Lauren Lopez

In this chapter it discusses the Christianity in both Asia and Africa.  in Asia at the time Islam was taking over as the number one religion so the Christian communities had to negotiate and pay a special tax in order to practice their religion at the time. But sometimes their churches were destroyed, their fields were burned and destroyed and they were forced to wear distinctive clothing. During this time Muslims controlled everything, and they were upset that the Christian practiced another religion, so the Christians lived in fear. Later the Chinese state turned against all religions including Buddhism. But later during the Mongol conquest the Mongols allowed a return of Christianity,  but when the Mongol rule ended the small number of Chinese Christianity almost completely fell of the map. In Africa Christianity was the religion of the majority. During the mid 14th century there was anti-Christian groups who destroyed churches and forcefully removed Christians from the l...

600-1600 Islam was highly successful, encompassing parts of Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia 23% of the world Identify as Muslim in 2013 Bedoiuns Mecca  become a wealthy area where people from all clans and tribes could be found When the Arab state became a huge empire, taking up most of or all of the Egyptian, Roman, Persian, Mesopotamia, and Indian civilizations. This caused the Islamic faith to spread fast and far. This lead to a lot of people of different cultures to come together due to their same faith.

In Chapter 7 we learn about the differences in Africa and America.  Americas lacked nearly all animals suitable for domestication,  Africa imported previously domesticated sheep, goats, chickens, and horses, metallurgy was less developed in the Americas, and they had smaller civilizations. We also learn of the Meroe, who were the o ldest in the Egyptian empire, they f lourished between 300 bce-100 ce. The Meroe people were ruled by a monarch who was usually a female. They specialized in mostly iron-working, they were skilled at hearding and farming, and instead of irrigation they used rainfall for crops.

In China during the Han dynasty choose officials based off of performance, but some were still chosen through social class and standings. Landowners have a lot of power. The increase in population caused the peasants to sell their land to wealthier landowners in order to keep themselves afloat. The peasants had a hard time living, most of them lived in full households and struggled. Conditioned like this caused peasants to begin rebellions, and join gangs of bandits. The peasants devastated the economy which later led to the overthrow of the dynasty.

In reading Chapter 4 the Confucian Answer was the most interesting to me. Confucius was born into an aristocratic family, and he spent most of his life trying to fix China political issues and bring harmony into China. His answer was not about laws and punishment it was about the morals of the people, "The relation between superiors and inferior is like between the wind and the grass. The grass must bed when the wind blows" Confucius used this quote to describe how the superior party should act towards the inferior party, if the superior party acted with genuine concern for others the inferior party would most likely be more patriotic. Confucius influenced Chinese culture in the way that morals influence others, and he also kept the belief in spirits and gods.

Which statement of Tacitus might you regard as reliable, and which are more suspect? Why? I do not think that we can take any statements from Tacitus as reliable except for statements that are purely factual. This is because it states that Tacitus never visited the lands of the people he described. He only relied on others works of writing and story telling.  We cannot regard him as reliable becuase we do not even know if there is any credibility in his statements.