Blog Post #9

For the past century Muslim societies have seek to overcome the humiliation of Europeans intrusion and find a place in the modern world. Islam had expanded all throughout African, Europe, the Middle East and Asia and causing a major impact all over. The central region of the Arabian Peninsula had been inhabited by nomadic Arabs, known as Bedouins, they lived in independent clans and tribes and engaged in blood feuds with one another. One important fact about Arabia is that they were aside of  very important trade routes, which connected the Indian Ocean world with the Mediterranean Sea, which gave birth to the cosmopolitan commercial cities. An important individual from this time was Muhammad Ibn Abdullah. He created a society and declared his movements independence from its earlier affiliation with Judaism.

Blog post #8

In chapter 10 the author discusses the spread and contraction of Christianity. It was in Arabia where the decimation of earlier Christian communities occurred. Within a century of Muhammad's death in 632, only a few Christian groups remained. In the Middle East, Jewish and Christian communities felt the impact of Islam as well. Because of the local Muslim rules, churches were destroyed, villages plundered, fields burned and Christians forced to wear distinctive clothing. In Egypt, however, Christianity had become the religion of the majority by the time of the Muslim conquest around 640. Across coastal North Africa widespread conversion to Islam reduced the extinction of Christian communities. By the thirteenth century, Christian crusaders from Europe and Mongol invaders from the east threatened Egypt. And by the mid-fourteenth-century there was a violent anti-Christian pogroms, destruction of churches.

Blog Post #7

The exchange of goods has been an extremely important process that has helped communities develop for many centuries. The Eurasian landmass is home to the world's most productive agriculture and largest civilizations. It also gave the rise to a sustain network of exchange. Silk Road trading network prospered most when large and powerful states provided security for the merchant and travelers. One example of this was the Roman and Chinese Empires, which had a long distance commerce. Of all luxury goods, silk was the one that symbolized Eurasian network of exchange. In the creation of silk, Chinese women were a major part of the process. They were responsible for every step of the hard and laborious enterprise of silk production. Chinese homes also became the primary site of textile production with the women as its main labor force. The high demand of silk caused the Roman writers appalled at the drain of resources. Silk also became a symbol of high status in both China and Byzantine Empires.

Silk also had a great impact on the culture. Buddhism spread quickly through Central and East Asia, and owned most of the activities of the merchants along the Silk Road. Buddhism also picked up elements of other cultures while in transit on the Silk Roads. Besides goods, diseases traveled fast. People were exposed to unfamiliar diseases, which they had no effective methods to cure it. The Greek city state of Athens, was by a new disease that had entered through Greece seaborne trade from Egypt, killing 25% of its army and weaken the city. Diseases in the Roman Empire and Han Dynasty destroyed populations and contributed to the political collapse.

Blog #6

From the area of Mesoamerica which spread from central Mexico to Central America, one of the civilizations growing was the Mayans. This specific civilization is one of the most important of all time and is still relevant today. They had agricultural technology, and practiced religion but their most important achievement was the development of a mathematical system and writing. They created the concept of zero and place notation and were capable of making complex equations. They also combined their math ability with night skies to plot cycles of planets, predict eclipses of the sun and moon, construct calendars and calculate the length of the solar year. Without these important creations we wouldn't be able to do what we do today. Math, although taken for granted is such a basic tool that helps many jobs put things together and is able to help humans develop into more advance times. We are also able to see and predict eclipses and we run on a calendar system, which helps us determine where we are in the year.

Chapter 3:State and Empire in Eurasia. Blog post #5

Chapter 3 focuses on the Persian Empire, The Greeks, and the comparison of Rome and China Empires and also Persian and Greeks. Throughout the time these civilizations developed  most monarchs continued to rule, women were subordinate to men and the practice of slavery was still practiced. There was also no technological or economic breakthrough until the Industrial Revolution came much later. One important thing that happened was the growth of population. Number quadrupled in the 20th century, and there was a pattern of growth during the age of agrarian civilization.

One interesting fact about technology was that the Chinese were the ones who had the most technological advancements. They came up with things like piston bellows, draw-loom, silk-handing machinery, the wheelbarrow, gunpowder among others. This interesting fact can connect with the world today because even today China is one of the countries that provides the most technology advancements and even simple things like clothing are exported from there.

The first Empire discussed is The Persian Empire. It was the largest and most impressive of the world's empires. Persian conquests quickly reached from Egypt to India, it contained many single states and had dozens of people, states, languages, and cultural traditions. Another important fact about Persians was that they had a very effective administrative system and was believed that their kings were absolute monarchs. Lastly, the Persians had a system of standardized coinage, predictable taxes and newly dug canal linking the Nile with the Red Sea. This is important because it expanded commerce and enriched Egypt.

In comparison to the Persians the Greeks had a total population of 2 to 3 million, which is a fraction of what the Persian was. The greatest contrast of Greece and Persia is the extent of participation in political life. The idea of citizenship of free people managing affairs of the state and equality of all citizens was very unique compared to other civilizations or Empires. One thing that the Persians and the Greeks had was expansion of people and how their expansion took form of settlement in distant places rather than conquest and empire.

The last comparison made in chapter 3 I between the Roman and Chinese Empires. Both of these empires invoked supernatural sanctions to support their rule. For Romans it was the regard of their deceased emperors as Gods and made religious cults to support the authority of living rulers. Politically, both had an effective control over regions and big populations, although Chinese were far more developed than Romans. Lastly, these two empires differ in several ways. One was their relationship to the societies they governed. Rome had very small city-states while China grew a much larger cultural heartland. And the last contrast is how the impacted the environment. Rome was very aware of the noise and smoke of the city, and objected to the urban sprawl that extended into fertile lands. On the other hand Chinese ironworking during the Han dynasty had a huge contribution to urban air pollution.

Blog Post #4: Document 2.1

How would you define the Mesopotamian ideal of kingship? What is the basis of the monarch's legitimacy?

Many Kings claimed that they had direct contact with the Gods. When the Gods created Gilgamesh, they gave him a perfect body, he was wise and saw mysteries and knew secret things. The ideal of kinship consisted in the perfect body and wise man to rule the land in this case being Gilgamesh. It was also important to think that they had a direct relationship with the Gods, which made them more powerful in their minds and the ones of the people. The document explains how he was given supremacy over the people but not the gift of immortality, which is what Gilgamesh had been searching for.

Blog post #3

Chapter two First Civilizations, in an introduction to the how the early civilizations evolved, groupings of class and gender, writing and accounting, interaction and exchange along with several other topics that display details of the early civilizations. Some of the first Civilizations were Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Norte Chico along with many others. Some interesting facts about these civilizations are how Norte Chico's economy was based on an extremely rich fishing industry in anchovies and sardines along the coast and they lacked defensive walls. Peruvian civilization came along the central coast around 3000 B.C.E to 1800 B.C.E. They lived in a desert region, yet was punctuated by dozens of rivers. Another interesting fact about Peru is that they did not rest on grain-based farming, unlike Egyptian and Mesopotamian societies.

In these civilizations there was also differences in gender. The typical ideal was that men were superior to women, and sons were preferable then daughters. Women's roles would take place in the home. Men usually married more than one woman and had the right to regulate the social and sexual aspect of the wives, daughters and sisters in the family. Something interesting is the lives that the lower class women had. Majority of them had to be in public working in the fields, tending livestock, buying and selling in the streets, or serving in the homes of their social superiors.

In  the end these civilizations gave us inspiration of art, early technology, awareness of nature and the art of writing. Although future civilizations have developed far from the first, without these basics we wouldn't be able to have what we have today.