite political strategy of Genghis Khan, who believed that military offensives would keep the tribes united under him.
401. (A) The Mongol invasions in eastern Europe brought the cultures of Asia into contact with the European world. At its largest extent, the Mongol Empire touched Europe and very nearly reached Japan; it also stretched southward to Persia and India. The unification of Eurasia under the Mongols greatly diminished competing tribute gatherers throughout the trade network and ensured greater safety in travel. Thus, the Mongols were among the first people to tie the so-called Eastern world to the West and open up trade relations across regions formerly separated by language, religion, and political regimes. This allowed the spread of Christianity to Asia and stimulated the European search for exotic goods. Under Mongol rule, trade flourished, ideas circulated, and diverse cultures existed side by side. This is sometimes called Pax Mongolica.
402. (E) Despite the military power of the Yuan Dynasty, its rulers never subjugated Vietnam or Laos. The other answer choices were all ruled by the dynasty. Xinjiang is in northwest China in Silk Road country. Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north of the Himalayas. Yunnan is a mountainous area located in the far southwest of China. The capital of the area is Kunming, and the area borders present-day Burma, Laos, and Vietnam. Taiwan, previously known as Formosa, is an island in the western Pacific Ocean off the southeast coast of China.
403. (C) The Mongols dominated Russia for about 200 years. Their most important victory was the capture of Kiev in 1240. They made the mouth of the Volga River their power center in Russia. During their rule, they standardized tax collection and based the recruitment of troops on a population census. However, they also used much of the local government machinery, allowing Russian princes to continue to rule as long as they paid homage and tribute to the khan. (The Mongol overlords exempted the Russian church from taxes.)
404. (E) In 1256, Hulagu Khan (Genghis Khan’s grandson) led a Mongol force into Iran, defeated the Assassins at Alamut, and turned toward Baghdad. In 1258, after a relatively short siege, the Mongols breached the walls of Baghdad and spent eight days sacking the city. They massacred most of the inhabitants, including the Abbasid caliph Al-Musta’sim; estimates of fatalities range from 100,000 to a million. The Mongols also destroyed large sections of the city, including its libraries, universities, mosques, artistic treasures, and the canals and dikes that formed the city’s irrigation system. The sack of Baghdad ended the Abbasid Caliphate, a blow from which Islamic culture arguably never fully recovered. Baghdad remained depopulated and in ruins for several centuries; its destruction is usually regarded as the end of the so-called Islamic golden age.
405. (B) Mongol khans and generals developed sophisticated military tactics, strategies, and organization that helped them conquer large parts of Asia, the Middle East, and eastern Europe. The Mongols organized their campaigns far in advance of the planned attack. Their armies traveled light and lived mostly off the land. While an army of the Roman Empire might cover 25 miles a day, Mongol horsemen could traverse 90 miles. Although the Mongols were ruthless in battle, they displayed extraordinary military discipline. Their primary weapon, the Mongol bow, had a range of more than 200 yards and was the best of its time. The Mongols also used sophisticated tactics such as two- and three-flank operations. For example, the Mongol invasion of Hungary was two-pronged: one division arrived from Russia, while the other moved through Poland and Germany. At the battle of Mohi in 1241, Mongol forces crushed the Hungarian army. After the invasion, about a quarter of the Hungarian population died by slaughter or epidemic. Yet although the Mongols claimed control of Hungary, they could not occupy the fortified cities. The Mongols excelled where cavalry operated best. While they could use siege warfare successfully (for example, at Baghdad), it was not their strong point. They realized this deficiency and tried to surmount it by using foreign technical experts (such as at Xianyang) and adapting new technologies when faced with strong defensive fortifications.
406. (A) Ivan III (1440–1505) is also known as Ivan the Great or the Gatherer of the Russian Lands. He was a grand prince of Moscow who tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Mongols over Russia, and renovated the Kremlin. He reigned for 43 years (1462–1505). The Mongol invasion, reinforced by the breakup of Kievan Rus in the 12th century, led to the rise of the grand duchy of Moscow. In 1476, Ivan refused to pay the customary tribute to the grand khan. He then expanded his territory to the south and east by pushing the Mongols to the Volga River. Ivan III was the first Muscovite prince to claim an imperial title, referring to himself as tsar (or czar, from the name Caesar). In 1471, Ivan defeated the city-state of Novgorod, Moscow’s possible competitor for control of Russia. In following years, he abolished Novgorod’s local government and forcibly relocated leading families to lands around Moscow. By the time of his death, he had laid the foundations of the Russian state. (Ivan the Terrible was Ivan IV (1530–1584), grand prince of Moscow and the first ruler to be crowned tsar of all Russia.)
407. (B) A rich cultural diversity developed in China during the rule of the Yuan Dynasty. Some of the major cultural achievements were the development of drama, especially the music drama. The Yuan suppressed Confucianism, with its emphasis on conservative conformity, and this meant the arts received new freedom. The Yuan rulers abolished the imperial examination system, lowering the status of intellectuals to a position only slightly higher than beggars. Scholars found an outlet for their talents as professional playwrights. The result was a wealth of plays to be sung, spoken, acted, or mimed. The Chinese playwrights gleefully mocked and satirized their Mongol oppressors to the delight of their audiences. They wrote stories of injustice and vengeance, love and death, gods, ghosts, and dragons. They set up the Scholars Association, which encouraged playwriting; the Yuan era was one of the golden ages of Chinese theater.
408. (E) After Kublai Khan’s successful conquest of China, the Mongols again looked to expand. However, the costly invasions of Burma, Champa, Annam, and Sakhalin only turned them into client-states. At the same time, Mongol invasions of Japan and Java failed completely. The Yuan Dynasty invaded present-day Vietnam three times: from 1257 to 1258, from 1284 to 1285, and from 1287 to 1288. In the end, the Mongols withdrew their troops, although Dai Viet and Champa became tributary states of the Yuan. The Mongols invaded the kingdom of Burma in 1277 and 1283; in 1287, they sacked Pagan, ending the kingdom’s 250-year rule of the Irrawaddy River valley. Burma would not be unified again for another 250 years. The Mongols launched six major campaigns against Korea (Gorveo) between 1231 and 1270; ultimately, Korea was forced into an alliance with the Yuan for almost 80 years. Of all the Mongol campaigns in southeastern Asia, Java was the most remote. The invasion began in 1292, but the heat, tropical environment, and diseases led to the invaders’ withdrawal from Java within a year.
409. (A) The Mongol conquest of southern China’s Song Dynasty was the final step for the Mongols to rule all of China. It was also the Mongol Empire’s last great military achievement. The decisive moment was the siege of Xianyang between 1268 and 1273, which led to the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty. Between the 1220s and the 1260s, the Song managed to turn back several major Mongol offensives. The key fortress was Xianyang on the Han River, with the almost equally strong city of Fancheng directly across from it. The walls of Xianyang were supposedly about 20 feet thick, and the main entrances to the city led through a waterway that was impossible to ford in the summer and an impassable swamp and series of mudflats in winter. Xianyang and Fancheng controlled the main route to the Yangtze River valley, which the Mongols needed to capture to reach the Song capital of Hangzhou. After a five-year siege, the Mongols finally took the two cities in 1273. Once the Mongols occupied Xianyang, they could easily travel by ship down the Han River into the Yangtze. Hangzhou surrendered in 1276, although Song loyalists continued fighting until the battle of Yamen in 1279. That battle marked the official end of the Song Dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty.
410. (A) Marco Polo (c. 1254–1324) was a member of a Venetian merchant family who traveled to China as a young man (c. 1271). He supposedly served Kublai Khan as an envoy for 24 years before returning to Venice. He was captured by Genoans in a battle with Venetians and, while a prisoner, dictated his adventures in Asia. The book, known as The Travels of Marco Polo, astounded Europeans when it appeared around 1299, and it became an international best seller. There is no definitive version of Marco Polo’s book; about 150 manuscript versions exist in a variety of languages. Marco Polo was released from captivity in 1299; he eventually became a wealthy merchant, but he never left Venice again. His book gave Europeans their first in-depth look at China; there is not much analysis but a good deal of description. Polo emerges from the book as curious, relatively tolerant, and devoted to Kublai Khan. The extent of his accuracy has been questioned for centuries, and a few historians have hypothesized that he never went to China at all but just repeated stories he had heard from other travelers. However, most modern scholars believe that Polo did actually go to China. If nothing else, he stirred the interest in exploration that led to the age of European ocean voyages.
411. (D) The Mongols were initially pastoral nomads organized into families, clans, and tribes. The leaders of the Mongols were always men, but women were allowed to speak in the tribal councils. In an unusual case, Toregene Khatun was the great khatun (female version of the khan) and regent of the Mongol Empire from the death of her husband, Ogodei, in 1241 until the election of her eldest son in 1246. In this role, she exercised enormous power in a society traditionally led only by men. Marriages in the Mongol Empire were usually arranged, but men were permitted to practice polygamy. Each wife had her own yurt; women worked by loading the yurts, herding and milking all the livestock, and making felt. In addition to these jobs, they cooked and sewed for their husbands, children, and elders. If a man died, his wife rarely remarried; instead, a woman’s youngest son or youngest brother took care of her. In general, Mongol women enjoyed more freedom than those in the countries they conquered. They refused to adopt the Chinese practice of foot binding and did not wear chadors or burkas. Mongol women were also allowed to move more freely in public than their non-Mongol counterparts. At the end of the Mongol Empire, however, the increasing influence of other cultures caused greater limits to be placed on Mongol women.
412. (E) In some ways, the Mongol conquest damaged China. The Yuan Dynasty forbade marriage between the Mongols and the Chinese and prevented the Chinese from learning the Mongol language. Yet these restrictions also had some benefits. Because the Chinese were not allowed to Mongolize, they preserved their own ethnic identity. When the Mongols were evicted from China in 1368, the Chinese established the Ming Dynasty under traditional Chinese practices they had never lost. The Mongols classified the population of China into a hierarchy of four groups: Mongols; non-Han (mostly Islamic); northern Chinese; and at the very bottom, the southern Chinese. The Mongol rulers distrusted the Confucian scholar-officials of China and dismissed many of them. These scholars and other native Chinese were not eligible for some of the top positions in the ruling government. The Mongols eliminated civil service examinations, which remained banned until 1315. Even after the ban was lifted, they were no longer the only means to an official position in the Yuan Dynasty.
