Essays | Ancient history homework help

Answer TWO of the following four questions, your choice.  Each essay should be approximately 2 pages (double spaced—one page single spaced).  Establish an introduction in the beginning of your essay, and use specific examples and details to clarify each of your points. Be sure to answer every part of the question. 

1. Explain the profound changes brought about by the invention of agriculture.  How did this seemingly simple development change the course of human history? What legacies from the development of agriculture are still with us in the present?

2. In Hammurabi’s Code a law dealing with a wife reads, “If she was not careful, but was a gadabout, thus neglecting her house (and) humiliating her husband, they shall throw her into the water.”  What can we learn about the status of women in Babylonia from this passage?  What was the life of women like in Mesopotamia?

3. What was the connection between religion and the social structure in ancient India? What was the relationship between religious ideas and social distinctions – for example, how did early Hindu religious ideas reinforce or challenge the caste system? How did the epics of the Vedic Age address the issue of social or political inequality?

4. Describe the historical factors or developments that contributed to the unification of China, and those factors that made unification difficult. What were the costs and difficulties that went along with Qin and Han unification?

5. Compare and contrast the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism in three areas: origins, views of social structure, and relationship to authority (political leaders, existing religious authorities, etc.) What factors or developments made each of them popular, or at least contributed to their spread?

6. Describe the philosophical contributions of the ancient Greeks.  How did thinkers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the later Hellenistic philosophers (Stoics, Skeptics, and Epicureans) shape the world?