Rising...

The PBS Documentary that talks about Martin Luther explains why the church wanted to silence him. The church felt threatened by what Martin Luther was writing about the Pope and the Priests and the Church itself. He wrote about the church's take of power and exploitation of it. He was a very idealistic person and went against the church even though the church was behind him trying to get him for what he had wrote. He was accused of heresy by the church, but that only gave him more desire to keep on challenging the church and its believes, he was willing to die to defend what he had written. Martin Luther's writings were causing revolt around Italy and the Pope decided that excommunication would be the best thing to do to Martin Luther. For Catholics that is the worst punishment that one can get, but this did not scare him he kept on moving along with his writing. He was one of the first person to use the printed press to gain followers in places far from where he was. He did not want to let the church be corrupt and he did not want the people to go and follow them without knowing what was really going on within the church and what the German money was being used for.  

The take over by the mongols started out as a blood bath for those that were being conquered, the mongols fought like no other to get what they wanted. They spread around the world very fast and they were feared more than they were respected because of their savage ways of conquering land. The mongols spread around Europe, South, East, Asia, and North Africa. The land was an accessible to travel across and the climate was also good for the travelers from around the steppe. They were used to that it was not hard for them to travel across the mountains. As the empire got bigger and bigger it spread further out in to the continents making them a very successful empire, even though they were very bloody. Even long after the death of Genghis Khan his grandsons spread their empire into other areas of the world.

The Mongols conquered the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Indians, and Western Africa. The many people that they conquered were from many different religions or believes. The Mongols in the beginning started out being Buddhist and tried to fight the Muslims together with the European Catholics who did not want to let Islam thrive. Although the Mongols once wanted to get rid of Islam after a time they themselves gave into the Islamic religion.

The Economic Impact that the Mongols had on western civilization was vast. Although they were very violent and wanted to conquer the entire world they opened up the door for the South, the East, the North and the West to trade. They had great ways of protecting their trade routes, they made it easy for merchants from different places to travel and sell their goods in others places and for them to take back new things that they had acquired on their trips.When the Mongols finally agreed to peace their empire helped the wealth spread across the landmass. Ideas and goods spread around more easily and more freely with the peace of the Mongols. But trade is not the only thing that the Mongols were going to be able to spread across the continents. With so many different people traveling and going to different places so did disease and death. Now although the Mongols were at peace with the people they had conquered the black death was now being spread by the people who traveled to get riches from other places. The black death killed many people 

At the sight of the Black death many people now turned to favor the monarchs because they believed them to be potential saviors believed that they had special powers. The black death period was not in all a bad thing because it brought stability to kingdoms and many places like Russia and Persia were able to get rid of the Mongols who had been their commanders for so long. The Ottomans rose after the black death in Anatolia under Turkish dynasty. They gradually came to dominate Byzantium.

Although Christendom and China recovered from the harsh strike of the black death Egypt and Syria did not and the rise of the Muslim world was not as fast as that of other places where the black death had also hit. After this Imperialism was now spreading to different parts of the world where they had never before experienced it. Like the Americas with the Aztecs and the Incas. But this does not mean that the entire world was under Imperialism most of the world remained under kinship or small estates. 

Culture was now being spread around the old world between the continents, religion was something that spread very easily and Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism were very common in those day. Many people converted from one religion to another although Islam was in a very small process the religion is one of the religions that is on the rise in modern days. Goods from different parts of the world were being traded and so was the people. The people who traveled and decided to stay to live in a different place were now adopting a new culture. Cultural assimilation was going on all around because people were meeting new people and blood was mixing other blood. Language is also something that can be acquired for people to communicate they had to learn a new language, because not everyone spoke the same language all across the different continents. Mixing of languages like Spanish with Arabic or French is what makes modern day Arabic because these three languages were being used very often in the old world. We must also remember that food plays a major role in survival, cultural diffusion in food is what makes every food so unique, yet so different. 

