Please Explain what was so great about Alexander. Use specific examples from the following readings to explain what he was able to achieve.

Ancient History, Ancient Empires, and Alexander the Great

How do historians study and learn about the past? And how do world historians in particular investigate histories of people around the globe and their interactions?

Fortunately, as societies became more complex between 3500-1000 BCE in certain places around the world, these dense urban societies had to figure out ways to keep good records. And many of those records have survived and been foundand been able to be deciphered. Therefore, much of the work of historians is in locating and putting together the documentary record: tax and census records, business and merchant inventories and sales, records of public works projects and defense needs with huge labor and technological requirements, along with the cultural and religious writings that detailed the work of kings and instructed priests and believers alike on the proper interactions with ancestors and deities.

Of course, the first large urban societiesMesopotamia in South West Asia, Egypt in North Africa, Indus Valley in South Asia, Caral in South America, China's Xia and Shang Dynasties in East Asialeft many other physical traces, from complex burial sites with bones and grave goods everywhere, to incised oracle bones and enormous bronze vessels with written engravings in China, textiles in dry deserts of Central Asia and Peru, ornately carved sculpture and complex grid designed streets and buildings in the Indus Valley, and impressive temples and tombs of northern Peru. In some places, around 1500 BCE, copper and bronze gave way to stronger and more durables melting of iron, used to great advantage for everything from oxen drawn plows and horse bits to chariot moving parts, spear tips, swords, and even lighter armor by 1000 BCE. These artifacts of material culture can be "read" just like written documents, enabling historians to reconstruct peoples' daily lives.

Historians work hand in hand with scholars from other disciplines in locating and analyzing these remnants from the past. Archaeologists work on historic sites and dig for material culture; they work with closely related scholars such as archaeo-astronomers who investigate the patterns ancient civilizations saw in the heavens and archaeobotanists who look for ancient flora and fauna and their connections with humans. Technological and medical advancements have exponentially increased the ways we can get information: archaeo-geneticists studying DNA have revolutionized the study of peoples around the world, and teams of historians and scientists use newer applications of lasers and radio waves sent from the sky to penetrate without destroying trees and land cover and discover remains of ancient civilizations. The kinds of primary sources historians work with have increased exponentially in recent years.

The first historians, like Herodotus in 5th century BCE Greece, took the evidence from the past, those documents and artifacts that we call primary sources, and fashioned a chronology, or story line, and attempt to draw meaning out of bits of evidence randomly left behind. The writings of these historians, then, form what we call secondary sources. Your textbooks are secondary sources. Ken Burns' documentaries are secondary sources. Films on the History Channel are secondary sources. The challenge for the world historian, interested in the interactions, exchanges, conflicts between different peoples around the world, plus in identifying patterns that were similar and dissimilar around the world, is immensely more complicated. It requires multiple abilities: language skills, deep knowledge of often quite different cultures and worldviews, creativity, imagination, and often the ability to think "outside the box" when trying to tease out previously unnoticed patterns.

Like Herodotus, world historians also had to be geographers. Many of the best world historians got their first training in geography, and the field of human geographyhow people interact with their environmentis one of the fastest growing parts of the profession. People have always travelled: around 70,000 years ago, the first modern humans, homo sapiens, followed earlier proto-humans and left Africa. Moving fast for early migrants, they reached Southeast Asia and even Australia and Oceania 50,000 years ago. Europe was peopled by modern humans around 40,000 years ago, and the Americas were peopled between 10-30,000 years ago. To help their migrations, people over the millennia developed guides to aid their travels. Ancient cave paintings dated to 25,000 years ago may represent star charts, and 7,000 BCE sites in Turkey have the earliest extant maps. By the 5-6th c BCE there are good surviving maps in Babylonia in the Middle East, followed by the earliest surviving maps in China from the 3rd c BCE. By the 2nd century BCE Greek geographers posited that the world was a sphere. The intricate scientific maps created by the Greek philosopher/geographer Ptolemy in the 2nd century remained in use through the Middle Ages in Europe. Maps are excellent guides to religious, cosmological, and intellectual ways of thinking, in all their diversity. Chinese maps, for example, were not to scale. More important sites were bigger and closer; less important were smaller and further away. We students of history have to learn to "read" historical maps for all they can tell us about people in history.

