ch 12

I was surprised to find that the number of humps on camels backs were related to wear they are found!  I just always assumed a camel was a camel and no matter how many humps they had they were all found in the same places.  Not that this information is that important to what we are learning, I just found it interesting!  Pastoral societies are way more interesting to read about than the last few chapters in my opinion.  I find it odd to think about living in a small group with only kin!  I think I would go crazy.  However, as a girl I would say living in one of these groups sounds way better than a civilization because I would get way less restriction on what I could do.  It surprises me how well known the Mongols are considering they never tried to spread their culture.  I am learning about how pandemics spread in microbiology right now!  It’s a little gross to think that most diseases are started by animals transmitting it to humans.

ch 11

I was wondering when we were going to get to the Islam religion!  The Islam religion is easier to understand than some of the other ones we have already been over because it is a bit more like Christianity and Christianity is what I know most about.  Monotheism is a key for me to understand religious ways better.  It’s easier to focus on one thing for me.  A major problem I see in the Islamic community is the fact that they have no distinction between the religious laws and the state or civil laws.  In the quotes I feel like women are referred to as if they were animals who should be obedient.  I see even Islam women today completely veiled in public and wonder if they choose to be veiled or if it is still unacceptable for women in the Islam culture to be in public unveiled.  

ch 9

In the golden age of Chinese achievement there was some give and take as far as the women go.  I would say that overall their lives improved.  However, I do think the feet binding part sounds painful!!!!!  I had hear about the Chinese binding girls feet but I was a bit skeptical on if it actual happened nor did I know why.  After reading this in a history book I was almost shocked to discover it did happen and it happen so that the girls would be restricted inside to do inside chores.  On the positive side the girls started to see more property rights, education and there were even powerful paintings and statues of women created.  I think that painting and statues of women is a good sign of improved statues. 

I never knew that Buddhism wasn’t very popular in China at first.  I always thought that Buddhism and China just kind of went together.  Now that I’m taking more time to think about it, it makes sense that it was not a solid belief at first because it focused more individual enlightenment while China is very much about the society.

ch 10

haha I had no idea that the people living in the byzantine empire were forced to wear sandals and robes so that they would not look like Germanic peoples!  I do not know why I find this so funny but they were so afraid of barbarian attacks that no one in the empire could wear anything resembling a barbarian, like boots, trousers, animal skin clothing or have long hair.  It seems a bit over the top to me.  I know that most of the change in the west was for the best but there was so much deforestation and it just kind of saddens me that so much of nature is destroyed for human use.  

7 docs

I think the documents are becoming more reliable because education is growing.  I like Marco Polo’s piece because it seems like he saw and did a lot for himself, he is not just writing down stories he heard as much as some other documents we have read.  The pictures stood out to me in these documents because these are the first visual sources we have looked at so far that have a lot of animals in them.  I think that because in traveling along the silk roads and sand roads people started to depend more on animals in order to trade goods and cultures.

ch 7

Silk roads, sea roads and sand roads!  When I first read these words I did not fully understand what they meant.  I mean did they really have silk roads?  So the roads weren’t silk, but they were roads.  These roads linked trade among the diverse people in Eurasia.  Which I think is very good because along with goods they were able to share cultures and beliefs.  I think it created important diversity.  As far as the sand roads go, I do not think traveling across a desert to trade sounds very fun.

6 docs

The weakness in the Periplus of the Erythraean sea document is that it is anonymous.  However, there are not many documents like it so it is what we have to work with.  I am thinking that the information in this document came for a few different people because it seems a little unlikely that one person went to all these different places and traded with all these different items.  In these documents we also see the start of a belief in a God.  Which I personally think is a bit more believable than believing in Ares, Zeus and Poseidon.  I think the system for trading with gold that they describe is actually fairly smart considering they spoke different languages.