413. (B) The impact of Mongol invasions on European and Asian countries was uneven. While the Mongols generally brought peace and prosperity to China (under Yuan rule), their conquest of Russia resulted in the destruction and emigration of many native Russians. While ruling China, the Mongols adopted some elements of Chinese culture and society, especially the use of a strong central bureaucracy to run the government. This idea diffused to other lands through the Pax Mongolica. The Mongols did not spread Islam to China and Russia. They did occupy Korea during Kublai Khan’s reign but never successfully occupied Japan or Egypt.
414. (C) Technically, the Mongol invasion of Europe began at the battle of the Kalka River in 1223 between a small Mongol force and several Russian princes. However, 15 years of peace followed. Most historians date the Mongol invasions of Europe to the full-scale attack on Russia, Poland, and Hungary from 1237 to 1242. These invasions, under the leadership of the great Mongol general Subotai, effectively destroyed east Slavic principalities such as Kiev and Vladimir. The Mongols then attacked the kingdom of Hungary (in the battle of Mohi in 1241) and Poland (in the battle of Legnica). By late 1241, Subotai was discussing plans to invade the Holy Roman Empire. Only the death of Ogodei (the great khan) and subsequent disputes over succession prevented an assault on Germany. Over the objections of Subotai, the Mongol princes withdrew the army to Mongolia for the election of a new great khan. The timing of Ogodei’s death thus ended the Mongol invasion of Europe. The Mongols would later raid Poland in 1259 and from 1286 to 1287, but these raids were not aimed at conquest. A recent view is that the Mongol invasion of Europe was simply a diversion meant to frighten the Europeans and keep them out of Mongol affairs in the Middle East. For the Mongols, the European invasions were only a third (and least important and lucrative) theater of operations, after the Islamic Middle East and Song China.
415. (A) The Mongol Empire became too large to be governed by one ruler, so it was subdivided into five khanates. These were independent kingdoms, each supposedly subject to the great khan. The Golden Horde conquered Russia; the word golden probably refers to the color of their leader’s tent, and horde comes from a Turkish word meaning “camp.” IlKhanate comprised Persia and most of the Middle East. The Yuan Dynasty was the Mongol Empire in China that replaced the Song Dynasty, and the Changhadai khanate consisted of western China and parts of southern Asia. After Kublai Khan’s death, the office of the great khan was abolished and the empire fragmented. At its peak (c. 1340), the territory of the Golden Horde included most of eastern Europe from the Urals to the Danube, extending east to Siberia and south to the Black Sea and the Caucasus Mountains.
416. (E) Genghis Khan (c. 1155–1227) was the founder and khan (ruler) of the Mongol Empire. He came to power by uniting many of the nomadic tribes of northeast Asia. As ruler, he abolished aristocratic privilege and instituted a quasi-meritocracy in Mongol society. He downplayed family ties and tribal identities, especially in the army. After his early conquests, Genghis Khan instituted the great law (Yassa), which was designed to keep peace on the steppes. Militarily, he put absolute trust in his generals such as Muqali and Subotai, allowing them to make their own decisions when they fought far from Mongolia. One of his strengths was that he was curious and tolerant of different religions. Genghis Khan had five sons who were eligible to succeed him, and they constantly jockeyed for position. However, he clearly picked Ogodei (1189–1241), his third son, to be his successor.
417. (B) The secular code of Mongol law was written by Genghis Khan and is known as the Yassa (Great Law). It was the principal law under the Mongol Empire, even though no copies were publicly available. It decreed strict rules and punishments and helped to suppress many of the traditional causes of tribal feuding such as wife stealing and livestock rustling. In this way, the Yassa helped to create a peaceful trading and traveling environment throughout the Mongol Empire. Harsh penalties (such as restitution of nine times the value of stolen goods) helped deter theft on Mongol roads. The Yassa also proclaimed complete religious freedom, ensuring that Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians could all travel freely throughout the empire. Religious leaders, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and scholars were all exempt from taxation. One of the Yassa’s strengths was its flexibility; it was often modified in remote parts of the empire.
418. (C) Some historians have suggested that the Mongol system of service to rulers deeply affected the way Russian rulers conceived of the national state. Ivan III and his descendants considered themselves, at least to some degree, heirs to the empire of the Mongols. They thought of Russia as a private dominion, emphasized autocratic power, and divided the population into a landholding elite that served the tsar and a vast majority of taxpayers. These historians have argued that the Muscovite princes created a national state that was more similar to the autocratic political tradition of the central Asian steppes and the Ottoman and Byzantine Empires than to that of western Europe.
419. (A) Tamerlane (1336–1405), also known as Timur, conquered vast portions of Asia. Though not related to Genghis Khan, he came from similar central Asian roots and imagined himself the successor to the great conqueror. Tamerlane roamed across an area from present-day Turkey to India and from Russia to Syria. By 1396, he had conquered Iraq, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Georgia. Along the way, he left a trail of death and destruction, although he was also known as a great patron of the arts. Much of the architecture he commissioned still stands in his capital at Samarkand (in present-day Uzbekistan). While central Asia thrived under his reign, places such as Baghdad, Damascus, Delhi, and other Arab, Persian, and Indian cities were sacked and destroyed and their populations massacred. He also weakened the Christian church in much of Asia; in 1400, he invaded Christian Armenia and Georgia and captured more than 60,000 people as slaves. While Tamerlane claimed to be a good Muslim, some of his most vicious attacks were against Mongols and fellow Muslims, destroying the jewel cities of Islam and slaughtering their inhabitants. His legacy remains controversial.
420. (D) Under Mongol rule, trade flourished, ideas circulated, and diverse cultures existed side by side. The development of the Silk Road trade across Eurasia under the Mongols resulted from their promotion of commerce and creation of an infrastructure that ensured safe conditions for travel. The Pax Mongolica ended with the political breakup of the Mongol Empire and the outbreak of the Black Death in Asia in the 1330s. Ironically, the Pax Mongolica allowed the plague to spread along trade routes to much of the world. In 1331, the plague was noted in China. From eastern Asia, merchants and soldiers carried it on the protected trade routes, where it killed an estimated one-third of China’s population and a quarter of Europe’s.
421. (A) Li Po (c. 701–762 CE) and Tu Fu (712–770 CE) are considered two of the greatest poets in Chinese history. They lived during the Tang Dynasty (618–906), when poetry was extremely important and no occasion or event was considered complete without a poem. Poems were written for birthdays and weddings, to honor emperors and friends, to celebrate the change of seasons, and to mourn the passage of time. The Chinese call this period their golden age of poetry, and Li Po and Tu Fu were the greatest masters of the time. Tu Fu was very involved in politics, although he failed to pass the civil service examination on two different occasions. Some of his poems reflect his disappointments. He also wrote about his feelings on being separated from his family and his sympathy over the destruction caused by the An Lushan Rebellion. Li Po’s work often uses Taoist imagery. He portrays himself as a neglected genius and a lover of wine, the moon, nature, friends, and women. His colloquial speech and confessional celebration of sensuality and his own failings made him the most popular Chinese poet in English. Li Po is influential in Europe and the United States partly due to Ezra Pound’s (1885–1972) versions of some of his poems that helped establish a conversational and intimate tone in modern American poetry.
422. (B) The order is Shang (c. 1800–1100 BCE); Han (c. 200 BCE–220 CE); Tang (618– 907 CE); Song (960–1279 CE); and Ming (1368–1644 CE).
423. (D) Papermaking was invented in the Han Dynasty. The oldest known Chinese piece of hard, hempen wrapping paper dates to the second century BCE. The standard paper-making process was supposedly invented by Cai Lun (c. 50–121 CE) in 105. The oldest extant piece of paper with writing on it was found in the ruins of a Han watchtower that had been abandoned in 110 CE in Inner Mongolia. The other answer choices were all accomplishments of the Song Dynasty.
424. (B) Wu Zetian (624–705 CE) was the first and only empress of China. The Tang Dynasty (618–906) was a time of relative freedom for women when they did not bind their feet or lead totally submissive lives. Wu was born into a rich and noble family and was taught to play music, write, and read the Chinese classics. At a young age, she was known for her wit, intelligence, and beauty, and she was recruited to the court of Emperor Taizong (599–649), one of the greatest emperors in Chinese history. She soon became his favorite concubine and then married his son who came to power as Emperor Gaozong (628–683). She ruled as empress dowager and regent following her husband’s death. In 690, she announced the founding of the new Zhou Dynasty (interrupting the Tang). Three years later, she took the title Divine Empress Who Rules the Universe, in effect creating a Buddhist state. These moves caused a brief rebellion, which she suppressed before she died of natural causes in 705. Wu Zetian has been described as malicious, cunning, devious, power hungry, and ruthless, especially to her adversaries. However, she also demonstrated great compassion for the peasants, reducing their taxes and boosting agricultural production. Her rise to power and reign were harshly criticized by Confucian historians who considered her a woman who had inappropriately overstepped her bounds. However, her reputation has been positively revised since the 1960s.
425. (C) In Korea, the Silla Dynasty was overthrown in 935 CE and replaced by the Goryeo Dynasty (from which the name Korea derives). The Goryeo Dynasty (918–1392) had a strong Buddhist influence that shaped many of its cultural achievements. Buddhist temples flourished, producing a need for fine vessels to be used during the many ritual ceremonies. In the mid-10th century, Korean artists, some of whom had been schooled in China, began creating celadon by using inlay and copper glazing techniques. These methods were first developed in China but perfected by Korean artisans. The term celadon (for the pottery’s pale, jade green glaze) was coined at a later date by European buyers. Actually, celadon glazes can be produced in a variety of colors, including white, gray, blue, and yellow. Korean celadon was noted for its pale green glazes with beautiful inlay work. The level of quality surpassed that of other areas and came to be revered by even the Chinese for its elegant yet simple beauty. The Goryeo royal court also used some of the best examples of celadon pottery in their palaces as vessels for daily use and as art objects. The finest examples of Korean celadon were produced during the late 11th century by anonymous artisans. The Mongol invasions, beginning in 1231, caused a decline in Goryeo culture and the quality of the pottery. By the beginning of the Chosun Dynasty (1392–1910), most of the Korean manufacturing techniques for celadon had been lost.
