World History

From  The Epic of Gilgamesh (abbreviated version) In the wildness she created valiant Enkidu , born of Silence, endowed with strength by Ninurta. His whole body was shaggy with hair, he had a full head of hair like a woman, his locks billowed in profusion like Ashnan. He knew neither people nor settled living,. He ate grasses with the gazelles, and jostled at the watering hole with the animals; as with animals, his thirst was slaked with mere water. A  notorious trapper came face-to-face with him opposite the watering hole. 
On seeing him t he trapper's face went stark with fear ,
 and he and his animals drew back home.
  The trapper was rigid with fear;  though stock-still
 his heart pounded and his face drained of color.
 He addressed his father saying:       "Father, a certain fellow has come from the mountains.        He is the mightiest in the land...

 The New York Times : The Elites Were Living High. Then Came the Fall. Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose. The more things change, the more they remain the same, as the French would say. How interesting that thousands of years ago the ruling elites evaded taxes themselves and heavily taxed the productive part of the population. Heterodox economists have studied the Great Depression, and they see similarities between the time just preceding the onset of the depression and our current situation.  In 1929, wealth inequality reached high levels similar to today. As today, much this wealth was based on asset appreciation and debt as opposed to creation of wealth in the productive economy. When debt became too burdensome to support, the economy crashed. Unfortunately, it will be the 99% that suffer the most , just as the wealthy in Syria did fine.   Photo Reference : https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/1929-stock-market-crash

Chapter 6 Africa benefited from its proximity to Eurasia. Eurasia had a great many wild animals that could be domesticated, which Africa lacked. However, once they became domesticated they became available in Africa. The proximity of North Africa to Eurasia allowed contact with Mesopotamia, which created cross pollination of their cultures. In addition, coastal North Africa was part of the Roman Empire and was used to produce crops, with slave labor. Camels came to Africa via Arabia and affected the development of a pastoral economy in North Africa and trans-Saharan commerce. The East African coast was an important port for trade between Africa and Eurasia. The Americas, on the other hand, were isolated from Africa and Eurasia. The only domesticated animals were llamas and alpacas in the Andes Mountains.  Therefore, there were no animals to pull carts or plows. Being lightly settled, there was very little interactions between different cultures. Also the geography was not s...

Chapter 5 Why do you think slavery was so much more prominent in Greco-Roman civilization than in India or China? In Greco-Roman civilization , the source of slaves was the foreign enemies and barbarians that they fought and conquered. Often in the process of conquest, their cities were destroyed. These conquered people were considered to be different than the Romans or the Greeks, so it was easier to enslave them. In contrast , in China conquest and development of an Empire occurred in a land mass that had predominantly won ethnic population. Most chines were small farmers and there was no advantage to enslave them. In India a caste system developed. The lower caste performed all the menial and labor intensive work. While they were legally free, they could not change their position in life, just like slaves. Photo Reference : https://www.dw.com/en/indias-caste-system-weakened-but-still-influential/a-39718124

Chapter 4  Q,2 “ Religion is a double-edged sword, both supporting and undermining political authority and social elites.” How would you support both sides of this statement? I would use the example of the Christian religion. It aroused in a very troubled time in the Roman Empire in Palestine . Roman rule was brutal,   taxes were high , and the Roman and Jewish elite were very wealthy. The area was seething with rebellion. Into this   mix came Jesus of Nazareth. While some of his teachings preached peace and love of one’s enemy, some of his teachings and actions seemed to promote rebellion. Because of this he was executed . As Christians entered Rome and Italy   they were viewed as atheists and traitors. They were oppressed because of their beliefs, including their aid to the poor and sick.   However, when hundreds of   years later, when the emperor converted the country to Christianity, the Church       became part of the ruling elit...

Chapter 3  Ways of the World  3. Do you think that these second-wave empires hold “lessons” for the present, or are contemporary circumstances sufficiently unique as to render the distant past irrelevant? Yes, the second wave empires do hold lessons for the present. As is a parent in Chapter 3 Empires arise, grow stronger, reach a peak, recede, and die.   Thus, the Empires of Spain, Portugal, and England no longer exist.   There are more and more expert opinions that suggest that the American Empire is receding and China is rising. The United States military, which has 800 bases in 80 countries, is being stretched thin as the US relies less and less on diplomacy and more and more on military action.       It has outsourced its industrial base to third world countries including China.   Similar to the decline in the Roman Empire, the taxes of the wealthy and large corporations are decreasing and the share paid by the less wealthy is i...

