The first usage of the term shekel, an ancient unit of weight and currency, appears from Mesopotamia circa 3000 BCE and refers to a specific weight of barley, which relates other values in a metric such as silver, bronze, copper etc.

A barley/shekel is originally both a unit of currency and a unit of weight.

West Micronesia (2,637 – 910 BCE): First Colonizations — Marianas Pioneers, Early Palau Settlements, Yap Landfalls

Geographic and Environmental Context

West Micronesia includes the Mariana Islands (Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Rota, and the northern chain), Palau (Babeldaob, Koror, Rock Islands), and Yap (Yap proper and its outer atolls).

• Anchors: Guam–Saipan–Tinian–Rota (Marianas), Babeldaob–Koror (Palau), Yap proper and nearby atolls.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

• Holocene stability with ENSO-driven drought/storm interannuals; freshwater lenses critical on limestone islands.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Marianas: among the earliest Remote Oceanic colonizations (c. 1500–1100 BCE). Colonists founded coastal hamlets on leeward flats and embayments; very thin red-slipped pottery (often called “Marianas Red”), shell-tempered, appears alongside shell/bone fishhooks and shell adzes.

• Palau: initial settlement by late 2nd–early 1st millennium BCE; hamlets on Babeldaob–Koror margins exploited reef–mangrove mosaics and freshwater streams.

• Yap: first landfalls likely late 2nd–early 1st millennium BCE; small villages near lens-fed wetlands and reef passes.

• Transported landscapes: coconut, pandanus, breadfruit, and taro took hold; pigs/chickens introduced variably (timing differs by island).

• Marine focus: lagoon netting and trolling; turtle and pelagic fishing increased; shellfish gleaning ubiquitous.

Technology & Material Culture

• Outrigger canoes with crab-claw sails; shell/stone adzes; drilled shell fishhooks (including small pelagic forms); fiber cordage from coconut husk; early stone weirs in tidal flats (Palau).

Movement & Interaction Corridors

• Marianas chain: inter-island shuttles knit Guam–Saipan–Tinian–Rota;

• Palau: Rock Islands sheltered canoe routes; Palau exchanged shell adzes and mangrove products with neighbors;

• Yap: early ties to outer atolls began; voyages westward linked Yap to Caroline pathways.

Belief & Symbolism

• Ancestral land-tenure embedded in house sites and groves; navigators carried sacred knowledge of stars and swells; shrines at canoe landings marked founding events.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

• Arboriculture mosaics + lens-managed taro pits buffered drought; distributed islet gardens and reciprocal kin ties hedged cyclones.

Transition

By 910 BCE, Marianas, Palau, and Yap supported permanent settlements linked by canoe circuits — a west Micronesian web of atoll/high-island economies.

The Sahara, from which the elephants and giraffes in the lands west of the Nile Valley finally retreat southward, sees an increase in aridity due to the southward shifting of the trade-wind belt.

The fork-branch plow, despite its primitive appearance and action, brings greatly increased crop yields that swell Egypt’s population.

As an animal protein source, Egyptians use the domestic or common pigeon, derived by selective breeding from the wild rock dove of Eurasia.

Totemism forms the foundation of Egyptian religion, relating kinship groups to specific plants and animals.

The northern principality of Bedhet belongs to Horus, the falcon; Naqada, in the south, belongs to Seth, the goat.

Ra, the sun god, rules above all.

The concept of divine kingship is well established by now, as is the existence of a specialized priesthood.

Both contribute to the force of royal authority.

The king becomes identified with the god Horus, who by this time is associated with the whole land of Egypt.

It is in this era that formerly independent ancient Egyptian states become known as nomes, ruled solely by the pharaoh, the former rulers forced to assume the role of governors (nomarchs) or otherwise work in tax collection.

Egyptians in this age worship their pharaoh as a god, believing that he ensures the annual flooding of the Nile that is necessary for their crops.

Egyptian views on the nature of time during this period hold that the universe works in cycles, and the Pharaoh on earth works to ensure the stability of these cycles.

They also perceive themselves as a specially selected people, "as the only true human beings on earth.” Egypt’s internal strength encourages expansion and aggression abroad.

Maintaining extensive trade contacts with Syria, Canaan, and northeast Africa, the kings of Egypt’s Third Dynasty have pushed into the Sinai and northern Nubia to establish both buffer zones and Egyptian-dominated trade routes.

