Big Picture Questions

1. What common features can you identify in the empires described in this chapter? In what ways did they differ from one another? What accounts for those differences?

2. Are you more impressed with the “greatness” of empires or with their destructive and oppressive features? Why?

3. Do you think that these second-wave empires hold “lessons” for the present, or are contemporary circumstances sufficiently unique as to render the distant past irrelevant?

4. Looking Back: How do these empires of the second-wave civilizations differ from the political systems of the First Civilizations?