ch. 6

There are many things that I find very interesting when reading about African and American cultures in the Classical Era.  I think it was so creative for the Maya people to make books on deer skin.  I think that was pretty smart for that time period.  I do not think it was very smart of the Anasazi people to build their pit houses like they did.  Their house floor was lower than the ground level.  If it rains their houses will flood!  I find all the little treasures found where the mound builders put their dead very interesting.  I wonder if they thought that stuff stayed with the dead or something.

chapter 5 docs

This document has a major strength.  That strength is that it was written by the woman about her ideas about women and Confucianism.  The weakness is that it is just one woman’s words.  It shocked me that the woman referred to herself as by nature unintelligent.  The next thing I don’t like is that even just after birth women were belittled by placing the baby girl below the bed so as if to get her use to being less important and below men.  I also find it awful that she says, “always let her seem to tremble and to fear”.  Like a woman is trained to expressively show the men power over them?   Its like the women really think their role is just to complement the man!  It seems like they think it is just their part in life to be subservient.  Following these lessons may help make a society be at harmony however, I could not imagine living following lesson for women by ban zhao.  

Sorry, I think I posted my blog to the docs and chapter in the wrong order!!!

chapter5

Ch. 5

Well I think it is safe to say that the India culture is very intriguing.  The way they think of social classes is so different and odd to me.  They have four social castes and you can only move up in class by dying and coming back in a different caste.  This is so foreign to me because I was taught that with enough drive and work I could become anything I wanted.  I also find it different that teachers and priests are higher in social class than rulers.

If I were alive at this time I would much rather live in Sparta than Athens.  Being a woman I would have nothing at all going for me in Athens.  They treat women with no importance whatsoever.  According to Aristotle says this is because woman cannot produce sperm.  That is a little crazy to be the reason why woman are less important.

chapter 4 docs

I really like most of the quotes in The Analects.  I like how a persons virtue is thought to be most important, even more important than wealth and such things that seem be a measurement of a successful human being.  The problem I have with these quotes is that they are said to be what Confucius said, but Confucius did not write them down!  These are what other people remember Confucius saying.  This is a problem in the validity of the Analects I believe.  People can easily reword things to make the sound the way they want or even leave words out or add words in that give the quotes different meanings.  I like the quotes I just think they have some major weaknesses.  The Bhagavad Gita is so interesting to read.  I am not positive but I think it does not matter if you are killed or kill because only the body dies and the person is everlasting.  I find Apology having more credibility than the analets.  Even though both were not written by the person who said the words I think Plato was closer to Socrates and recorded his words at the time of his apology. 

cultures

More often than not it seems as though there is more than one way to fix a problem.  It seems as though we see this in the many different ideas brought about by great thinkers over the chaos and disharmony in China around 500 b.c.  From trying to fix the laws and rules to social harmony in relationships, it seems as though everyone had their own emphysis on what was most important to fix the turmoil.  The part that stood out to me most was in the confucian answer.  It stated that human society consisted primary of unequal relationships.  I really think there is truth to that at different levels in most every society.  I found it interesting that in trying to find harmony in China they did not give much thought to religion and/or spirts like India.  I took a religions of the world class two years ago and reading about these different cultures is bringing back some of the ideas I liked learning about while reading for that class.  I remember things like the buddha and the different momuments for different religions in which people pray to for different reasons.  I don't believe in polytheism myself, but I like to read about how different people see things.  I think it is good to keep an open mind.  I went to a Catholic school from first to second grade so its always something familiar when I get to read about monotheism, Jesus Christ, the trinity and the spreading of christianity.

visual sources

This was the first set of primary sources that I actually liked the visual sources a bit better than the written documents.  Not that the documents did not give me a better understanding of what the people in these empires were thinking and doing at the time, I just really enjoyed looking at the images.  My favorite one is the last one.  I believe it is on page 162.  It just has so many thins to look at and think about on the breastplate.  What could all those symbols possibly mean?  Could he have thought he was protected by the gods?  I am not sure exactly, but I think it is pretty cool.

