Geology Based Culture?
Civilization would not have developed without the availability and use of natural resources. Mineral resources generally correspond to underground resources. They form a concentration of naturally occurring solid, liquid, or gaseous materials in the earth
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Geology Based Culture? Ken-ichiro Hisada
The relationship between mineral resources and humans started when ancient people picked up suitably shaped stones for use as hunting aids. They discovered that siliceous nodules, chert, radiolarite, obsidian, and other hard rocks made the best knives and spear points. Native metals such as copper and gold were first used more than 20,000 years ago (Skinner et al. 2013). In ca. 5000 BC ancient people began to learn how to extract copper from certain minerals through a process known as smelting, which will be described in Chap. 8 in this volume. They found how to smelt minerals to produce lead, tin, zinc, silver, and other metals. The technique of mixing metals to create alloys was learned next, and bronze came into use by combining copper and tin. In this chapter, continental and regional topography and geological features of West Asia will be first described to discuss the relationship between the geology and the people.
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Outline of West Asia
West Asia is located east of the Mediterranean Sea and west of Central Asia and South Asia. It is separated from Europe by the Bosporus strait and from Africa by the Red Sea (Fig. 2.1). According to the division of climatic zones by Köppen, most of West Asia belongs to dry desert and steppe climates. The coastal areas along the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, and the Caspian Sea belong to extratropical
K.-i. Hisada (*) Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, 1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba 305-8572, Ibaraki, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2017 A. Tsuneki et al. (eds.), Ancient West Asian Civilization, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-0554-1_2
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K.-i. Hisada
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Fig. 2.1 Plate boundaries of West Asia
Mediterranean, highlands Mediterranean and subarctic wet climates. It is obvious that these climates had a considerable influence on civilization and the cultural formation of these lands. Such climatic zone formation, however, can be traced back to plate tectonics, which the created topographic relief of West Asia such as high mountains along mobile belts and flatstable landmasses.
2.2
Plate Tectonics of West Asia
The outer layer of the earth is made of the firm, rigid lithosphere above the softer asthenosphere, where materials can easily flow. Much like a person slipping on a banana skin, the lithosphere easily glides over the asthenosphere. The lithosphere is
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Geology Based Culture?
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divided into oceanic plates and continental plates moving in various directions to form three different types of boundaries. Convergent boundaries occur when plates collide. In such cases, the collision force can result in buckling of the two plates, or one plate may slide beneath the other. Divergent boundaries occur when the plates are pulled apart, and transform plate boundaries occur when two plates slide laterally against each other. The thickness of the plates has been estimated to be more than several tens of kilometers to 150 km. Continent-scale large topography
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