Egypt’s Old Kingdom period had begun with the Third Dynasty in around 2686 BCE.

It is in this age that formerly independent ancient Egyptian states become known as nomes, under the rule of the pharaoh.

The former rulers are forced to assume the role of governors or otherwise work in tax collection.

The Old Kingdom is the name given to the period in the third millennium BCE, when Egypt attained its first continuous peak of civilization in complexity and achievement—the first of three so-called "Kingdom" periods, which mark the high points of civilization in the lower Nile Valley (the others being Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom).

Nineteenth century historians coined the term itself and the distinction between the Old Kingdom and the Early Dynastic Period is not one that would have been recognized by Ancient Egyptians.

Not only was the last king of the Early Dynastic Period related to the first two kings of the Old Kingdom, but the 'capital', the royal residence, remained at Ineb-Hedg, the Ancient Egyptian name for Memphis.

The basic justification for a separation between the two periods is the revolutionary change in architecture accompanied by the effects on Egyptian society and economy of large-scale building projects.

The Old Kingdom is commonly regarded as spanning the period when the Third Dynasty through to the Sixth Dynasty (2686 BCE – 2134 BCE) ruled Egypt.

Third Dynasty kings had begun constructing elaborate stone funerary complexes for themselves, which (according to mainstream chronology) culminate in the five magnificent pyramids attributed to the kings of the Fourth Dynasty founded by Snefru.

Royal power expressed as divine kingship reaches its zenith under Sneferu’s great pyramid building successors Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure; the spirits of dead kings are thought to inhabit their statues.

Urukagina, alternately rendered as Uruinimgina, is a ruler (énsi) of Lagash in Mesopotamia about the twenty-fourth century BCE, is best-known for his reforms to combat corruption, which are sometimes cited as the first example of a judicial code.

Although the actual text has not been discovered yet, much of its content may be surmised from other references to it that have been found.

In it, he exempts widows and orphans from taxes; compels the city to pay funeral expenses (including the ritual food and drink libations for the journey of the dead into the lower world); and decrees that the rich must use silver when purchasing from the poor man, and if the poor does not wish to sell, the powerful man (the rich man or the priest) cannot force him to do so.

Urukagina's code is perhaps the first known example of government self-reform.

Like the Magna Carta and the United States Constitution that followed (and like the Codes of Hammurabi, et al.

to some degree), Urukagina's code limits the power of politicians, governing government.

The text describing Urukagina's reforms is also the first known use of the word freedom, in this case the Sumerian ama-gi.

Urukagina frees the inhabitants of Lagash from usury, burdensome controls, hunger, theft, murder, and seizure (of their property and persons).

He also participates in several conflicts, notably a losing border conflict with Uruk.

During his reign, Uruk falls under the leadership of Lugal-Zage-Si, patesi of Umma, who ultimately overthrows Urukagina, annexes Lagash, and establishes a Mesopotamian Empire.

Birth rates crash and plague ravages the land as the central government, ruled by Egypt's Sixth Dynasty, collapses around 2150.

The country slides into anarchy, forfeiting its gains in Nubia and West Asia.

The Memphite monarchs of the short-lived Seventh Dynasty of Manetho's history, “from which no king’s name is known,” are powerless to prevent the breakdown of centralized rule as provincial warlords fight each other over territory.

The Seventh Dynasty is most likely an oligarchy that attempts to retain control of the country.

The Eighth Dynasty rulers, claiming to be the descendants of the Sixth Dynasty kings, also rule from Memphis.

Little is known about these two dynasties since very little textual or architectural evidence survives to describe the period. (Several Eighth Dynasty kings are known from inscriptions found in the temple of Min at Qift in the south; this indicates that their rule was recognized throughout the country. As the combined span of the Seventh and Eighth dynasties encompassed only twenty years, the instability of the throne suggests political decay. Egyptians may have accepted the fiction of centralized rule only because there was no alternative style of government to monarchy.)

While there are next to no official records covering this period, there a number of fictional texts known as Lamentations from the early period of the subsequent Middle Kingdom that may shed some light on what happened during this period.

Some of these texts reflect on the breakdown of rule, others allude to invasion by "Asiatic bowmen.”

In general, the stories focus on a society where the natural order of things of both society and nature is overthrown.

