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.