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.