One particularly interesting phrase talks about times of high taxation even when the waters of the river Nile are abnormally low ("Dry is the river of Egypt, and one can cross it by foot").

Traditionally, people are taxed according to the inundation level of the Nile in a given year.

The fact that people are taxed by what they should have been able to grow instead of what they had actually grown suggests a long period of relatively low inundations that historically often lead to famine (an instance of which is recorded on the Famine Stele at Elephantine).

The high taxation also implies an inherent breakdown of rule, reflecting an arbitrary approach not evident during the Old Kingdom.

With the end of the Eighth Dynasty in 2130, the Old Kingdom state collapses.

During the so-called First Intermediate Period that ensues, famine and violence are widespread; sharply increased numbers of burials in cemeteries bear witness to the consequent rise in the death rate.

It is also highly likely that it is during this period that all of the pyramid and tomb complexes are robbed ("Those who were entombed are cast on high ground").

Further lamentation texts allude to this fact, and more directly at the beginning of the Middle Kingdom we begin to see mummies decorated with magical spells that were once exclusive to the pyramid of the kings of the Sixth Dynasty.

Pepi II of Egypt is generally thought to have ruled for ninety-four years (from about 2278 BCE to about 2184 BCE), the longest reign of any monarch in history, though this has been disputed by some Egyptologists who favor a shorter reign length of sixty-four years, given the absence of attested dates known for Pepi after his Thirty-first Count.

It is known that near the end of his reign, some foreign relations were completely broken off, a further sign of the disintegration of central rule.

His reign marks a sharp decline of the Old Kingdom, which arguably began before the time of Pepi II, with nomarchs (regional representatives of the king) becoming more and more powerful and exerting greater influence.

Pepi I, for example, married two sisters who were the daughters of a nomarch and later made their brother a vizier.

Their influence was extensive, both sisters bearing sons who were chosen as part of the royal succession: Merenre and Pepi II.

Increasing wealth and power appears to have been handed over to high officials during Pepi II's reign.

Large and expensive tombs appear at many of the major nomes of Egypt, building by the reigning nomarchs, the priestly class and other administrators.

Nomarchs were traditionally free from taxation and their positions had become hereditary.

Their increasing wealth and independence has led to a corresponding shift in power away from the central royal court to the regional nomarchs.

Later in his reign it is known that Pepi divided the role of vizier into two: one for Upper Egypt and one for Lower, a further decentralization of power away from the royal capital of Memphis.

Further, the seat of vizier of Upper Egypt was moved several times.

The southern vizier was stationed at Thebes.

It is also thought that Pepi II's extraordinarily long reign may have been a contributing factor to the general breakdown of centralized royal rule.

While there are some doubts that he reigned as long as 94 years, most believe that his reign was unusually long.

This almost certainly produced a succession crisis and also led to a stagnation of the central administration.

There are no official contemporary records or inscriptions of Pepi's immediate successors, and for this reason in many books Pepi II is typically credited as being the last verifiable pharaoh of the Sixth Dynasty and of the Old Kingdom.

However, according the Manetho and the Turin King List, he was succeeded by his son Merenre II, who reigned for just over a year.

He in turn may have been succeeded by Nitocris, who was likely Merenre II's sister as well as wife.

If she did in fact rule, she would be the first female ruler of Egypt.

According to the story as told by Manetho, Merenre II was assassinated, and Nitocris saw to it that his murderers were punished prior to committing suicide.

There is now considerable doubt in the academic community as to whether she in fact existed, given the paucity of physical evidence in such things as the various Kings Lists attesting to her rule.

This was the beginning of the end of the Old Kingdom of Egypt, a prelude to the roughly two hundred-year span of Egyptian history known as the First Intermediate Period.

Early collections of laws, including the code of Ur-Nammu, (the king of Ur in about 2050 BCE), the Code of Eshnunna (around 1930 BCE) and the code of Lipit-Ishtar of Isin (around 1930 BCE), formalize the role of money in civil society.

They set amounts of interest on debt... fines for 'wrong doing'... and compensation in money for various infractions of formalized law.

The wider debate over the end of Indus civilization continues, but evidence gathered by the archaeological Survey of India appears to point to natural catastrophes, specifically floods and storms as the source of Lothal's downfall.

A powerful flood submerged the town and destroyed most of the houses, with the walls and platforms heavily damaged.

