First Reading (Prologue and Chapter 1)

One of the most interesting things to me that we had also talked about in class is how the first part of human history the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras make up 95% of all human history, However it isn't talked about or written about like the stuff that is more recent. The further we get into history the more information there is and of course that is because writing became more and more prominent. Another interesting thing is seeing how the first civilizations moved from Africa to at one point finally inhabiting every part of the world. Also seeing how they moved from hunting and gathering to farming and then eventually making civilizations.

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Reading #7(Chapter 6)

In this chapter we saw the similarities and differences between Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas. One of craziest things to me is the way the population was distributed, 85% of the population was in Eurasia. I think the number one thing this can be attributed to is agriculture. In the americas there weren't as lucky as they were in Eurasia. They did not have animals they could domesticate, they also had not developed any written language. Because of this the Americas and Africa had civilizations that were a lot smaller. Another major difference is that the Americas were isolated so they didn't really have anyone to communicate with like the people of Eurasia and Africa. Although the people of the Americas did not have access to iron tools or animals for domestication they still eventually achieved great things. We see with the Mayans were able to have a political system, engineering, mathematics, and even a writing system. The people of Teotihuacan formed Americas largest urba...

Reading #4(Chapter 3)

In this reading I really got to see how different all of the civilizations were. Starting out with the Persian empire we saw a gigantic empire that had millions in it population. We saw how to conquered a lot of land. What was really surprising however was how they were really nice towards the people they took over, they would still let them practice their religions. One thing about them was they had one leader and that leader got the upmost respect and power. He was feared so he could do anything. Next we saw the Greek empire which was very different from the Persian empire. First it was different in size, the Greek empire was only 5 or 6 million. Another major thing was the government, instead of having on ruler the Greek empire operated in smaller but more city states. What was crazy was when these two clashed and the Greek empires being the underdog was able to defeat the Persians. Now we couldn't talk about civilizations without talking about the Roman Empire. Which really wen...

Reading #6(Chapter 5)

In this reading we saw how the 2nd wave civilizations changed their social systems. With the agriculture booms and people starting to make more than others. Also with forms of government starting to rise of course there is going to be divisions between all of the people. In India there was a very interesting structure. Basically there was a caste system with five levels priests, warriors, merchants, peasants, and the untouchables. A normal person would think that yeah if you happened to be born into a peasant family that is unfortunate but with hard work you might one day be able to become a merchant. However that was not the case whatever you were born into you were for the rest of your life. The only way to move up was to die that way and basically if you were a peasant you had to be a great peasant your whole life. To me this seems outrageous but to the people of the time they really believed it and they followed through with it. I could not live in a society like this. If you wer...

Jose Alvarez Avina

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