426. (E) The heaviest commercial traffic on the Silk Road took place during the first half of the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE). This world-famous network experienced its golden age before the An Lushan Rebellion (755–762). The Chinese imported gold, gems, ivory, glass, perfumes, dyes, and textiles, and they exported furs, ceramics, spices, jade, silk, bronze, iron, and lacquer. Chang’an (present-day Xian), the eastern terminus of the Silk Road, became an international metropolis during the Tang Dynasty and possibly the largest city in the world. Tang trade also benefited because competing empires to the west, such as the Byzantines and the Arabs, were relatively stable during this period and willing to build commercial relations with China. Tang China, like Rome, also boasted roads that linked all parts of the empire. The Tang emperors paid special attention to the vast so-called western regions of eastern central Asia. Important garrison posts (such as at Kucha and Tokmak) guarded the Silk Road, and the Tang court sent military governors as far west as Teheran. All these factors led to commercial prosperity along the Silk Road and frequent cultural exchanges between the West and the East. Despite minor setbacks, the Tang dominated central Asia until the battle of Talas in 751, when the Islamic Arabs decisively defeated the Chinese. Tang trade along the Silk Road began to decline after the An Lushan Rebellion and never recovered its former glory, although it did undergo a revival until the Pax Mongolica of the late 13th century.
427. (C) China’s rulers used the so-called mandate of heaven to explain the decline of one dynasty and the takeover by another until the end of the empire in 1912 CE. The concept of the mandate of heaven originated with the Zhou Dynasty to justify its overthrow of the Shang. The notion was supported by Mencius, an influential Confucian philosopher. The mandate of heaven supposedly granted a dynasty the authority to rule. Whenever a dynasty fell, Chinese sages declared that it had lost the moral right to rule, which was given by heaven alone. In this sense, heaven did not mean a personal god but a universal all-encompassing power. However, unlike the European concept of the divine right of kings, the mandate of heaven depended on the conduct of the ruler in question. The idea was adopted by the rulers of the Tang and Song Dynasties to rationalize their assumption of power.
428. (A) Zhu Xi (1130–1200 CE) was a Song Dynasty scholar and the most influential neo-Confucian in China. His main contribution to Chinese philosophy was assigning special significance to The Analects of Confucius, The Book of Mencius, Great Learning, and Doctrine of the Mean (the so-called Four Books). Zhu Xi not only selected these classical Confucian texts, but he also edited and compiled them with commentary. By doing so, he redefined the Confucian tradition, restoring its original focus on moral cultivation. The Four Books became required reading for the imperial civil service examination system from the Yuan Dynasty until the civil service system was abolished near the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1908. Zhu Xi’s teachings dominated the Chinese movement known as neo-Confucianism. While older Confucianism had focused on practical politics and morality, the neo-Confucianists borrowed Buddhist ideas about the soul and the individual. The influence of neo-Confucianism eventually spread to Korea and Japan, both of which partially adopted the imperial examination system and admired Zhu’s intellectual achievements. (The White Cloud Sect was a type of Buddhism that became popular during the Song Dynasty and still survives today. Adherents believe that reciting the name of the Buddha, renouncing meat, and studying are three factors that can help bring salvation.)
429. (A) Tibet emerged in the seventh century CE as a unified state but quickly divided into a variety of territories. Some of these retained their independence; others fell under the control of the Mongols or the Chinese. Tibetan cuisine differs from that of its neighbors because only a few crops (not including rice) will grow at the country’s high altitudes. Barley is the most plentiful crop; wheat, rye, buckwheat, and potatoes are also cultivated, but the main occupation is raising livestock. Bon is the ancient religion of Tibet, but it has almost been replaced by Tibetan Buddhism, which merges Mahayana and Vajrayana (Tantric) ideas. A common motif in Tibetan Buddhism and art is the representation of wrathful deities, who are often depicted with angry faces, circles of flame, or the skulls of the dead as necklaces. Their wrath represents their dedication to the protection of the dharma (divine law). The Potala Palace is a UNESCO World Heritage site and the best example of Tibetan architecture. Construction began in 1645; it has 13 stories with more than 1,000 rooms, 10,000 shrines, and about 200,000 statues. The Epic of King Gesar dates from the 12th century. It tells the story (in poetry and prose) of the heroic deeds of Gesar, the fearless lord of the legendary kingdom of Ling. It is still sung throughout central Asia and is well known as one of the only oral epic traditions in the world to still survive as a performing art.
430. (D) The Vietnamese people adopted many Chinese ideas, such as the civil service and bureaucracy, Confucian writings, Buddhism, and Chinese agricultural techniques. However, differences between Chinese and Vietnamese cultures sparked animosity to Chinese rule. Women in Vietnamese society were used to wider privileges, especially in local business and commerce, than their Chinese counterparts. The Vietnamese won their independence after a thousand years of Chinese control in 939 CE, shortly after the fall of the Tang Dynasty, when Ngo Quyen (897–944) defeated Chinese forces at the Bach Dang River. Vietnamese rulers of the Li Dynasty (1009–1225) established a capital at Hanoi and conquered peoples to the south. The subsequent Tran Dynasty (1225–1400) was considered the golden age of music and culture. During this dynasty, the Vietnamese people repelled three Mongol invasions, Buddhism flourished as the state religion, and the Vietnamese language was used for the first time as the second language at court.
431. (B) After the fall of the Han Dynasty, China broke into numerous regional governments. The Sui Dynasty (589–618 CE), powerful but short-lived, restored the central government and united the Chinese people by constructing public works. They built granaries and palaces and also repaired many of China’s defensive walls. The Sui Dynasty is probably best known for the construction of the Grand Canal, which linked northern and southern China. The Grand Canal is more than 1,100 miles long from Beijing to Hangzhou, with roads on either side of it. It is the longest canal in the world. The oldest parts date back to the fifth century BCE; the Sui Dynasty built the connecting links between the various sections. The Grand Canal provided an effective and economical way to transport rice and other crops from the Yangtze River valley to the northern portions of China. Until the invention of railroads in the 1800s, the Grand Canal was China’s main economic link. The Sui launched a series of costly and unsuccessful campaigns against Korea between 598 and 614. The dynasty’s tyrannical demands on the people, who bore the burden of taxes and compulsory labor, caused its rapid fall after the assassination of Emperor Sui Yangdi (569–618). This dynasty is often compared to the earlier Qin Dynasty because of its ruthless accomplishments.
432. (C) The Song Chinese were world leaders in shipbuilding. Watertight bulkheads improved buoyancy and protected cargo. Stern-mounted (sternpost) rudders improved steering. Sounding lines were used to determine depth. Some ships were powered by both oars and sails and held several hundred men. The Song also perfected the compass. The fact that a magnetic needle would point north-south was already known, but in Song times, the needle became smaller and was attached to a fixed stem instead of floating in water. In some cases, it was put in a small protective case with a glass top, making it suitable for sea travel. The first reports of a compass used this way date to 1119 CE. These improvements led the Song to create China’s first permanent navy. The dynasty also relied on new naval weapons such as gunpowder, catapults, and incendiary devices. Between 1132 and 1189, the Song navy introduced paddle-wheel warships, some so large that they had 12 wheels on each side of the vessel. The Song also used ships for trade; for the first time in Chinese history, maritime trade exceeded overland foreign trade. In 1973, a Song-era vessel that had been shipwrecked in 1277 was excavated off the south China coast; it was vastly superior to European ships of the same period. (Astrolabes date back to the Hellenistic world.)
433. (E) The position of Chang’an (present-day Xian), the capital of Tang China, played a crucial role in the dynasty’s outward-looking worldview. The city was first constructed about 200 BCE and also served as capital to the Han and Sui Dynasties. It grew because of its location as the eastern terminus of the Silk Road, which connected it to the vast caravan trails that extended through central Asia to the Middle East, India, and the Mediterranean. All trade goods from northern Africa, the Byzantine Empire, and the Islamic world had to pass through Chang’an. From the city, one of the best transportation networks in the world distributed these goods by canal, river, and coastal shipping throughout China and southeastern Asia. At its height, Chang’an—along with its competitors, Baghdad and Constantinople—was one of the world’s largest cities and may have had a population of as many as one million. It was also a tolerant city; its rulers created special quarters for merchants and religious practitioners of Nestorian Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Zoroastrianism, and there were many Buddhists and Taoists. Much of ancient Chang’an was destroyed during the fall of the Tang Empire.
434. (B) Sejong the Great (1397–1450 CE) reigned from 1418 to 1450 as king of the Yi Dynasty of Korea. During his reign, he created a phonetic writing system called Hangul that is essentially the same system used in Korea today. Before the creation of Hangul, only members of the highest Korean classes were literate. A person would have to learn complex Chinese characters in order to read and write Korean. In 1446, Sejong introduced a 28-letter Korean alphabet. In the preface to Hunmin Chongum (The Proper Sounds for Instructing the People), he wrote, “The spoken language of our country is different from that of China and does not suit the Chinese characters. Therefore among uneducated people there have been many who, having something that they wish to put into words, have been unable to express their feelings in writing. I am greatly distressed because of this, and so I have made 28 new letters. Let everyone practice them at their ease and adapt them to their daily use.” Hangul is the only alphabet made by a specific individual for which the theory and motives behind its creation have been fully explained.
435. (D) The Han brought Chinese culture to Vietnam when they occupied the country in 111 BCE. However, Han attempts at imposing Chinese values and institutions brought conflicts between the Chinese-influenced elite in larger towns and valleys and those living in more remote areas. When Chinese authorities executed a popular local leader in 39 BCE, his widow (Trung Trac) and her sister (Trung Nhi) organized a revolt, and their militia drove the Han garrison out of the region. The Chinese returned two years later and overwhelmed the Trung sisters’ forces; the sisters drowned themselves rather than be taken alive. It was more than a thousand years before Vietnam was independent again. The Trung sisters are revered in Vietnam; many temples are dedicated to them, and many Vietnamese observe a yearly holiday to commemorate their deaths.
436. (A) The art of metallurgy during the Song Dynasty built on the achievements of earlier Chinese dynasties. Steelmaking was known in the Han Dynasty as early as the first century BCE. However, Song Dynasty inventors discovered new ways to make steel. Between 806 and 1078 CE, the per capita output of iron in China rose 600 percent. According to one estimate based on government tax receipts, by 1078, Song China was producing 125,000 tons of iron per year. This massive increase in output resulted in manufactured products such as weapons, cooking utensils, farm implements, coins, musical bells, artistic statues, and components for machinery. (The greatest volume of goods was traded along the Silk Road during the first half of the Tang Dynasty.)