Between 1000 and 300 BCE, then, some of the largest states that had survived nomadic raids, climate changes, and social shakeups were armed with increasingly more accurate maps and more destructive weapons of war, with iron fitted horses pulling war chariots alongside infantry with iron lances and armored cavalry wielding recursive bows with iron tipped arrows. In a few places in the world that had favorable winds, rich silted plains around navigable rivers, reliable sources of food from agriculture and trade, and a state apparatus in place that could organize larger and larger units, an unprecedented level of expansion took place to create empireslarge diverse states with people from mixed ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and racial heritages. Egyptian culture greatly influenced Nubia to the south; the Eastern Zhou Dynasty in China used canals and rice cultivation to expand south; cities in the rich Gangetic plain of India grew wealthy from rice and trade to expand their influence south and create the first great states in this region; the Olmecs expanded throughout much of MesoAmerica from their coastal security on the Gulf of Mexico, and the Chavin continued the vertical linking of coastal fishing and lowland agriculture with steep Andean mountain terraces begun by earlier cultures in what is now Peru.

By the mid-4th century BCE, north of the independent but intensely interactive city states of Greece, with their rich artistic, cultural, and political traditions, a succession of rulers, first Philip II then his son Alexander, created the successful state of Macedonia. Using new military technologies and strategies, they first defeated the Greeks and then expanded by attacking their rivals from Egypt and then the great Persian empire.

Consolidated in 550 BCE by the "king of kings" Cyrus the Great and then Darius the Great, the immense Persian empire was the first to try to include many different ethnic groups, treating them all equally and agreeing not to interfere with local customs as long as they obeyed and paid taxes. By the time of Alexander, Persia stretched to include the Caucasus and parts of Central Asia to the north, the Indus basin (modern Afghanistan and Pakistan) to the east, and Asia Minor (Turkey today), and the Levant, the Balkans, and Egypt to the west. But its enormous size and complexity outpaced its later rulers' abilities, and Alexander with his tightly disciplined and loyal armies, system of rewarding top commanders with conquered territories, his cult of personality, and most importantly his willingness to use risky strategies in rapid assaults, was able to conquer giant Persia and redistribute its wealth within his newly won empire from Egypt to the Indus Valley. But Alexander's aim was also cultural: he intended to spread Hellenistic culture derived from the Greeks to the rest of the world. Although Hellenistic culture indeed spread and became the ideal for successor states throughout (the first sculpture of the Buddha was fashioned by descendants of Greek artists in Gandhara, present day Afghanistan), Alexander's success had in fact come from a skillful fusion of east and west. His dress was a mixture of Persian and Greek elements; in Babylonia he was crowned King of Asia where he adopted many Asian court customs complete with harems; his infantry, calvary, and aristocracy were integrated with both Persians and Macedonians. His legacy at his untimely death at age 32, then, was one of conquest, encounter, and exchange. His generals followed his example, carving his empire into several smaller empires that combined Greek with the Asian and/or African and lasted nearly three centuries.

Finally, how do historians know about Alexander? What kinds of primary sources are there to work with? What other kinds of sources do the many stories and legends surrounding Alexander depend on? Although there may be only fragments of documents extant written by Alexander himself, there are probably six official eyewitness accounts written by contemporaries who accompanied Alexander. Each one had his ownor Alexander's own reasons for telling their stories in the way they did. Then there was the next generation of historians who used those histories to construct their own accounts, followed by generation after generation of historians who layered history upon history. Each one of these histories has its own controversies that have been studied in great detail. From these histories has grown up entire industries of legends and myths surrounding this man-seen by many as hero, as others as arch enemy.

Empires leave other kinds of documentary evidence which we have in abundance both in Greek and non-Greek sources, and much of it is also controversial. In addition, we have a wealth of archaeological evidence of the grandeur of Alexander's far-flung empire, especially from the ruins of the dozens of cities Alexander founded. Perhaps the most interesting and well-known physical evidence lies in the coins pressed with the official likeness of Alexander that spread his story throughout his empire and beyond, seen by hordes of people, from the time of Alexander to the present day.

Alexander, then, is a perfect case study for historians, especially world historians, and those thinking about the history of early empires. In his own time and for 2,300 years hence, there have been many Alexanders.