The acropolis and was leveled (2000-1900 BCE), and inhabited by common tradesmen and newly built makeshift houses.

The worst consequence was the shift in the course of the river, cutting off access to the ships and dock.

The people built a new but shallow inlet to connect the flow channel to the dock for sluicing small ships into the basin.

Large ships were moored away.

Houses were rebuilt, yet without removal of flood debris, which made them poor-quality and susceptible to further damage.

Public drains were replaced by soakage jars.

The citizens did not undertake encroachments, and rebuilt public baths.

However, with a poorly organized government, and no outside agency or central government, the public works could not be properly repaired or maintained.

The heavily damaged warehouse was never repaired properly, and stocks were stored in wooden canopies, exposed to floods and fire.

The economy of the city was transformed.

Trade volumes reduced greatly, though not catastrophically, and resources were available in lesser quantities.

Independent businesses caved, allowing a merchant-centric system of factories to develop where hundreds of artisans worked for the same supplier and financier.

The bead factory had ten living rooms and a large workplace courtyard.

The coppersmith's workshop had five furnaces and paved sinks to enable multiple artisans to work.

The declining prosperity of the town, paucity of resources and poor administration increase the woes of a people pressured by consistent floods and storms.

Increased salinity of soil makes the land inhospitable to life, including crops.

This is evidenced in adjacent cities of Rangpur, Rojdi, Rupar and Harappa in Punjab, Mohenjo-daro and Chanhudaro in Sindh.

A massive flood in about 1900 BCE destroys the flagging township in a single stroke.

Archaeological analysis shows that the basin and dock were sealed with silt and debris, and the buildings razed to the ground.

The flood affects the entire region of Saurashtra, Sindh, and south Gujarat, and affects the upper reaches of the Indus and Sutlej, where scores of villages and townships are washed away.

The population flees to inner regions.

Archaeological evidence shows that the site continued to be inhabited, albeit by a much smaller population devoid of urban influences.

The few people who returned to Lothal could not reconstruct and repair their city, but surprisingly continued to stay and preserved religious traditions, living in poorly built houses and reed huts.

That they were the Harappan peoples is evidenced by the analyses of their remains in the cemetery.

While the trade and resources of the city were almost entirely gone, the people retained several Harappan ways in writing, pottery, and utensils.

ASI archaeologists record a mass movement of refugees from Punjab and Sindh into Saurashtra and to the valley of Sarasvati about this time (1900-1700 BCE).

Hundreds of ill-equipped settlements have been attributed to this people as Late Harappans a completely de-urbanized culture characterized by rising illiteracy, less complex economy, unsophisticated administration and poverty.

Though Indus seals go out of use, the system of weights, with an 8.573-gram (0.3024 oz. avoirdupois) unit, is retained.

The so-called Code of Hammurabi, created in response to the needs of increasing trade, usury and commerce, seeks to end blood feud and personal retribution and replace these with a secular state code based on the idea of citizenship.

The Code defines the legal rights of all sections of the population, including the enslaved people.

It consists of two hundred and eighty-two provisions systematically arranged under such headings as family, labor, personal property, real estate, trade, and business.

Legal actions are initiated under the code by written pleadings; testimony is taken under oath; witnesses can be subpoenaed.

The Code is guided by such principles as that the strong should not injure the weak and that punishment should fit the crime.

Severe in its penalties, it prescribes "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

The legitimacy of the code is maintained by invoking the authority of the gods and the state.

The Code recognizes various methods of disposing of property, including sale, lease, barter, gift, dedication, loan, pledge, and bailment.

The law of sales includes the doctrine that the Romans were later to call caveat emptor ("let the buyer beware").

The Code regards usury as an offense.

The code establishes price ceilings for goods as well as maximum wages and fees for laborers, artisans, and professionals.

Crimes punishable by death require a trial before a bench of judges.

Capital crimes include bigamy, cowardice in the face of the enemy, incest, kidnapping, adultery, theft, false witness, and malfeasance in public office.

Murder, however, is not included in the code.

Among the family law provisions is the requirement of a written contract for marriage.

Dowry and marriage settlements are allowed, with penalties for their breach spelled out in the marriage contract.

A husband wishing to divorce his wife is required to provide alimony and child support.

Wives may obtain divorces for desertion, cruelty, or neglect.