The way the elite could have taken advantage of the seals is to regulate merchandise, or to keep track of what merchandise was there whenever they had to move it. The seal could have also acted as a signature, maybe if the seal had something unique on it that only the owners seal had. They could have also used it for like branding. I also think the seals were used to distinguish people. I don't think you would see an official or landowner with the same seal as a worker. So in a way these could have seen as a sign of power. You could think of it as a police badge, it just gave people authority. One thing that the writing pointed out is that even if you didn't speak a language you would still be able to understand a seal because it was just a picture. So they were very versatile.
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...
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