437. (A) At some time in the first millennium BCE, the people of the Malay peninsula became daring sailors and began to travel long distances to ports as far away as Africa and Madagascar. These so-called Malay sailors carried plants such as bananas and coconuts as well as cinnamon, which originally came from southern China. The sailors discovered how to ride the predictable monsoon; they sailed for thousands of miles with the wind at their backs, waited until it changed direction, and then sailed home. By the first century CE, regular maritime traffic connected India to the Malay peninsula and southeastern Asia. In the fifth century, a well-defined maritime route between India and Asia regularly used the Strait of Malacca and the South China Sea. This paved the way for the rule of the far-flung Hindu/Buddhist Srivijaya Empire between the 7th and 13th centuries. For six centuries, the rulers of Srivijaya controlled the areas around the Malay peninsula by controlling the two passages between India and China: the Sunda Strait and the Strait of Malacca. The empire reached its peak in the 10th century between the fall of the Tang and the rise of the Song.
438. (E) The unified Silla Dynasty (668–935 CE), with its capital at Gyeongju, marked a turning point in Korea’s cultural development. The country had previously been conquered by the Han Dynasty, which had introduced a Chinese centralized government. In the mid-600s, the Silla Dynasty drove out the Chinese, and for the first time, the Korean peninsula was unified and controlled by native peoples. Under the Silla, the Koreans continued to construct Buddhist monasteries and create Buddhist art objects. They also modified the writing system based on Chinese characters. However, despite Chinese influences, Korean society under the Silla was divided into distinct classes, with a large semislave population supporting an aristocratic minority. The last century of the Silla Dynasty was filled with almost constant civil war. Warlords in the north eventually overthrew the Silla Dynasty in 935, and it was followed by the Goryeo Dynasty (918–1392).
439. (D) As commerce brought Buddhism to China, the nature of the religion changed. The Chinese, influenced by the Confucian emphasis on the family and the distrust of celibacy, were never totally at ease with Theravada Buddhism. As the religion advanced via the Silk Road, the Chinese preferred Mahayana Buddhism, which emphasized the divinity of the Buddha and surrounded itself with rituals that were unknown to Indian Buddhism. In some cases, Chinese Buddhism blended with Taoist beliefs to form a faith that depended on meditation and enlightenment called Chan Buddhism (Zen Buddhism in Japan). The Buddhist speculation on the nature of the soul also influenced neo-Confucianism, and the new interest in metaphysics made it more attractive to the scholar-officials of the Song period than the pure Buddhist religion. Buddhism also affected land distribution in Tang China, because large tracts of land were taken up by Buddhist monasteries.
440. (A) In the 10th century, the Song Dynasty (960–1279 CE) again restored centralized rule to China. This dynasty was characterized not by military rule but rather by an emphasis on education and the arts. However, the Song Dynasty maintained a strong, centralized state and the most urbanized society of its time. Under the Song, the Confucian civil service was expanded to include opportunities for more men to study Confucian philosophy and to take the exam. Song China faced some threat from nomadic invasion, but there were no Islamic incursions during this period.
441. (C) Wood-block printing is a technique for printing text or images that is used throughout eastern Asia. The technique originated in China before 220 CE; the earliest existing fragments of wood-block printing are Chinese silk printed with flowers in three colors from the Han Dynasty. (The earliest Egyptian printed cloth dates from the fourth century; it is unclear if Egyptian printing was learned from China or developed separately.) The oldest existing wood-block book is the Diamond Sutra, dating from 868. This book is so technically advanced that historians presume wood-block printing must have begun much earlier. Because Chinese writing has at least 40,000 characters, wood-block printing suited it better than movable type. In the former, only the characters used in the text needed to be created. In addition, the Chinese focused on printing and reprinting Buddhist texts. Even if these required 130,000 woodblocks, the blocks could be maintained for centuries. If a text needed to be reproduced, the original woodblocks could be reused, while the same book produced with movable type would need new, possibly error-prone editions. Ironically, although the Chinese invented movable type with baked clay in the 11th century (and metal movable type was invented in Korea in the 13th century), they continued to prefer woodblocks because of the difficulties inherent in typesetting Chinese text. The difference between Asian wood-block printing and the European printing press affected the comparative development of book culture and book markets in Asia and Europe.
442. (A) In the sixth century CE, the Khmers (Cambodians) created an empire in present-day Cambodia and Laos. The capital was established in Angkor (not Phnom Penh) by King Yasovarman I (reigned 889–900). The Angkor period (889–1434) was the golden age of Khmer culture, when the empire reached its greatest extent into parts of present-day Thailand and Vietnam. At this time, Angkor was one of the largest urban centers in the world. The Khmer Empire was influenced by Indian culture, especially Buddhism and Hinduism; many Indian scholars, artists, and religious teachers were attracted to the Khmer court, and Sanskrit literature flourished under royal patronage. The greatest achievements of the Khmers were in architecture and sculpture, especially evidenced by the construction of Angkor Wat by Suryavarman II (reigned 1113–1150). Angkor Wat is a temple complex dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu and a magnificent blend of Indian and southeast Asian cultures. Another noted temple complex is Angkor Thom, constructed by Jayavarman VII (reigned 1181–c. 1218). Khmer temples were filled with bas-relief sculptures that depicted Khmer life in great detail. The Khmer Empire declined in the late 1300s and early 1400s for reasons that are still disputed.
443. (E) Foot binding probably originated among court dancers in the early Song Dynasty, but it spread to upper-class families and even to lower socioeconomic groups. According to one estimate, about 40 percent of Chinese women had bound feet in the 1800s, with the number rising to almost 100 percent for the upper classes. Foot binding was the practice of tightly wrapping the feet of young girls (usually between two and five years of age) with strips of cloth. This would break some bones in the foot, preventing the girl from walking easily. It was generally painful for life. The belief was that men found the tiny, narrow feet extremely erotic and that such feet made a woman’s movements more feminine. The procedure also was a display of high social standing and a way to control a girl’s behavior. Since foot binding made it impossible for a woman to do most agricultural work or even walk without pain, it demonstrated that a family was so wealthy that it did not need to send its women into the fields to work. Their disability also made Chinese women with bound feet completely dependent on their husbands or other male family members. The practice did not die out until the early 20th century.
444. (C) The An Lushan Rebellion (755–763 CE), sometimes known as the An Shi Rebellion, was the turning point in the history of the Tang Dynasty. For the next 144 years, the Tang were greatly weakened, and their rule was a far cry from the dynasty’s glorious days under the emperors Taizong (599–649) and Xuanzong (712–756). The troubles began in 755 when An Lushan, a disaffected general, began a revolt against the dynasty. The subsequent civil war devastated a large portion of the Tang Empire until, after many ups and downs, the rebels were finally defeated at unbelievable cost. The 754 census recorded a population of about 53 million, while the 764 census listed only about 17 million. It is unlikely that the population really declined to this extent, but it does indicate the severity of the rebellion’s impact. After the An Lushan Rebellion, distant provinces broke away, reducing the influence of the central government in Chang’an. The need for soldiers from neighboring tribes reduced the prestige of the Tang Dynasty among “barbarians,” who began raiding Tang settlements again. The Tang also lost control over the western regions in eastern central Asia along the Silk Road when the troops there returned to central China to crush the rebellion. The An Lushan Rebellion also caused a crisis of conscience among many Tang intellectuals; it had a major impact on poets like Tu Fu and Li Po.
445. (D) The decline and fall of the Southern Song Dynasty had multiple causes. However, the main reason for the collapse was outside invasion. In the early 1100s CE, nomadic northern peoples such as the Khitan and the Jurchen began demanding tribute and overrunning the northern part of China. The Northern Song could not repel the Jurchen invasions; in 1127, the Jurchen captured the Northern Song capital of Kaifeng and created their own Jin Dynasty (1115–1234). This limited the Song Dynasty to the south; the border between the two parts comprised the Yellow (Huang He) and Yangtze Rivers. Between the 1220s and the 1260s, the Song did turn back several offensives by the Mongol Empire. However, the Mongols were victorious at the siege of Xianyang (on the Han River) between 1268 and 1273. Once the Mongols occupied Xianyang, they easily traveled by ship down the Han River into the Yangtze. Hangzhou surrendered in 1276, although Song loyalists continued fighting until the battle of Yamen in 1279. That battle marked the official end of the Southern Song Dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty (1280–1368).
446. (A) Cahokia is located near present-day Collinsville, Illinois, about 15 miles east of St. Louis, Missouri. It was one of the world’s greatest cities and larger than London, England, in 1250 CE. The Mississippians who lived here were master builders and erected a wide variety of structures, from practical homes to monumental public works. Cahokia was abandoned by 1400. However, the agricultural practices of Mississippian culture—such as the use of flint hoes and the superior strains of corn, beans, and squash—spread across eastern North America.
447. (B) Until about 3000 BCE, Americans were nomadic hunter-gatherers. The first farmers probably lived in present-day Mexico, planting avocados, chili peppers, and cotton. However, agriculture as a way of life did not emerge in South America and Mesoamerica until about 2000 BCE. Inventive farmers of that time learned how to breed tomatoes, potatoes, and manioc (a fast-growing but not very nutritious root crop). In about 1500 BCE, native American societies in Mesoamerica discovered ways to domesticate maize (a variety of corn). Over the centuries, they bred maize into a much larger and extremely nutritious plant that was hardier and had a higher yield per acre than the staple cereals of Europe such as wheat, barley, and rye. In the first millennium CE, maize cultivation spread from Mexico into southwest America, and after 1000 CE, into the American northeast and present-day Canada. Native Americans also learned to cultivate beans and squash and to plant them in the same fields as corn, creating a mix of crops that provided a diet rich in calories and essential amino acids. This technique also preserved soil fertility and led to higher yields. The result was an agricultural surplus that led to the wealthy and populous societies of Mexico, Peru, and the Mississippi River valley. (Wheat was originally cultivated in the Fertile Crescent and contributed to the rise of city-states such as Assyria and Babylon.)
