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.
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