Reading Journal

Commonalities and Variations - Africa, the Americas, and Pacific Oceania  Eurasia was then home to more than 85 percent of the world's people. Africa was 10 percent, the Americas were around 5 percent and Oceania less than 1 percent.  The domestication of animals in the Americas was not as successful because it had fewer animals and it very little pastoral societies that were found in the pockets of the Andes.  Africa lacked wild sheep, goats, chickens, horses, and camels. However, due to how close the continent is to Eurasia, the domesticated animals became available in Africa.  Writing was limited to the mesoamerican region in the Americas.  Ancient Egyptian Civilization was in contact with Crete, Syria, and Mesopotamia and inspired the greeks.  Domesticated camel came from Arabia  Highland Ethiopia sustained very productive agriculture.  Climate conditions spawned numerous diseases carrying insects and parasites, which have long c...

Social mobility in earlier civilizations made it harder for those wishing to move up socioeconomic class. It is really similar today. Only the wealthy and well off could afford the cost of education without taking loans. There are scholarships but no real sponsoring. It is possible to climb up the ladder but it takes more than smarts. In addition, I think it is very smart for civil service exams to be utuilized but again, it would only work if the access of education were equal as well as the time the education started.  Slavery is pretty interesting in certain regions because some slaves had rights to protect them but only so much was enforced because slaves was not really considered a respectable human. 

"Serving is Different from Helping and Fixing" I have never thought about helping being based on inequality because generally, the focus is on the act of bettering a situation.  The articles start stating how helping is taking away from someone in terms of self-esteem and sense of self-worth, but I have to disagree with it because, although you are putting your pride aside to ask for help it is not be viewed as a bad thing. This goes both ways because you could treat a server in the worst way possible and still be able to lower the self-esteem of a person and sense of worth.  Chapter 4 - Culture and Religion in Eurasia/North Africa  Religion was becoming a great thing overall in the world with two distinct items  - Greeks and Chinese: Focused primarily on world affairs and human rationality  - Indian Persian, and Jewish: Focused on the unseen realm - Relationship to God and other like figures.  * China - Confucianism and Daoism  D...

In chapter 2, it is surprising how equality in paleolithic societies starts diminishing and are becoming into patriarchal societies. In paleolithic societies, it was common to value the woman more, as there were statues of goddesses that although they were exaggerated, they still worshipped a woman. Soon enough the societies were becoming civilizations and there were gender roles assigned. Women were only known as wives, daughters, sisters, or widows. Men had more priority and they took positions in authority like just like in modern times.  One thing that I found interesting were the sacrifices that were made throughout and in different civilizations. Most of the sacrifices were human sacrifices. I have been to Teotihuacan and truly it is amazing how huge the area is and truly the building of pyramids.  Truly there is new interaction for humans. 

In todays reading, I read about the the breakthrough in agriculture and there were many things that I found interesting. The Agriculture Revolution began and grew pretty strong. There were a lot of modifications made to food such as the corn plant with a cob would grow from one inch to six inches by 1500. Also, when it came to breeding animals, the process was very selective so there could be better outcomes. It reminds me of the overall genetic engineering process and how we have modified plants and animals to cater to our personal needs. In regards to domestication, it is amazing how certain animals were domesticated. There are only certain amounts of animals that could be domesticated and that did not account for a majority of animals. For example, in areas such as Peru, the alpacas and the llamas were domesticated and were seen as great help as the animals were helping moving materials and such tings. With the agriculture revolution, came a lot of foods that may seem common but w...

The first section of the prologue starts off with the explanation of the cosmic era and explaining how the Big Bang came to be. Afterwards, the whole solar system was formed and because of history we are able to identify how old items found on earth are and other such things. Throughout history, there are multiple revolutions that happened such as the Agriculture Revolution, Industrial revolution and others that are defining markers in our history. The Agriculture Revolution began after the Ice Age. At this time, the domestication of animals is beginning especially in Africa. Approximating twelve thousand years ago new things started emerging and transformations were made in these human societies. there are specific eras such as the Neolithic era that technology was advancing. Although the importance of each era is subjective, the Neolithic era saw the domestication of animals and the new plants. The first humans and human like creatures originated from Africa. Although there is pr...