448. (C) Some pre-Columbian cultures, such as the Incas, did not have a system of writing. Instead, they used a method of record-keeping known as the quipu, a collection of cords of different colors on which were knots of different sizes and shapes. Each knot represented a different aspect of Incan life and government. The other answer choices are all Mesoamerican cultures with intricate and somewhat similar writing symbols. Those from Mesoamerican scripts are often called glyphs as a short form of hieroglyph. Many Meso-american glyphs are extremely ornate representations of real objects such as animals.
449. (B) The Ancestral Puebloans were an ancient American culture that thrived from about 100 BCE to 1350 CE in the present-day Four Corners area of the United States. They were sedentary agriculturists who excelled at irrigation and planted corn, beans, and squash in the river valleys. They also domesticated the turkey, gathered wild plants, and hunted game to supplement their diet. The Ancestral Puebloans organized their lives on a communal pattern, and their many kivas presumably show that their religious ceremonies were similar to those of the present-day Pueblo. They were remarkable builders and are best known for the stone and adobe dwellings built along cliff walls, particularly from about 900 to 1300 CE. They were also highly skilled potters, and shards of thousands of smashed pots litter their archaeological sites. The most common decorated pottery had black painted designs on white or light gray backgrounds. The Ancestral Puebloans built a complex system of ceremonial roads, many radiating out from the great house sites in Chaco canyon. Ironically, these people lived in the cliff dwellings for barely a century. By about 1300, many centers, such as Mesa Verde, were deserted. Several theories have been offered to explain the migration: climate change, drought and crop failure, overuse of land, deforestation, soil depletion, civil war, invasion, and/or social and political problems. Perhaps the people were simply looking for new opportunities elsewhere.
450. (E) The oldest of the highly developed Mesoamerican cultures was the Olmec, who flourished between about 1400 and 400 BCE. The Olmec were a somewhat mysterious people, often considered a parent culture for the Mesoamerican cultures that followed. They lived in the Gulf Coast regions of present-day Veracruz and Tabasco in Mexico, living off surpluses of corn, beans, and squash that they produced using irrigation techniques. They constructed large-scale buildings and developed noted ceremonial centers at San Lorenzo and La Venta. The Olmec developed markets, an administrative hierarchy, a standing army, a calendar, and a writing system. Olmec culture is most famous for its massive stone pieces such as stelae, altars, and especially colossal heads. Scholars believe these heads are the likenesses of certain rulers, perhaps dressed as players of the Mesoamerican ball game. Some of them are nine feet high and weigh more than 40 tons. The Olmec are somewhat unique as a culture because, although they had access to water from streams and small rivers, they did not develop in a major river valley. The reasons for the decline and dispersion of their culture are unknown. However, for some reason, between 400 and 350 BCE, the population in the eastern half of the Olmec heartland dropped sharply, and the area remained underpopulated until the 19th century CE.
451. (A) Among the many achievements of the Mayan culture was the development of both a lunar and a solar calendar that could record historical events. The solar calendar contained 18 months of 20 days each, with a final period of 5 days dedicated to religious observance. The Maya could perform complex mathematical and astronomical calculations because of their understanding of the concept of zero as a placeholder. Mayan scientists could predict solar and lunar eclipses with amazing accuracy. They also developed the most advanced writing system in the Americas, using glyphs to represent either symbols or words. With this system, they recorded the royal lineage of various city-states and noteworthy events such as wars and famines.
452. (E) Population estimates for the pre-Columbian Western Hemisphere are disputed. However, recent estimates place the population of the Americas in 1500 at about 70 million. Most of the people—probably about 45 million—lived in Mesoamerica. Another 15 million lived in lands to the north of the Rio Grande (the present-day United States and Canada), and about 10 million lived in South America. These so-called native Americans were divided into scores of language groups and hundreds of distinct cultural groups. American peoples lived in large empires, but many also lived in smaller agricultural communities in which kinship formed the primary bonds of society.
453. (A) The Incan Empire began as a small city-state. Under militaristic native rulers, the Inca eventually conquered much of western South America. The Incan Empire was known for its extensive system of roads, sophisticated farming techniques, lack of a writing system, and a strict class system established by the first Incan ruler. The empire remained strong until the mid-1500s when the Spanish invaded South America.
454. (C) In about 1325, the Aztecs claimed a small island area at the southwestern edge of Lake Texcoco; in 1376, Acamapichtli became their first ruler. In the early 1400s, a power struggle developed among the central valley communities. The Aztecs, with their capital at Tenochtitlan (present-day Mexico City), made an alliance with the cities of Texcoco and Tlacopan (the weakest of the three). These three city-states waged wars of conquest and expanded rapidly. They ruled the area in and around the Valley of Mexico from 1428 until they were defeated by the Spanish in 1521. The Aztecs, especially under Montezuma I (c. 1398–1469), eventually became the dominant partner in the alliance. (The Mixtec are a Mesoamerican people who live in the present-day Mexican states of Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Puebla. They were a major pre-Columbian culture after 1100 CE, producing fine stone- and metalwork. Their influence on other cultures was strong, but they were rarely friendly with the Aztecs.)
455. (E) The Hopewell culture (100 BCE–500 CE) is an ancient American culture that developed from the preceding Adena culture in Ohio. The Hopewell people lived in small villages scattered throughout the river valleys of southern Ohio. They increased their food supply by domesticating plants, which allowed clans to settle in cities. The people grew a variety of crops, including sunflower, squash, and other plants with oily or starchy seeds. They also gathered wild plants, hunted deer, and fished. The Hopewell culture is known for its gigantic burial mounds and earthen enclosures, as well as for handsome ornaments and pipes. People obtained exotic raw materials from great distances, such as shells from the Gulf of Mexico, copper from the Great Lakes region, mica from the Carolinas, and obsidian from the Rocky Mountains. Their cultural influence spread as far as present-day Wisconsin and Louisiana. However, the Hopewell cultural “explosion” was brief. By 400 CE, the culture’s elaborate trading network had collapsed for reasons that are still disputed. Increasing conflict has been suggested for the abandonment of the earthworks and the far-flung trade routes.
456. (D) By 1500, the Incas ruled a large empire from present-day Ecuador to Chile and Argentina along the western coast of South America. With a population of possibly 10 million people of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds, the Inca Empire was one of the largest political units ever established in South America. The Incas were able administrators. They used quipus to record population counts, economic and financial matters, and religious concerns. They built an efficient system of roads that stretched the length of the empire. They did not collect tributes but instead required communities to participate in building projects, mining, or working the land. These shifts of labor were called mita. The vast majority of the Incan population consisted of peasant families living in towns and villages. Within Incan communities, small kin groups known as ayllu worked together to keep the community self-sufficient. Each ayllu owned a specific piece of land, and members of individual families within the group cultivated as much of this land as they needed to live. The members of the ayllu maintained a series of reciprocal obligations such as helping other members of the group build houses and cultivate land or providing communal support for the elderly, the infirm, widows, and orphans.
457. (B) The Aztecs, or Mexica, were nomads from northern Mexico who arrived in the Valley of Mexico around 1200 CE. For the next century, they migrated from one location to another, often forced to move because of their warlike disposition. In their wanderings, the Aztecs adopted many of the customs of other Mesoamericans, such as the cultivation of maize, ball games, the construction of truncated pyramids, picture writing, a solar calendar, and the legend of Quetzalcoatl. Because they borrowed so heavily from other cultures, they were not particularly noted for the development of more advanced traditions of their own.
458. (A) Most of the roles of women in ancient Mayan society can only be guessed from burial and ceremonial sites, as well as from glyphs, murals, steles, and vases. From this evidence, it appears that Mayan women typically cared for their household. They raised animals, helped with the harvest, prepared food, wove textiles, and made clothing. In many cases, men and women had complementary gender roles: men produced the raw materials (such as hunting deer), and women transformed them into objects of use (such as processing deer skins). Mayan families appear to have been patriarchal, although more prominent families traced their lineage through parallel descent (daughters inheriting from the mother and sons from the father). The Maya had several female divinities such as the moon goddess and Ixchel, the patron of midwifery and medicine. In the Mayan codices, a young female goddess of women, marriage, and sensual love appears frequently. The Maya preferred that rulership pass to sons, but there are examples of female rulers. The eighth ruler of Palenque was a woman named Yohl Ik’nal, who reigned for 20 years. At El Peru in northwestern Guatemala, archaeologists have discovered the burial tomb of an unknown Mayan queen from about 800 CE.
459. (D) The Chavin were a highly developed culture in the northern Andean highlands of present-day Peru from about 900 to 300 BCE who extended their influence along the Pacific coast. The Chavin appear to have lived mainly on potatoes and quinoa, crops that are somewhat resistant to the frost and irregular rain associated with high-altitude environments. However, some scholars have argued that Chavin culture depended on the cultivation of maize and the development of agricultural surpluses. The Chavin demonstrated advanced skills in metallurgy and used metal in their tools and weapons. They also used llamas as beasts of burden. The best-known archaeological site is Chavin de Huantar, north of present-day Lima. It was built around a large temple in about 900 BCE and was a religious and political center.
460. (E) The Mesoamerican ball game was played by the Olmecs, Mayas, and Aztecs from at least 1200 BCE until the Spanish conquest in the 1500s (and variants continue to be played today). More than 1,500 ball courts have been found in Mesoamerica. The game combined elements of present-day basketball, football, and soccer. Teams had to maneuver a heavy rubber ball around the courts, often using only their hips or arms, and the penalty for losing could be ritual sacrifice. The precise rules of the game varied from place to place and over time, but all versions shared two uniquely Mesoamerican innovations: team (as opposed to individual) participation and a ball made of rubber. While the rest of the world was emphasizing individual athletic skills such as jousting, footraces, and wrestling, Meso-american cultures were fielding teams of players who competed against each other on specially designed courts. The game was both a contest of athletic skill and a ritual spectacle in which the teams enacted the struggle between the opposing forces of day and night, good and evil, and life and death. The game appears to have been an attempt to impose order on a random universe, but it was also a lavish entertainment spectacle accompanied by music, dance, and drama. The ball game was an endless source of inspiration for Mesoamerican artists, who created ceramic figurines and vessels, stone sculptures, carved monuments, wall murals, and miniature ball courts packed with players and spectators.
