ABSTRACT
China, India, and the Mediterranean all built large regional civilizations during the classical period, 800 BCE to about 500 CE. All of them, along with a major effort in Persia, established societies that were larger than their river-valley predecessors, and had a more elaborate legacy. This chapter discusses the major cultural, political and social features of the classical civilizations, along with analysis of the somewhat different patterns of decline in the final centuries of the period. Connections among the centers, including the famous Silk Roads, were also important, but the main legacies of the period center on the regional features that would be remembered and utilized later on.
