welcome to AP world simplified today we're gonna be discussing the religions trade and migration patterns of the late foundational era now the earlier religions carry over from the Paleolithic era they were more so meant to explain how the world worked and perhaps codify some sort of ethic that these groups of people were living by this this way that they were living their lives now they didn't have the scientific tools analysis that we have nowadays however they were able to try to of course explain the world in terms that they can understand that the first three general religious practices that took place were in the form of animism shamanism and ancestral veneration now animism is actually where people are going to worship inanimate objects so this is the sort of thing you think of when people are worshiping the Sun or volcanoes are making sacrifices to those things that would be a form of animism giving those human qualities to inanimate objects shamanism on the other hand is a connection through one or multiple spiritual leaders in your tribe or group that have some sort of spiritual connection be it they can see the future they can harness some sort of mystical power or healing powers or herbal medication those are the types of things you would generally consider a more shamanistic belief code and insist relations can be particularly popular in East Asia that is where one venerates or worships or celebrates their ancestors in the hopes of that that respect and that sort of worshipping would result in their ancestors blessing them going forward and if they don't do those things they neglect their ancestors they won't receive the blessing or aid of those ancestors or perhaps those ancestors may work against them now almost all of these religions are going to be polytheistic meaning they worship many gods or many deities one of the first religions to break away from that tradition that would be known as Zoroastrianism starting in roughly the second millennia BCE this came out of what is going to become Persia or modern-day Iran and this really really changed a lot of the core beliefs that many of these policy polytheistic and primitive religions practiced first and foremost Zoroastrianism is going to focus around a monotheistic belief or a belief in one single God one divine being furthermore Zoroastrianism is going to believe that this one God has created the universe and there is this sort of constant battle between good and evil across the world and greater universe and in that battle between good and evil there are humans who have the choice or the free will to choose to live their lives more towards the good or more towards the evil and of course Zoroastrianism was one of the first to lay out a concrete afterlife in that they believed if you led your life mostly for the bad you would end up in a place of eternal torment or hell if you led your life for the most part in the toward the causes of the good you would be rewarded with eternal paradise or heaven and all of these are fundamental concepts that had not been thought of before be it monotheism good versus evil the free will to choose which side you're living towards punishment eternally in the case of the good and the bad and also they're the first to come up with this concept of a messiah some person that we born or coming later into humanity into humanity and they would shift the battle in the favor of the good these five fundamental beliefs are gonna profoundly influenced later Judaism Christianity and Islam which today make up some of the biggest religions in the entire world speaking of which judaism is a belief that comes from the people of Israel or the Hebrew people while it used well it originated roughly 3,000 years ago with the Hebrew Scriptures it was mostly a polytheistic and very Mediterranean type religion it had a God that was somewhat temperamental angry and jealous and all these various human emotions however that sort of tone is going to take a shift later after we call second temple Judaism before I explain to you second temple Judaism let me tell you about the Jewish people the Jewish people have been displaced from their state of Israel several times throughout history excluding their slavery stint in Egypt they were also displaced from Israel by the Assyrians Babylonians and later Romans now while they did not have a a Jewish state to identify with their form of identity came with maintaining their culture their language and their religion which was Judaism now most people at the time when they were conquered by a surrounding city-state or Empire they generally chose to or were forced to give up their religion in favor of the clearly superior other civilizations god or gods the Jewish people however would hold on to that and that would really cause them a lot of anguish as they were persecuted by many of these groups that would take over them and they would force to be forced to either leave or they would be persecuted for not converting to the the new religion this would change however after the Persian Empire invaded the Middle East when they defeated the Babylonians thus freeing the Jewish people from their exile in Babylon they allowed the Jewish people to not only go back to their State of Israel but they allowed them to keep their religion without any sort of influence or forcing of bezouro Astron ism upon them whether or not they contributed to the mixing of the two Judaism would syncretized heavily with these Zoroastrian core beliefs of not only a monotheistic single God but also the concept of good and evil freewill heaven in hell as