Chapter 3 Part 1: First Civilizations

            Honestly for the first month of school this was my least favorite chapter, it is repetitive, too factual and unorganized. By reading this chapter I learned about this global phenomenon where these huge civilizations were around the same time eras around 3500 to 1000 B.C.E. but scatter in 6 different regions of the world. However even though these cities were impressive and lead to a new way of life I learned that they eventually absorbed the homelands and abandoned them. Aside from these six big societies there were more minor civilizations that prevailed from this we have examples from Nubia south of Egypt and in China a city known as Sanxingdui from the Shang Dynasty.

            The only outcome that surely impressed me was not knowing the origins of these civilizations or knowing if they conflicted with other local cities or groups but the equality in classes. In the reading they pull out a quote from the epic story of Gilgamesh describing its city as “Even the great gods are kept from sleeping at night” pg 63, yes this is impressive but the classes that come within the city as the scribes create the rules but the farmers and peasants are slaves but even within that almost an inception of classes we accumulate greater knowledge of the importance of gender and education. As you read into the middle of the section you run into this word called patriarchy and they never fully give the definition but it is a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it. We see an example documented by a historian named Gerda Lerner and how in the second millennium of Mesopotamia started to create laws to enforce and offered women an extension of protection. This is huge it means that our ancestors really believed in equality to an extent and this goes to show that biases on sex is old news.

First Farmers

Chapter 2: First Farmers

            Even though last week I had read chapter 3 instead I don’t mind back tracking. In chapter I had read about the amazing evolution of the first farmers in the Neolithic era “agricultural revolution” and the first human process to operate on a global scale with initial settlement of the earth. What seemed most interesting was the coming of this agriculture revolution this represented a transformation in human life. Human farmers all over changed things putting up boarders and selective breeding this way taming and changing nature benefitted human kind. Through a long history people developed deep knowledge for this natural world, they learned how to make use of a larger number of plants, obtained the abilities to hunt and gather.  

            In the agricultural revolution new opportunities appeared with the improving conditions that came after the ice age, humans gained new knowledge and technology that helped communities to expand and exploited the environment.  The agricultural revolution led to an increase in human population, productivity increased, the ability to stabilize a community in great numbers because of productivity was huge.

Chapter 2: Writing And Power

Chapter two goes into detail about how writing has greatly impacted and influenced religion and power. What I learned from this section was that the development of writing withheld many advantages for a culture; we are talking about communication, religion, water regulations, agreements, and money. Religion, philosophy and literature go hand in hand in this chapter because with language you’re able to bind people together. Forms of writing are as old as humanity itself; even then cave paintings have been used to imply messages such as self-expression. What impressed me other than how many different languages that are around the world was they all contained a common theme and that was religion and how the earth was created or how we have a God or Gods. By studying written passages of creations from the bible, to rah, and rig veda, we are able to understand peoples cultures their values, morals, and their relationship to the world. Works of religion and the philosophy/ morals that come attached to it gives us a sense and the people who follow a sense of their past and missions to shape their collective thoughts. Writing offered cultures with that it possess certain advantages the ability to read and write elevated certain individuals, groups, and classes within cultures for example Greeks and the first New Testament author “Mark”, he wrote his gospel “around 70 C.E” in a common language and this creates complexity for religion as they were trying to convince the upper class they were expected to listen to these people and this changes history because it defies it. Language is so powerful because it creates these relationships and it pushes to traditions and rituals.  If we look more into the chapter and these sources of writings that given to us we can compare and contrast these similar themes of how the world was created with source 1: Excerpts from Atra-hasis, 2: excerpts from book 10 of the Rig Veda, and 3: Book of Genesis, this theme is a god that creates everything from nothing and we have a mother and a father which brings people all over the world together because we are all one brother and sister.

Chapter 1: The Need For Water

In chapter one I had read about large civilizations ranging from Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and Rome that had expanded just by building an irrigation system. Irrigation systems have been found around the world and are taken for granted. Three goals in the systems were flood control, irrigation, and grain transport. In the ancient world water supply systems took large amounts of labor but once conquers discovered the importance of the systems labor wasn’t a problem, yet in this world they had no power tools nothing more than axes, hammers, saws, and drills. As a war tactic armies used the waterworks as weapons such as flooding, and etc… The size and complexity of the systems imply that work forces were at large given the lack of elaborate equipment.

 A unique part that stood out to me in the reading was not only that it showed examples or pictures of these aqueducts but rules that follow them. The rules that came in the packet included about people stealing another farmers water supply system and if they messed up or over flood the lands a price comes with it. Surprisingly some ancient water supply systems still are alive today though they might not be used the tools that were being used at the time help supply modern cities today. Though it must have been tough with insects and pollution in the rivers, today we still deal with these problems but not as much. Some cultures like Egypt even based their calendars on the way their water supply worked. These aqueducts greatly impacted ancient civilizations it boosted cash crops, obtaining water for hydration, and basically made life a little easier, little did they know these systems that are used today had changed not only their cities but the world.