Week 2- Ch. 3, 4, 5, 6

Part Two of the text was incredibly interesting in the way it took segments of time and compared and contrasted civilizations within that time.  Doing it this way helped me to see the history as the progression of human kind around the world, and not just the progression of one group of people.  In this way, you can evaluate a civilizations progress compared to itself and its past history in the time it existed, and not compare it to a group of people that have existed in their culture for longer, and therefore seem to have accomplished and progressed more.

Chinese history always seems so long and dense, I have never really taken the time to try and parse it out and understand it, but breaking it up into the various causes and effects of smaller time periods helped immensely.  The same with Indian history, but even more so for the history of the Americas.  Knowing a tiny bit about the Incas and the Mayans, I was surprised to learn about the peoples that lived around them and their societies, gods, and economies.  Evaluating the differences in how cultures develop based on what kind of large animals they have available to domesticate was interesting and seems to make a huge difference in civilization development.

Week 1- Prologue, Ch. 1 & 2

***Addendum to original post: An article from The Times of India about an ancient Indus Valley civilization being re-dated upon new studies. 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Indus-era-8000-years-old-not-5500-ended-because-of-weaker-monsoon/articleshow/52485332.cms?utm_source=toimobile&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=referral

In the prologue, the author, Robert Strayer, attempts to shift your point of view as you approach the discussions of world history that so many of us feel like we have learned over and over again in our course of study.  Starting with the creation of the universe, however, is not how history was conventionally presented to us, and I appreciate taking a step back to see the world as a whole unit, with our histories being shared from a very early date before the diverge and meet back up again as civilizations interact with one another.  Everyone has heard how old the world is, how long ago dinosaurs lived, and when our earliest points of major history took place, but seeing that, in the grand scheme of things, our whole history takes up such a tiny amount of time makes you feel small and very mortal.  It helps you understand that you exist in just a speck of time, and though it can easily panic you, it also helps put your current problems and worries in perspective.  

I appreciated the use of the "three c's", not only because I am a fan of literary alliteration, but also because it gives me a means of looking at different peoples through various times.  By evaluating what changed from one era to the next, comparing how people handled those changes, and connecting how the similarities or differences affected the next stage of time, you can begin to feel you have learned something new about the cultures you have studied repeatedly.  

So often today, we talk of globalization, and know it to mean something in particular, but using the word in terms of people populating the various continents of the planet shed a new light on what it means for humans to bring their knowledge, lifestyles, and culture to new parts of the world.  In order for each place on earth to have a culture to share with others, it first must be developed.

It was also interesting to be reminded that things didn't simply switch from gathering/hunting to large civilizations very quickly.  It took many generations to deduce what plants could be used, and many more generations in small groups of people that were no longer nomadic, but were far from living in an urbanized empire.  

I bookmarked and wrote down for further research a note about the Saka women, who appear to have battled along side the men. This, juxtaposed with the almost universal deterioration of women's rights in coalescing civilizations, made me curious to study more about these different histories and other anomalies of women's roles. 

Above all else, it was staggering to really comprehend and internalize the vast amount of time that the Paleolithic era covered.

First week test of blog post!