well as a later coming Messiah not only that but Judaism itself would result in Christianity breaking off from it as well as Islam and both taking a lot of these core fundamentals along with them which of course today we see all over the world with well over a billion Christians in Islamic people throughout the world another major religion established at the time would be known as the Vedic beliefs before they were later codified and made into what is now known as Hinduism now these beliefs were largely spread by a group of people referred to as the indo-european or Aryans who began a migration from the Central Asian steppes they were pastoralists throughout Europe the Middle East what is now modern-day persia or modern-day Iran and India and with them particularly into the Indian subcontinent they're going to take with them their oral traditions known as the Vedic beliefs now these beliefs are going to synchronize or mix with the local people of the Indus Valley and the rest of the Indian subcontinent and they're going to later form as I mentioned before being codified by the Sanskrit Vedas and Upanishads and forming Hinduism they're going to blend together to form and enforce this existing caste system which I'll explain later when we talk about Hinduism as a whole love these Vedic beliefs these Aryans also spread their language which is why if you look at the root languages for most of the peoples of Europe even into the Middle East Iran Central Asia and India you will see the root languages is Indo European and that's because of these core invaders that came from roughly the Caucasus mountain regions and they're going to spread not only their technology culture and religion but their language as well another major bank migration taking place at around 1000 BCE is known as the Bantu migration now the Bantu people came from West Africa most likely around the Niger River Valley where they first harnessed agriculture they also harnessed and developed iron tools and iron making and that gave them a massive advantage versus the other people that were south of the Saharan desert which at the time still cut off sub-saharan Africa from afro North Africa Asia and Europe now when these people expanded they had a massive advantage over the somewhat pastoral / nomadic people that inhabited East and South Africa with our agriculture iron making another advantages and they're going to relatively easily spread out first to East Africa and then down further to South Africa now while there's not a whole lot of genealogical evidence for to support this Bantu migration there's a very clear linguistic set of proof as most of these language can be routed back to this Bantu language that goes into West Africa now a lot of these migrations and religions were able to spread because of increased amounts of trade towards the later half of the foundational era one of the first long-distance consistent inter-regional trade is going to take place between the Nile River Valley of Egypt and the Mesopotamian civilizations and empires of Mesopotamia this is going to start off by land as that is obviously the easier of the two to develop as sea trade is not going to develop until the Indus Valley starts around 2300 BCE however what I need to mention here is the fact that trade is going to be centered around the trade of luxury goods they're not going to risk their lives and they're going these long expensive trips to trade basic things they already have they're trading for things that they either don't have available to them as a resource or are crafted and manufactured specifically in these various regions that could include gold silver various clothes later on silk and other luxury goods that people are willing to risk their lives for and profit from highly by trading between these two regions now the first connection by sea as I mentioned by the Indus Valley River civilizations around 2300 BC they're gonna make a maritime connection with the peoples of Mesopotamia now these Indus Valley traders are actually there to stay their trade the train that they establish is so successful that many of the people from the Indus Valley actually stay in Mesopotamia intermarrying and acting as translators and merchants that become a part of the language and gene pool of the peoples of Mesopotamia and finally the last topic of the lake foundational era is going to be the cultural exchange that took place between Egypt and Nubia now Egypt was downstream of Nubia although they were actually further north the Nubians are going to make this connection with the Egyptians and at the time the Egyptians were pretty far ahead as far as architecture mathematics society goes than almost any other civilization in the world as such when the Nubians established this trade connection between the Egyptians of themselves they're going to borrow heavily from Egyptian culture what I mean by that is they're going to adopt a lot of the qualities of the Egyptian deities and gods they're going to copy a lot of their dress and both sides are going to share goods and ideas as well and while places like Egypt Nubia Mesopotamia and India's valley had established them long-distance trade nobody who had consistently established these long-distance trade networks that are going to develop in the Classical era which will be my next video series and well that's it for this episode of AP World simplify it be sure to check out my website at Morgan 8 be teaching calm if you're looking for materials as an AP world student or an AP world teacher to help yourself out along the way thanks for watching [Music]