461. (C) Beginning around 800 CE, Mayan culture declined for reasons that are unclear and disputed. This so-called Classic Maya collapse is one of the biggest mysteries in archaeology. It is particularly intriguing given the juxtaposition of the cultural sophistication of the Maya before 800 CE and the relative speed of abandonment of their cities and ceremonial centers. Numerous theories have been proposed to explain the Mayan decline. Scholars have proposed foreign invasion (by the Toltecs), civil war, epidemic diseases, deforestation, or perhaps soil depletion from overuse of the land. Revolutions, peasant revolts, and social turmoil have also been suggested. Some evidence implies that a two-century-long dry period may have caused a decline in population. According to this theory, the resulting economic crisis would have impelled overtaxed peasants to desert the temple cities and retreat to the countryside. Whatever the reason, by 900 CE, many Mayan religious centers had been abandoned. However, several cities did not collapse, and the Maya continued to influence the Gulf Coast and even the highlands of Mexico. After the so-called collapse, the Maya of the northern Yucatan prospered, and the rulers of Chichen Itza built an empire that briefly united much of the Mayan region. For these reasons, some scholars reject the term collapse. (Moral decay and the loss of civic virtue were reasons Edward Gibbon [1737–1794] famously proposed for the decline of the Roman Empire.)
462. (D) In Mesoamerica (and Mississippian culture), men as well as women worked in the fields. However, among Eastern Woodland peoples, men remained hunters and growing corn became women’s work. Women prepared the ground with wooden hoes tipped with bone, flint, or clamshells. Then they planted the seeds and cultivated the plants. As women perfected their farming skills, they provided most of their society’s food supply. By intensely cultivating two acres, an Indian woman could harvest 60 bushels of shelled corn—half the calories required by five people for a year. Among many tribes, women’s role in food production enhanced their authority. For example, the Iroquois of New York had a matrilineal-based clan and inheritance system. In Iroquois tribes, use rights to land and other property passed from mother to daughter (rather than from father to son as in patrilineal European societies), and the senior women of each clan chose the male clan chief. The work of the two genders in Eastern Woodland culture often differed, but neither had priority. The common duties of native women included cleaning and maintaining the living quarters, nursing children, gathering plants for food, grinding corn, extracting oil from acorns and nuts, cooking, sewing, and packing and unpacking camps. They were also responsible for brewing dyes, making pottery, and weaving baskets and mats.
463. (A) The Ancestral Puebloans (Anasazi) lived in present-day northern Arizona and New Mexico. By 600 CE, they used irrigation to grow two crops a year. Although they grew squash, they depended on corn to survive, and they domesticated turkeys (not chickens). The Ancestral Puebloans developed large, multiroom stone structures and elaborate residential villages in steep cliffs. They built an elaborate ceremonial road system and several sophisticated astronomical devices. The culture fell into decline after about 1250, possibly because the fragile system of food production was disrupted by long periods of drought and invasions by nomadic Navajo and Apache. However, the descendents of the Ancestral Puebloans—including the Zuni and the Hopi—later built strong but smaller and more dispersed village societies. (Potatoes were South American plants.)
464. (B) Cahokia is the largest archaeological site related to the Mississippian culture. The Mississippians developed advanced societies in central and eastern North America more than five centuries before the arrival of Europeans. The city flourished from about 600 to 1300 CE. The 2,200-acre site includes 80 remaining human-built earthwork mounds over an area of six square miles. Cahokia was located at a strategic position near the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois Rivers. It maintained trade links with communities as far away as the Great Lakes to the north and the Gulf Coast to the south, trading in exotic items such as copper and whelk shells. Cahokia began to decline after 1300, perhaps undermined by urban diseases such as tuberculosis and warfare among city-states over access to the fertile soils of the river valleys. It was abandoned a century before Europeans arrived in North America in the 1500s.
465. (B) The city of Teotihuacan was located about 40 miles northeast of what would become Tenochtitlan (the Aztec capital). Teotihuacan influenced most of Mesoamerica from about 100 to 500 CE before its mysterious decline and fall. Teotihuacan contains some of the largest pyramids in the Americas (the Pyramid of the Sun was as large at its base as the great pyramid of Cheops in Egypt) as well as huge, multi-floor apartments; the Avenue of the Dead; and many colorful, well-preserved murals. The residents of the city also produced a distinctive orange pottery style that spread through Mesoamerica. At its zenith in about 500, Teotihuacan was the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas, with as many as 200,000 inhabitants. It contained more than 100 temples and about 4,000 apartment buildings. The archaeological site is about 25 miles northeast of present-day Mexico City and is among the most visited archaeological sites in Mexico.
466. (A) Mayan culture was located in the Yucatan Peninsula and in present-day Belize and Guatemala. It peaked (Classic Maya) from about 300 to 900 CE. Mayan cities, such as the capital at Tikal (with a population of about 20,000 in 300), and the ceremonial center at Palenque featured massive truncated pyramids and temples dedicated to Mayan gods. Agriculture formed the basis of Mayan life; maize, beans, and squash were the main crops. The various independent city-states were linked by trade, especially in jade, salt, flint, honey, feathers, and shells. Sometimes cacao beans were used as currency.
467. (B) The Aztecs filled the power vacuum created by the collapse of the Toltecs. From about 1000 to 1200 CE, the Toltecs had expanded southward and dominated the Maya of Yucatan. However, this larger Toltec Empire did not last long. Nomadic peoples (collectively termed the Chichimec) apparently brought about the fall of Tula (the capital) and the collapse of the Toltec in the 1200s. This opened the way for the rise of the Aztecs.
468. (C) The Moche culture flourished in northern Peru from about 100 to 800 CE. Moche was home to the Huaca del Sol, the greatest adobe pyramid ever built in the Americas, containing 143 million bricks. The Wari flourished in the south-central Andes and coastal area of present-day Peru, from about 500 to 1000. They established architecturally distinctive administrative centers in many places. They also created new fields with terraced field technology and invested in a major road network, both of which were later used by the Inca. The Chimu were the residents of Chimor, with its capital at Chan Chan, a large adobe city near present-day Trujillo, Peru. The culture developed about 900 and flourished until it was conquered by the Inca in about 1470. (The Adena lived in present-day Ohio around 500 and were noted for their large burial mounds.)
469. (E) There is archaeological evidence that the Toltecs traded obsidian (from northern Mexico) for the turquoise of the Ancestral Puebloans in the present-day southwestern United States. The Toltecs dominated southwestern Mexico around 900 CE after the fall of Teotihuacan. Their early history is obscure, but they were a warlike and formerly nomadic people who made their capital at Tula. They adopted many cultural beliefs and practices, such as temples and truncated pyramids, of sedentary Mesoamerican people. They began to expand to the south about 1000 and dominated the Maya of Yucatan from the 11th to the 13th centuries. The Toltecs were skilled artists and builders, and they knew how to smelt metals. Their polytheistic religion seems to have centered around Quetzalcoatl. Their ceremonies included human sacrifice, sun worship, and a sacred ball game. They are said to have discovered pulque (a fermented drink), and they developed considerable astronomical knowledge and a sophisticated calendar. The ambiguous information on the Toltec Empire has created extremely varied interpretations of its nature, geographical extent, and duration.
470. (A) All pre-Columbian people of South and Central America worshipped gods of nature. The Inca had no system of writing, although they were the only group noted for their administrative ability. The Toltecs carried on long-distance trade with the Ancestral Puebloans. The Aztecs did not integrate other groups into their society.
471. (D) Feudalism is an economic system involving a grant of land in exchange for military and/or agricultural services. In the 13th century CE, both western Europe and Japan underwent a feudal period. In medieval Japan, landowners recruited warriors known as samurai to provide military protection for their lands. Each samurai swore an oath of loyalty to the emperor and to his daimyo (lord) and promised to follow a code of honor known as Bushido. In medieval Europe, the king gave land to his nobles, who promised to serve him and supply him with knights (warriors on horseback). Knights were expected to follow a code of chivalry. Historians disagree on how far the analogy can be extended. The countries in the other answer choices did not depend on feudal relationships.
472. (A) Between about 300 BCE and 300 CE, the Yayoi traveled to Japan from the Asian mainland. This marked a period of transition when influences from China and the Qin Dynasty began to be brought into the Japanese islands by way of the Korean peninsula. The Yayoi introduced wet rice cultivation, bronze, ironworking, and new pottery styles. They are named after the neighborhood of Tokyo where archeologists first uncovered artifacts and features from that era. (According to tradition, Buddhism was introduced to Japan in 552 CE by Korean missionaries.)
473. (C) The kami are the Shinto deities; the word kami is usually translated as “god” or “gods.” However, the kami are not like the gods of monotheistic religions. In Shinto, there is no real notion of God’s omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. Shinto has numerous deities that are conceptualized in many forms. This belief system/religion looks to the physical world for meaning and stresses the individual’s duty to live in harmony with his or her natural surroundings.
474. (B) The Nihon Shoki was written in classical Chinese and finished in 720 CE. According to this history, the emperor traced his ancestry to various kami who created the islands of Japan. With the acceptance of this myth, Japanese emperors were regarded as divine and the owners of all land on the islands. The Nihon Shoki begins with a creation story but continues to events of the eighth century. It has been an important tool for historians and archaeologists, because it includes the most complete surviving historical record of ancient Japan.
475. (D) The Heian period (c. 794–c. 1192 CE) is named after the capital city of Heiankyo (present-day Kyoto). It was an unusual period in ancient Japan because of its general peace and prosperity. Japanese culture, especially poetry and literature, flourished during this period. Although Chinese influences were strong, the Japanese at the Heian court developed an independent culture that included their own system of writing. They also created a court culture with values and concepts that were uniquely Japanese—such as miyabi (courtliness), makoto (simplicity), and aware (sensitivity). This new culture was forged largely among the women’s communities at court and is exemplified in the classic Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu. Yet Chinese influences were also powerful in the Heian period. Buddhism and Taoism were at the height of their influence, and the capital was laid out as an exact replica of the Tang era’s Chang’an. Although the imperial house of Japan officially ruled the country, the real power was in the hands of the Fujiwara clan, an aristocratic family that had intermarried with the emperor of Japan. (Japan was never occupied by the Mongols and never adopted Confucianism as a state religion. It did not really begin to explore and conquer until after the Meiji Restoration in 1868.)
