This week’s reading covers the period of time from 500 to
1500 AD, which the author refers to as:
An Age of Accelerating Connections.
In our first chapter, we spend a lot of time learning about the Silk
Roads and the Sea Roads. These networks
of routes were used extensively by traders who would move merchandise between
China, India, the Middle East, and Central Asia. I found it interesting that people were
willing to make those long journeys to bring goods across continents or
oceans. That really opened up the world
to different goods and cultures. The use of camels that could go without water
for up to 2 weeks even allowed traders to journey across the Sahara Desert in
Africa to bring goods to and from the West African peoples. It is also interesting
how this increased mobility of people and goods moved diseases such as Bubonic
plague throughout the world. While I
have obviously heard of the Black Death, I had no idea of the massive
devastation that this plague imparted on most of the world. This must have been one of the first truly
horrible side effects of so many people living together in cities and having to
deal with increased amounts of waste and rodents.
The
next chapter talks about China and its influence on the world. It’s interesting how other Asian cultures and
communities were so strongly influenced by the Chinese. What struck me the most, however, was the
treatment of women during the Golden Age of the Song Dynasty. While China was enjoying great progress in
education, farming, culture, and technology, women were beginning to live much
more restricted lives. Confucian
philosophies placed women in an inferior relationship to men and encouraged
them to be submissive and quiet. A strange tradition of binding the feet of
young girls so that they would not grow to their natural size began, as Chinese
men found women with small feet to be more desirable. Thankfully, the foot-binding tradition did
not spread to other cultures and eventually ended, but the Chinese ideals of
women staying inside the home and dutifully serving her husband did spread to
other cultures, and women no longer enjoyed the freedom that they had in
previous years.
The
final chapter of this week’s reading focuses on the split between the Eastern
and Roman Catholic Churches. I’ve never
considered the split in this church before.
I always assumed that because of geographical difference and cultural
difference that the two sides of this religion just naturally evolved into
slightly different traditions. Apparently,
it was more political than that and there were many disagreements that finally
ended in mutual excommunication of both churches by each other. We then look at some of the technologies of
the times that were being shared or copied by various peoples: the heavy plows
of northern Europe that were better able to till the hard soils, the use of
horses for heavy agricultural chores, the windmill, and the water mill. We read about paper and printing as
well. It seems that much innovation
happened during this time, and much of it had to do with the fact that people
were travelling and seeing what other cultures had done, then doing it
themselves at home. I guess it just shows
that we always have things that we can learn from other people, even when we
don’t necessarily like them. I wish the
author would have spent a little time talking about the Scandinavian people and
the Vikings, because there was a civilization way up North too, and he’s really
barely mentioned them. I wonder if they
were influenced by the Confucian thinking of the Chinese?
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