It was surprising to learn that ecological destruction by human actions is not something new in our current era of anthropogenic climate change that threatens the very existence of life on earth. Thus, while agriculture saw an enormous advance in ancient Mesopotamia, it came at the cost of the eventual destruction of that very agriculture. Thus, in order to grow crops, deforestation cleared the land for agriculture, but this ultimately led to soil erosion. In addition, the advanced technique of irrigation led to salination   of the land and loss of its fertility. Beeing from Brazil I can relate to this. They burning the Amazon Forest in order to grow crops and to drill for oil and to mine minerals, the Amazon Forest is important to the world as a sink for carbon dioxide. Loss of this sink will make climate change worse.

I was sad to read that as humans progressed from hunter gatherers to a more settled life style, the gender and economic equality that existed in Paleolithic society ceased to exist. I am sure that these differences arose in part, as the text book states, due to differences in individual capabilities. However, clearly politics and violence were also undoubtedly involved, for example the Bantu people in Africa drove away or killed the Paleolithic people. Photo Reference: https://education.onehowto.com/article/the-difference-between-paleolithic-and-neolithic-art-12651.html

I found it interesting to read about the importance of climate change and agriculture in World History. The end of the last Ice Age and the warmer temperatures led to the availability of many more plants and animals becoming available for human consumption. This led to larger human populations and the ability of humans to decrease or eliminate their nomadic existence. As the settled human population agriculture developed to support the increased need for food. In the modern era cities have been looked upon as the centers of power, culture, progress, science and life, but this could not have come into existence without the development of agriculture. Photo Reference: https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/big-history-project/agriculture-civilization/first-cities-states/a/intro-to-agrarian-civilizations

This is the timeline that I think makes more sense to me, when I read through the history: 1-Cosmic 2-Paleolithic ( Gaiac) 3- Neolithic 4- Ancient 5-Classical 6- Modern 7- Ecozoic Cosmic represents the time from the creation of the Universe to the Paleolithic Era. From the Big Bang to the Paleolithic era over 13 Billion years. During the Paleolithic era , there were very few humans and they had  very little impact on the earth and on nature. They ate whatever plant life they could find and their meat came from dead animals they found. Therefore, I consider this to also be the Gaiac era.  Gaia was the greek mother goddess of the earth.  The Gaiac era was an era where all the living and nonliving things were one single system. In the Neolithic era, agriculture arose independently in multiple regions of the earth. This led to humans’ ability to live in larger communities. It also led to the ability to increase the total human population due to the greater supply...

Big History, I had never heard of  Big History before. It is a new concept to me.   Big History is a multidisciplinary approach to history from the Big Bang to the present day which attempts to explore the human history in this wider context. But is this appropriate? What is the definition of history?   Is that the history of the Universe from the beginning of time? Or is it the story of the much shorter time of the human existence on Earth ? Certainly humans are a mere speck in the Universe, but modern science in the last several hundred years has convinced us that the earth and humans are not at the center of the Universe. We don’t need Big History to convince us of this. Is history appropriately his-story (a feminist critic of standard historiography)? It should remain the attempt to explain how humans went from point A to point B. Why did feudalism arise? Why was it replaced by capitalism? Why were there revolutions in America, France, and Russia, and why di...

                                                                 Early Humans, When we look back into our distant evolutionary past in how we became human we realize that evolution doesn’t follow a straight line, there are many branches and adaptations of early human species in our evolutionary time line.  These adaptations over 7 millions years can be noticed from the size of the large brain, the ability to walk upright and making tools for cooking , hunting, and self-defense. These adaptations helped the only members of our ancestral line to survive that  is us. Our origins begin in Africa about seven million years ago. The scientists found thousands of fossils from dozens of species of early human ancestors in Africa. Fossil evidence indicates that Homo Sapiens originated in Africa, and this has been...

Wednesday, May 13, 2020 Introduction    Hello World History Class,   I need to confess that I had a hard time and spend an amount of time thinking in what to write about my interest in the World History for this assignment.  First because I am used to having in person interaction class and if I have any doubt about the assignment I can ask right away with the professors or classmates. I have been struggling with communications at NDNU by email , it became a little difficult and this  concerns me. I don’t know if this is just happening with me or with a large number of students. In some departments at NDNU it sometimes takes time for someone to return your email. I have experienced that I didn’t hear from the person for about 10 days after I sent an important email. After I communicated with another department that reached out to this person, I find out that my emails went to her junk emails.  Computer skills are not my strength and sometimes are synonym...