476. (E) The Tale of Genji is a classic work of Japanese literature attributed to the Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu (or Lady Murasaki) in the early 11th century CE. It is sometimes called the world’s first novel. The Tale of Genji relates the life and loves of Prince Genji and the affairs of his children and grandchildren. It is written in a prose style, with a vocabulary of more than 12,000 words and almost 800 embedded poems. The book was a product of the aristocratic court culture that flourished during the Heian period (794–1192 CE) in Japan. It is considered one of the great works of all Japanese literature and has been narrated and read in a variety of forms for more than a thousand years. The text is well known outside Japan. (Kimigayo is the national anthem of Japan; its lyrics are based on a waka poem written in the Heian period and sung to a melody written in the 19th century.)
477. (B) Zen is a subset of Mahayana Buddhism; the word Zen is derived from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chan. Zen Buddhism emphasizes the wisdom of experience, rather than the study of theory, in order to attain enlightenment. In China, Zen emerged as a distinct school of Buddhism in the seventh century CE. From there, it spread south to Vietnam and east to Korea and Japan. A koan is a subject for meditation in Zen Buddhism, usually a saying of a great Zen master of the past. The paradoxical nature of the koan is meant to shock the student into spiritual intuition and the abandonment of reason that is necessary for enlightenment. The first collections of koans were compiled in the 11th century. The use of koans remains one of the main practices of some sects of Zen Buddhists today.
478. (C) Feudalism was the primary political and economic system in western Europe and Japan during the period known as the “Middle Ages.” The main characteristics of feudalism are a decentralized power structure that stresses reciprocal alliances between nobles and monarchs. The main difference between Japanese and European feudalism was the size of the peasantry; the number of poor agricultural workers in Japan was much smaller than in western Europe.
479. (B) The rule of the Kamakura shogunate (1185–1333 CE) marked the beginning of Japan’s medieval period. For about the next 700 years, the emperor, court, and traditional central government were left intact but relegated to ceremonial functions. De facto control of civil, military, and judicial matters was in the hands of the samurai class and the shogun. This period was filled with military violence. Increasing pessimism led to a search for salvation for many Japanese; this was the age of the great popularization of Buddhism, especially the new sects of Zen and Pure Land (Jodo Shu). It was also during the Kamakura period that the Mongols were defeated in 1274 and 1281. However, even though they were defeated, the invasion attempts caused problems for the Japanese. The war with the Mongols drained the treasury, and new taxes had to be levied to keep up defenses for the future. The invasions also caused disaffection among samurai who did not receive their expected rewards for their help in defeating the Mongols. Bands of roving ronin (masterless samurai) threatened the stability of the shogunate. The Kamakura period ended in 1333 with the destruction of the shogunate and the short reestablishment of imperial rule.
480. (C) Bushido was expected of both male and female members of the samurai class. Because of the value the Japanese placed on military ability, they only partially accepted the bureaucratic nature of Chinese government. During Japan’s feudal period, the nation had a decentralized government of self-sufficient estates in which the samurai were expected to devote their attention to military service.
481. (B) A ronin was a samurai with no lord or master during the feudal period (1185–1868 CE) of Japan. A samurai became masterless after the death or exile of his master or after the loss of his master’s favor or privilege. Ronin were in demand in times of war but a burden on society in times of peace. They sometimes became farmers, monks, soldiers of fortune, or even bandits, and their status varied over the centuries. Technically, according to Bushido, a samurai was supposed to commit seppuku (ritual suicide) on the loss of his master. A samurai who did not honor the code was on his own and sometimes suffered great shame. However, in some cases, such as in the work of the great Japanese dramatist Chikamatsu (d. 1724), the ronin were a model of loyalty and self-sacrifice that actually exemplified Bushido.
482. (A) The movement of Buddhism into Japan introduced a dramatic gender inequality in religious life. Women were deeply mistrusted in traditional Buddhism (as opposed to Shinto). Many Buddhists believed that salvation was impossible for women; Buddhist monastic communities were entirely male, and Buddhist monks only accepted men as students. Yet women found ways to make the religion work for them. As Buddhists, many women’s religious lives centered on the Lotus Sutra, one of the only Buddhist sutras to specifically address the enlightenment of women. They also adopted Fugen as a personal bodhisattva because he was the protector of devotees of the Lotus Sutra. Women wrote the great poetry, tales, and diaries in the Heian period. Because they often focused on the inner lives of men and women, they provide a better understanding of the experience of gender in ancient Japan than in any other premodern culture. While the Buddhist religion did not always see women as equal to men, it did not have the Confucian restrictions against women as rulers. This horrified Confucianists, who believed that women should be subordinate to men and that a woman ruler would upset the natural order. Six of the rulers between 592 and 770 CE were women. However, after this period, only two women ruled as Japanese female emperors; both were children, and their reigns were brief.
483. (C) According to tradition, Korean missionaries brought Buddhism to Japan in 552 CE and began to convert the Yamoto and other clans to the new faith. Initially, there was conflict with the native Shinto priests, but the two faiths found common ground within a few decades. The first Buddhist temples appeared in the late sixth century, and a priesthood soon followed. The oldest surviving Buddhist temple is the Horyuji Temple near Nara, built in 607. By the seventh century, when the religion was firmly established, Japan had dozens of temple complexes, various orders of priests, and skilled artisans to craft the icons used in the faith. However, early Japanese Buddhism was not a mass religion but limited to members of the imperial court and educated priests whose official function was to pray for the prosperity of the state. This kind of Buddhism had little to offer the uneducated masses and led to the growth of “people’s priests” with no formal Buddhist training. Buddhism did not really become popular with the Japanese masses until around the 13th century.
484. (D) Tennoism was the dominant political theory in Japan for more than a thousand years until the end of World War II (1945). The emperor of Japan was called the tenno, which literally means “heavenly sovereign.” He was not only the head of the Japanese imperial family but also the highest authority of the Shinto religion. In the early seventh century CE, the emperor began to be called “son of heaven.” The Taika Reforms of 645 declared that all land in Japan and all loyalty ultimately belonged to the emperor, who ruled by the decree of heaven and exercised absolute authority. For the Japanese, this theocracy distinguished them from other countries, because only the Japanese were ruled directly by a divine emperor. The Japanese retained their belief in the divinity of their emperor despite long declines in imperial power from 1185 to 1868, and the concept returned with a vengeance in the early 20th century. The idea still exists in some extreme conservative and marginal political movements in Japan.
485. (E) In the 12th century CE, the peace and security that was synonymous with the Heian period began to disintegrate. In the Japanese countryside, people tended to obey their clan elders rather than listen to the government bureaucrats sent from the capital. Tax revenue declined, especially because Buddhist monasteries and estates were tax exempt. Court disputes over regents for emperors and the increasing power of the outlying provinces forced the creation of the office of shogun—the emperor’s chief military and political officer. From 1192 to 1867, the shogun would become the (usually) hereditary military dictators of Japan. The Genpei War (1180–1185) was a conflict between two powerful military clans—the Taira and the Minamoto—over dominance of the imperial court and control of Japan. The latter were ultimately successful, establishing Minamoto Yoritomo as the first shogun to rule all of Japan under the Kamakura shogunate (1192). This was a turning point in Japanese history; imperial rule ended in favor of direct military rule by the shogunate. (Edo was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate that ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868.)
486. (D) Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, similar to letters, that are used in written Japanese. They were different from the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji. Kana is said to have been invented by a Buddhist priest in the ninth century CE. By the Heian period, Japanese writers had developed the syllable-based kana system, which used simple Chinese characters to represent the 50 sounds of the Japanese spoken language. For centuries, classical Chinese would remain the language of men, but educated women wrote in kana. This was the style used by Murasaki Shikibu in the 11th-century masterpiece The Tale of Genji.
487. (B) There appears to have been very little that was taboo in the way of sexual activity in ancient Japan. Shinto had no special code of morals and did not teach sexual conduct in premodern Japan, so it was never a source of religious opposition to homosexuality. Early Japanese law codes penalized incest and bestiality but not homosexuality. Buddhist monasteries appear to have been early centers of homosexual activity in ancient Japan, even though all sexual activity was forbidden by the code of monastic discipline. From religious circles, same-sex love spread to the samurai class, where it was customary for a boy to undergo training in the martial arts by apprenticing to a more experienced adult man. The man was permitted, if the boy agreed, to take the boy as his lover until he came of age. This type of apprenticeship was called wakashudo (the way of the young). The older partner would teach martial skills, warrior etiquette, and the samurai code, while his desire to be a good role model for his wakashu would lead him to behave more honorably himself. Shunga is a Japanese term for erotic art, and large numbers of shunga scrolls appeared in the Heian period. They depicted every kind of sexual activity, including heterosexual and homosexual, old and young, and a wide range of fetishes. Shunga was widely enjoyed by men and women and carried almost no stigma.
488. (A) Hakata Bay faces the Tsushima Strait in the northwestern part of Fukuoka on the Japanese island of Kyushu. It is famous as the approximate site of the Mongol invasions that took place nearby; both invasions are sometimes referred to as the battle of Hakata Bay. In 1274 and 1281, Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor of China (Yuan Dynasty), assembled enormous fleets to attack Japan. Both times, the fleets were almost completely destroyed by major storms. Samurai bands defeated the Mongols who survived these storms, and Kublai Khan made no further attempts to invade Japan. The invasions are the earliest events for which the word kamikaze (“divine wind”) was widely used. The destruction of the Mongol fleets guaranteed Japan’s independence but also created a power struggle in the Japanese government that led to the military’s dominance over the emperor and the end of the Kamakura shogunate.
489. (E) By about 500 CE, aristocratic clans dominated Japan. In the following thousand years, they often reduced the emperor to a mere figurehead. The Japanese followed some aspects of the Chinese style of government. However, they emphasized noble birth as a key to power and ignored the Chinese concept of the civil service examination. The aristocratic clans accumulated increasing amounts of land while most of Japan was an uneducated, agricultural, village-based society. The common people were alienated from the Japanese aristocracy, who lived in a world of rich homes and palaces, silks, wealth, Chinese writing, and Buddhism. Although the Japanese did adopt Buddhism, Shinto retained much of its popularity.
