JESENIA ARZAGA

What I thought was the most interesting was the pastoral peoples: Central Asia and west Africa.  These people had long impinged more directly and dramatically on civilizations than did hunting and gathering or agriculture village societies. The mongol incursion along with the enormous empire to which it gave rise, was one in a long series of challenges from the steppes, but it was not quite the last. In Africa pastoral peoples stayed independent of established empires several centuries longer than those of inner Asia, for not until the late 19th century. I thought it was cool to learn and read about these people.

The most interesting part of this chapter was the section bout the world economy. The mongols did not produce much of value of distant markets nor were they active traders. They consistently promoted international commerce, largely so that they could tax it and thus extract wealth from more developed civilizations. They mongols also provided financial backing for caravans introduction standardized weights and measures and gave tax breaks to merchants. Also the mongol empire brought the two ends of the eurasian world into closer contract than ever before and launched anew phase in the history of the silk roads. I thought that it was interesting learning about the mongols. The mongol trading circuit was a central element in an even larger commercial network that linked much of the Afro-Eurasia world in the 13th century. These were some facts that I found interesting to me.

What I thought was the political life in Western Europe. In the early centuries of this era, history must have seemed more significant than geography, for the Roman Empire, long a fixture of the western mediterranean region, was gone. The traditional date marking the collapse of the empire is 476 when the German generally ordered odoacer overthrew the last roman emperor in the west. The even became the most symbolizing moment in the west. Land under civilization contracted while forests, marshland, and wastelands expanded. Public buildings crumbled from lack of care. I thought it was so bad for these people to be in theses bad conditions with everything. Because money exchanged was running low and in many places they were losing ground. I thought it was interesting to read about this because how the political life in Western Europe wasn't what I thought it was. They struggled a lot which I thought sucked for them.

I thought that the network of exchange was the most interesting to me in this chapter. The reason why is because it had to do with goods, technology, food products, and ideas circulated widely. Commerce was valued positively within Islamic teaching, and laws regulating in figured prominently in sharia, creating a predictable framework for exchange across many cultures. Which I thought was pretty cool tolerant and read about because they figured out a way to help exchange good and advance for many people. Arab and Persian trades had established a commercial colony in canton in southern china, which it linked the islamic heartland and Asias other giant and flourishing economy.  Various forms of banking, partnership, business contracts, and instruments for granting credit facilities these long distance economic relationships and generated a prosperous, sophisticated, and highly commercialization economy that spanned the old world. I thought this was interesting to read about because h...

The woman of Song Dynasty was the most interesting to me. China was less than golden for many women for that era marked yet another turning point in the history of Chinese particularly. These women had participated in social life with greater freedom than in earlier times. I thought this was pretty interesting to know that women had social life because normally women aren't able to have a social life of their own without their husbands back then. It was associated with new images of females beauty and eroticism that emphasized small size, frailty, and difference and served to keep women restricted to the "inner quarters" where the confucian tradition though they belonged. I thought this was rude to stick women in a category of how beauty is supposed to be based off of their opinion. Women however did own their own restaurants because the property rights expanded allowing women to control their own dowries and to inherit property from their families. I thought thus was coo...

What I thought was most interesting in this chapter was the disease in transit. I thought it was intrusion to read how much a disease affects lots of people. It's says how people were exposed to unfamiliar diseases for which they had little immunity or few effective methods of coping. Which when I read this I wasn't surprised because I could believe that it would have been extremely hard to help yourself with protecting yourself from these disease because these people probably didn't have resources like we have today to help themselves from those diseases. It said how the epidemics that followed often brought suffering and death on an enormous scale to rich and poor alike. which I thought was surprising to like the rich and poor were both having the same outcome of deaths just because I would think the rich would have had some resources to prevent them form death. The disease spreading were smallpox, measles, devastated the populations of both empires, contributing to their...

What was interesting to me during this reading were the pictures displayed. It was cool to read about them and the one I liked the most was the statue seven inches tall and found in Mohenjo Daro which depicts one of the elite men. Its a statue that looks like a soldier wearing clothing with a headband and has a beard. The book says that Archeologists have found on grand temple or palaces; no elite burial places filed with great wealth; no images or warfare, conquest, or the sizing of captives; no monuments to celebrate powerful rulers. These absence have left scholars guessing about social and political organization of this civilization. I thought it was interesting the there wasn't much information or evidence left behind from that time ti figure out how people were back then that there was only a slight amount of information left behind that people had to just guess what it meant to those people back then. Kenyer suggest...