To Thrive or Not to Thrive


Hello World Explorers, 

This journey has been interesting. I must say the initial reading didn't leave me with the warm fuzzies. As Strayer said, monarchs continued to rule the new civilizations, women remained subordinate to men in all of them, there was a divide between the elite and everyone else and the practice of slavery was on the rise. Doesn't appear the Age of Agricultural Civilization is bringing out the best in people. By 1500 C.E the world population was nearly 500 million and there was a disappearance of equality. As the specialization of work grew, it's important to note, these specialists didn't grow their own food, they were supported by others who were highly efficient at farming.  Inequality and hierarchy became the norm and as we experience today, upper-class citizens avoided physical labor, enjoyed the finer things in life, and life at the top.

Of course, with wealth come riches. Often they upper-class enjoyed the finer clothes, houses, and as Strayer said their burials. With these first civilizations, they started to experience what we know to be part of our societies responsibilities such as taxes, rents, labor which supported the upper-class (Strayer).   

As expected, there was a belief that men were superior to women and sons preferred to daughters. Interesting I think, as we are still dealing with this issue today. Very sad indeed that in 2018 we are experiencing the inequality in male and female salaries for the same job. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ursula de Jesus - Blog Post

Ursula has a sad story but also somewhat easier story than other slaves.  Reading it made me think about how life could have been if I didn't grow up in the time and place that I did. There is so much opportunity in the Bay Area, while not always easy, I wasn't born into slavery. Ursula, on the other hand, was born into slavery as her mother was a slave. She was more fortunate than other slaves, being born into a wealthy aristocratic family and by age 8 (my daughter's age), she was sent to live in another home with religious values. She was definitely a slave, taking care of her owner's personal needs, and cooked, cleaned and took care of those that fell ill. Due to the wealth of her owner, she was able to elevate herself among the other slaves. However, things took a dramatic change, when in 1642, she almost died by falling into a well. Given this event, Ursula decided to change her ways and give up the lavishness of her lifestyle and stopped wearing the nice clot...
Read more

Zheng He China's Non-Chinese Admiral

Good evening friends, Thought I would discuss what I found a bit unnerving and a bit shocking as I had never even heard of this before. It's called becoming a eunuch or being castrated. I actually felt a bit sad with the reading as it seems so foreign to remove one's genitals. In the case of Zheng He, this was not by his choosing.  Born in 1371, Zheng's roots were from Central Asia. His dad and grandfather were Muslims and had also made the pilgrimage to Mecca.  His father was killed resisting forces of the Ming dynasty.  He was taken prisoner at the young age of 11. It's unbelievable to me that the Ming dynasty would castrate a young boy. I mean what horror he must have experienced. It's written there was a long history of this practice and over one million eunuchs served the Chinese emperor. Is this like castration for horses and they felt men would obey their rulers if they lost their manhood? While it seems odd, there were several men who voluntarily gave up...
Read more

Buddhism & China Blog 3

Image
I found it very interesting in the way Buddhism started in China.  I had no idea it started with the Silk Road trading network around 200 C.E. As we know Buddhism originated in India. Most Chinese were not open to the idea of Buddhism due to the conflicting teachings of Confucianism. Initially, it started with only practiced by foreign merchants and monks living in China. About 300 and 800 C.E. Buddhism started to become more popular due to the collapse of the Han dynasty. Chinese started to welcome the idea and supported the monasteries, temples and even art. As one might suspect with the Buddist culture, they provided help to those in need. The provided food, shelter, treatment if one was sick and even provided a place for children to learn. There was also great effort to translate the religion into information the Chinese could understand. One that I don't necessarily love is the translation from the Indian teaching that "husband supports wife" was translated to ...
Read more