In conclusion although the Mongols were bloody and deathly they came to peace and brought great riches to the world. They opened up the trade routes that made different places rich and opened the door to cultural diffusion. The black death brought misfortune to many people, but this brought stability to the government and it also brought the down fall of the Mongol Empire. Russia broke away from them and so did China, Christendom and the Ottomans conquered their own empire. Culture, Religions, Languages and foods mixed in the midst of all this. We are all a mix of everything our languages have a mix of everything, we are unique in our own way, but we all very alike.

Fernandez- Armesto, Felipe. 

(2011)  The World.

PBS.

 01/06/2010.  Martin Luther: Driven to Defiance  

Martin Luther: Reluctant Revolutionary.  

Retrieved from web

 http://video.pbs.org/video/1379563195

                                              http://video.pbs.org/video/1379546586

Great Rises and Even Greater Falls

In this third blog I will be talking about the great things that the ancient empires left us, but we will also learn of the bad things that went on during these times that we would not want happening today.  The Roman empire has been one of the most talked about empire all around the world for ages since the rise to the fall and up until today. I will be talking about the documentaries The Spartans by Bettany Hughes, Meet the Romans by Mary Beard and also some of the discussion will include parts of the readings from the book The World by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto on chapters 5,6, and 7. 

The television show Meet the Romans by Mary Beard talks about how the Roman empire came to be and how it expanded. The Romans were very liberal we could say about who became a Roman citizen and about how people led their lives. In the Roman Empire to you did not have to fight to become Roman one just had to learn something useful that would be good the the empire. Slaves could become Romans if they were freed by their masters and learned to work all and make a decent living. Rome had many immigrants because they knew that they had a chance of a better life where they could live and work and have enough food to eat everyday. The Roman warriors were meant to die and that is why they did not mind having people from other places because that way the empire could expand into another part of the world. Although it seemed like a great place to live for men it was not so for women. Women were second class citizens and they had no saying or vote in what happened in the empire. They could not be in the same place as man and they could only be house wives or prostitutes. The Romans empire was made up of all different cultures that with time eventually became Roman.

In the documentary by Bettany Hughes she talks about how fierce the Spartans were. She explains how they were a very liberal and sexual empire. They were born to fight and to die if they had to to keep their empire at the top of everyone else. The government had a say on which new born would survive and which one would be given up because he was not fit to become a soldier for the empire. Infanticide was common in ancient Sparta because the government wanted to have the best soldiers and since every male had to become a soldier they had to be able to survive and they had no space for the weak. Another thing that was different about Sparta was that women had freedom, they could become warriors too and when the men were away fighting they ruled the streets and had a saying on what happened in the empire, they were a great part of the expansion of the Spartan Empire.

Rome is located in Italy and is near the Mediterranean sea. Rome is a place that is made up of different geographic terrains. It is made up of mountains and lowlands that divide the East and the West, these lands were also very fertile, and they are climatically different as well. On the other hand Sparta was a very small land with only a few house and public buildings that had no constructed walls up until about the end of the 4th century.  

The citizens of Rome were all from many different parts of the ancient world as I have said before, people migrated to Rome to look for a better life and eventually became citizens, frees slaves could also become citizens if they learned to do something that would benefit themselves and the empire. The Romans needed people because they were not having enough offspring to keep the empire growing while the warriors were out on war and dying off. The trade mark for Rome was the fact that they had people from everywhere that eventually became Roman and then they too could go to war to fight for the empire. The Spartans on the contrary had to be born Spartan and had to train their entire lives to earn their citizenship as Spartans, well the males at least. They could only be the best and the fittest to be able to become Spartans.

During these times there was trade going on, since Italy is a very small place with not enough resources to be able to feed the entire Roman city they had to trade good with other parts of the world, they mostly traded for olive oil because they depended on it for almost everything in a daily basis. In other parts of the world during the dark ages the lack of space for growing crops made them over exploit their land and eventually more vulnerable to disease and famine, some of these people were also more vulnerable to their enemies. Also the ambition of some of these civilizations drove them to do things that they should not have done, and made them fall as a civilization. 

