ABSTRACT
Some of the earliest social changes that started the path to modernity took place in the area frequently referred to as the "Middle East", encompassing the regions of Anatolia, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. While a variety of different peoples were gaining and losing power in the Tigris-Euphrates region, Egypt exhibited a stability that in ancient history is rivaled only by the Chinese. Both in the capital and elsewhere, the social stratification system continued to evolve, featuring expanding possibilities for social mobility through military and civil service. As the Dark Age gradually subsided in the early first millennium BCE, a society identified as Greek emerged, one that had some cultural inheritance from the Minoans in Crete and the militaristic Mycenaean society of southern mainland Greece. As Classical Greece gave way to the Hellenistic Era, a powerful civilization was emerging further west on the Italian peninsula.