490. (B) Bushido means “way of the warrior” and describes a Japanese code of conduct somewhat similar to the European concept of chivalry. Bushido developed from the samurai’s moral code and stressed absolute loyalty, martial arts mastery, and the overwhelming importance of honor. It developed between the 9th and 12th centuries CE in Japan, combining the violent world of the samurai with philosophical trappings from Shinto and Buddhism. Bushido was followed by both men and women of the samurai class. Its code emphasized the preservation of family honor and willingness to face death rather than accept defeat or retreat. When faced with defeat, Bushido provided an honorable outcome through seppuku, or ritual disembowelment. Between the 12th and 16th centuries, Bushido had a wide influence across Japan, although the actual term rarely appears in the contemporary literature.
491. (E) Pure Land Buddhism (also known as Amidism), is a popular tradition of Mahayana Buddhism in eastern Asia. It is based on the Pure Land sutras that arrived in China around 150 CE. These sutras center on Amitabha (Amida in Japanese), a buddha of compassion and mercy, and his Pure Land paradise (Sukhavati). In Japan, Honen Shonin (1133–1212) established Pure Land Buddhism as an independent sect known as Jodo Shu; Shinran (1173–1263), a former Japanese monk, established Jodo Shinsu. Today, Pure Land is the main form of Buddhism in Japan. The central teaching is that nirvana can no longer be attained in the present degenerate age. Instead, a person must rely on the saving power of some benevolent entity—in this case, Amida. Focusing devotion on Amida will give a person enough karmic merit to go to the Pure Land. This is not an eternal destination but a pleasant place in which all karma disappears and nirvana is easier to attain. To its adherents, Pure Land Buddhism seemed more optimistic than traditional Buddhism. Its basic premise came from a Buddhist scripture in which Amida vowed to save anyone who would invoke his name with sincerity. Most Pure Land Buddhists focus on chanting a three-word mantra of devotion to Amida (“Namu Amida Butsu”) as often as possible to create a proper and sincere state of mind and thus gain admission to the Pure Land. However, Pure Land’s sincerity refers to an egoless psychological state that is actually quite difficult to attain.
492. (C) The Jomon period was Japan’s Neolithic age and is usually dated from the end of the Ice Age (c. 14,000 BCE) to about 300 BCE. The first people to come to Japan probably originated on the Asian mainland; one estimate suggests that they came to Japan around 20,000 BCE when an ice bridge connected Siberia and northern Japan. They lived in matrilineal, clan-based societies and survived by fishing and domesticating a few local plants. Some of the world’s earliest pottery (dated to the 14th millennium BCE) was produced in the Jomon period. The term jomon actually means “cord-patterned” in Japanese and refers to the pottery style of the culture, which has markings made from their construction using sticks with cords wrapped around them. All Jomon pots were made by hand without the aid of a potter’s wheel; the potter built up the pot from the bottom with repeated coils of soft clay. Women almost certainly produced these early pots, as was the case in most Neolithic cultures. The manufacturing of pottery implies some form of sedentary life, because pottery is fragile and generally useless to nomadic hunter-gatherers.
493. (A) The Yamoto leaders of Japan adopted the Chinese concept of a centralized state and turned it to their own purposes. The Taika Reforms (645 CE), established by Emperor Kotuku, attempted to completely revamp the Japanese government along Tang Chinese lines and enhance the power of the imperial court. The independence of regional officials was severely restricted, and a centralized administration run by educated bureaucrats was organized. The reforms decreed the creation of a Confucian/Buddhist-type civil service, government ministries, conscription, a reformed tax system, and an official court protocol. A permanent capital was erected at Nara (710–794) and then moved to a grander location called Heian-kyo (present-day Kyoto). Envoys and students were sent to China to study everything Chinese, including the writing system, literature, religion, and architecture. The Taika Reforms also abolished private ownership of land and established a semifeudal land tenure system. Lords could hold power and possess hereditary rights to land, but the reforms declared that all land ultimately belonged to the divine emperor. However, despite these decrees, the centralized government never really effectively gained control over the independent clans and aristocratic families of Japan.
494. (C) The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon records the detailed observations of Sei Shonagon during her time as a court lady in Heian Japan from the 990s until about 1002 CE. In her book, Sei Shonagon included lists of all kinds, such as “annoying things” or “things which distract in moments of boredom.” She also discussed poetry; court anecdotes; and personal thoughts on nature, religious ceremonies, and pilgrimage. The book is known for her wit, humorous observations, and caustic depictions of her contemporaries. Her style was unusual for the time in that she did not use many Chinese words. Sei Shonagon was a contemporary and sometime-rival of Lady Murasaki, whose novel, The Tale of Genji, fictionalized the same Heian court life. The Pillow Book is a great introduction to the daily concerns of the Heian upper class before the popularization of samurai values such as Bushido.
495. (C) Waka is a traditional form of poetry that has been composed in Japan for more than 1,300 years. The term waka (“Japanese poem”) was coined during the Heian period, although the form may have existed as early as the seventh century CE. Waka originally distinguished Japanese-language poetry from kanshi, poetry written in Chinese by Japanese poets. The term eventually referred only to tanka, meaning a “short song.” Traditionally, waka had no rhyme but was intended to be chanted aloud to music. The eighth-century Manyoshu (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves) is the oldest existing collection of Japanese poetry. More than 4,000 of the anthology’s 4,500 individual poems are written in waka form on subjects such as the beauty and evanescence of the natural world, human love, laments for the dead, and the affairs of ordinary people. It was customary in Japan for two writers, especially lovers, to exchange waka instead of prose letters. Making and reciting waka became a part of aristocratic culture in the Heian period; The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon and The Tale of Genji both illustrate the use of waka.
496. (B) The Japanese tea ceremony (sado) is a way of preparing and drinking tea that was strongly influenced by Zen Buddhism. The ceremony consists of many rituals that have to be memorized; almost every hand movement is prescribed. The tea ceremony remains popular in modern-day Japan. Ikebana is the Japanese art of flower arrangement, emphasizing harmony, color, rhythm, and elegantly simple design. It is traced back to the sixth-century CE Buddhist ritual of offering flowers to the spirits of the dead, although the first classical styles of ikebana did not appear until about the 15th century. Noh is a form of classical Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 1300s. Many characters are masked, with men playing male and female roles. Performances of Noh plays move slowly and combine singing, speech, instrumental music, dancing, and mime. Kabuki is a classical Japanese dance-drama known for the elaborate makeup worn by some of its performers. Kabuki uses more characters than Noh and features much more stage action. In both classical and modern forms, Kabuki continues to be popular in Japan, while Noh is restricted to a few theatrical groups. During the century of civil war (1467–1568), Noh, the tea ceremony, and Buddhism spread through all levels of society. (Muqam is the classical musical style used for more than 1,500 years by the Uyghurs in northwestern China and central Asia.)
497. (C) From about 800 to 1400 CE, a shoen described a private, tax-free, and often independent Japanese estate. The rise of the shoen undermined the political and economic power of the emperor and contributed to the growth of powerful local clans. Shoen became popular in Japan in the eighth and ninth centuries to counterbalance the system of state landownership established in the mid-600s by the Taika Reforms. The estates developed from land tracts assigned to officially sanctioned Shinto shrines or Buddhist temples or granted by the emperor as gifts to the imperial family, friends, or officials. As these estates grew, they became independent of the civil government and contributed to the rise of daimyos and powerful local clans. All people connected with the land—the patron, the owner, and the estate manager—benefited through rights to part of the income from the land. By the 11th century, shoen had completely replaced state possession as the typical form of land ownership in Japan. The Kamakura shogunate appointed stewards to weaken the power of these local landlords, but they did not disappear until the 1400s. At that time, villages became self-governing units, owing complete loyalty to a feudal lord (daimyo) who subdivided the area into fiefs and collected a fixed tax.
498. (B) In Japan, great tax-free estates were built up in the eighth century CE by giving land to members of the imperial family, friends, or officials who could not be supported at court. These estates were often managed by territorial barons, or daimyo. The daimyo established and administered their domains (han), built castles, established samurai armies, and created towns around their castles where their samurai retainers lived. The supreme military leader was called the shogun, and his government was called the bakufu, or “tent government.” Daimyo were subordinate only to the shogun and the most powerful feudal rulers in Japan from the 900s to the middle of the 1800s. Warfare and destruction characterized much of this era in Japanese history, especially from 1185 to 1600. The rise of the samurai occurred as political power devolved from court nobles to warrior families. Military leaders ruled the land, while the emperor and his court remained in place but held no power. Samurai values of service to a daimyo and personal loyalty became central to Japanese cultural tradition over these centuries.
499. (E) The Ainu are an indigenous people of Japan. They may be descended from people who once lived in northern Asia and entered the Japanese islands before the Jomon period. According to one Ainu legend, “The Ainu lived in this place a hundred thousand years before the Children of the Sun came.” At some (much disputed) point, more powerful invaders from the Asian mainland gradually forced the Ainu to retreat to the northern islands of Japan, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands in the east of present-day Russia. The Ainu religion was animistic; the people believed that everything in nature had a spirit inside and that there was a hierarchy of these spirits. One of their rituals centered on a bear cult. The Ainu are lighter skinned than their Japanese neighbors and have more body hair. In earlier times, when race was a more important concept, investigators proposed a Caucasian (European) ancestry for the Ainu. However, recent DNA tests have not shown any genetic similarity with modern Europeans. Most Ainu currently live on Hokkaido as fishers and small-scale farmers. In the early 2000s, official estimates placed the Ainu population at about 25,000, while the unofficial number was said to be more than 200,000. (Burakumin are a Japanese social minority group. They are the descendants of outcast communities of feudal Japan, especially in occupations considered ritually impure such as executioners, undertakers, butchers, or tanners. The burakumin traditionally lived in their own secluded hamlets and faced [and continue to face] social discrimination.)
500. (C) Kofun are large tombs in Japan that were constructed between the third and seventh centuries CE; this was primarily the Yamoto period (c. 250–700). The tombs are so distinctive that the time period is sometimes called the Kofun period. Many of the kofun have an unusual keyhole-shaped mound unique to ancient Japan. They were constructed in the area around the Kanto plain on the central island of Honshu, where the Yamoto clan had created the beginnings of a state. Kofun range in size from several yards to more than 400 yards in length. The largest is in Sakai City and may be the tomb of the fourth-century emperor Nintoku. The large burial mounds indicated the new wealth and prestige of the Yamoto leaders.