Chapter 3

I do not really know why, but I have a hard time staying focused when reading about the Chinese empires. For some reason they really just do not interest me that much.  My favorite part about this chapter was reading about the Persians and the Greeks!  I admit that the Persian empire is very appealing to read about and seems so decretive.  However I think that I prefer the ways of the Greeks!  I like how they went out on a limb and tried new things.  For instance, they tried out a version of democracy in their city states.  It is weird to think that ideas from so long ago are still very present today.

early documents

First of all I love reading about Mesopotamia!  Second, reading about the early societies through primary sources is that much better!  I understand that there are strengths and weaknesses of these primary sources, but they are still very interesting and entertaining to read!  I like reading about these peoples' outlook on there lives, yet it saddens me that I am only getting the perspective of the people in higher positions in society.  How did the poor view their society?  Because mostly only higher ranking poeple learned to write, we miss out on different class perspectives.  I enjoy reading the laws because it has a major strength!  These laws were the laws for the rich and the poor.  It is no ones opinion, It is a written statement of how things were delt with!  I think these laws are very interesting to read about.  I mean, what if our societies today still had laws like these?  One of the laws literally states "eye for an eye".  If you hurt someones eye, you get your eye hurt!  It is very wierd to think about that being a law.

the first civilizations

This may be an odd thing to enjoy reading about, but whenever we get to sections of the book the mention Mesopotamia it just puts a smile on my face.  In seventh grade I had a history teacher who was very into the the Mesopotamian society and Star Trek.  In his class we would literally make a fake movie set, dress up and he would film us acting out early societies or Star Trek movies.  Needless to say, he is a teacher I will always remember and I will always remember Mesopotamia because of him.  I think it is crazy how fast things happened with the start of agriculture!  As soon as we had agriculture we had more food.  When people had more food they we needed structure, laws and economy, in other words, we needed to be more civilized!  Once people had civilizations things like equality issues arose, hierarchies arose and things like deforestation became a problem!  I think it is just sad that we can go back to our first civilizations and find problems we still face today like slavery, discrimination and loss of our much need natural environment.  It makes me wonder if it is even possible to ever end these problems in the world.

documents and egalitarianism

I really enjoyed reading the documents for chapter 1.  I like reading the facts in the text, however it is refreashing and a bit more entertaining to read a story or account of a persons life.  It captures my attention more and I get more into the reading because it becomes more personal.  I do not think that we can take one persons account of the bush life and say that is how ancient paleolithic people lived, but it definitely gives us one idea of what life might have been like.  From this account, I get the idea that Paleolithic People may have been very egalitarian.  Even more so then today perhaps.  Women seemed to have just as many rights as men and were treated equally.  The document also mentions the use of insulting the meat.  If one person was able to get more meat than others and didn't bother to share, that person was told in front of everyone they were not better than anyone else and to share their meat.  It seems like this would keep everyone fairly humble.  Though I find it odd, in the section about lovers, the document mentions that they all had lovers! Lovers meaning more than one!  I don't know what their definition of love is, but I know I want to love one man and I want him to just love me back, not have a whole bunch of lovers.  The document says one man can only give you so much, but if you have more than one lover you inreturn get more things.  According to this peice of writting affairs have always been in existance and are just part of life. 

early humans

In the first part of chapter one there is much focus on the first migrations of human kind.  The simplest of tools made it so hunting and fishing was possible.  I think it was incredibly smart of early people to learn to make tools and be able to use them to hunt game and fish.  The early people were also smart enough to plan their settlements around the movement of the animals that they used for a food source.  I also like thinking about what the first images people drew represent, however its a little sad that we will never now for sure what the people were trying to document or if it means anything at all.  I kind of think the most intriguing is the theory about how the animals represent a past life of some sort.  I was amazed that just in the time of the first migrations Australia already had some 250 languages!!! As the chapter moves on to talk about the economy and the environment I was thankful that our lives have changed so much over the years.  Back then the life expectancy was a short 35 years.  If that was true now I would most likely already be without many of the important people in my life and I cannot even imagine that.