People in the ancient times were predominantly ruled by their elites, not very often were these elite women. It would be rare to find ans ancient civilization ruled by a women in ancient times because they were normally second class citizens who had no voice or vote. Only in Sparta would one be able to see that women had a little bit more freedom to be who they wanted to be. they could become warriors and manage their cities while the men were away at war. But going back to the fact that only the elite males could rule a civilization and make them grow as a civilization. Only those who knew how to handle power were able to make their cities into empires and conquer land away from home. But rulers often got greedy and wanted to rule and manage people in an unfair way and they wanted to take land, but really did not have the resources to do so and that would cause them to fall. Although this failed attempts at conquering the world did have an impact on different places because while they were trying to conquer there was cultural diffusion. 

As the empires grew stronger and bigger the cultural differences were becoming less and less, people were becoming one and they shared their different cultures and religions. All this cultures eventually became one and the people became one as well. Immigration, slavery and war played a very big role on the acculturation of all these different peoples. Culture all over the world is something very important to everyone, culture is how we identify ourselves and it is on what we pride ourselves to be. Romans took all these different cultures and made them one. We the new people always look to Rome Specifically because it was one of the most influential empires that ever happened, but it happened because the people made a strong and large empire of different peoples merging into one becoming stronger.

All in all, we have learned a lot about ancient empires, about their ways of life and what was acceptable and what was not. Immigration, slavery, and wars have shaped our world since the beginning of time. These three things are what have given us all our different cultures and languages and government. We also know that at least in one part of the ancient world were women able to be a little bit more free than in any other empire in the ancient times, but this city was also one of the most brutal in the ways in which to give their citizens a voice and their empire a name. We also learned that they were very liberal and many things that we thought were not accepted were actually happening in the ancient world. 

Beard, Mary.  Meet the Romans 2013

Hughes, Bettany. The Spartans

Population and Migration: Becoming who we are today.

Populating the world was something that tool many thousands years, our ancestors moved from place to place and in those migrating days many people separated, those who wanted to stay, stayed and the one who wanted to find a new place to live moved and made a home somewhere else leaving behind many people and populating the world slowly. Our ancestor had to develop new ways of living and had to adapt to their new environments giving way to the differences in physical appearances that we have now with people from different places, our bodies have to adapt to the environment in which we put it, of do not adapt we do not survive. As Spencer Wells explains in his documentary The Journey of  Man , our ancestors had to go through great challenges to get where we are today.  Fernandez- Armesto explains in his book The World  how People went from being hunter- gatherers to an  agricultural society with rulers, Gods, and different worshiping figures. Although most of us might see the change from hunting and gathering as a good thing or as evolution from primitive to evolved human beings, agriculture was not a step forward, nor am I saying that it was a step back, but people had to put in extra effort to be able to get food and also they invited diseases from animals into the human system. People also had to learn how to cook what they were now using for food to be able to digest the it. Agriculture was much more work and very little pay off.

Dr. Spencer Wells in his documentary The Journey of Man  takes the on the challenge of tracking down the first ancestor and the steps taken from when they first came out of Africa to populating the new world. He travels all around the world and takes the DNA of many different groups of people to find which group is most related to the first ancestor, so he can tell the story of how we all came to be who we are today.  He finds a few particular people who have DNA that is very similar to that of our ancestor he goes  from Africa. to India, to Australia, to Khasakstan and finally made it to America. This journey shows us how our skin color and out facial features change from one place to another according to to the environment in which we live. 

This documentary shows that there really is no such things as an elite race, we all come from the same ancestor, we all have the the same root DNA of course it varies because along the way we mix with one and other so the DNA pattern must change, But we really are one big family who came from Africa and has populated the world and turned it into what is is today.  Searching for the descendants of the ancestor took a lot of work and time, because even though we all come from the same roots they are direct descendants from that one first person who decided to migrate to other places and explore what was outside of Africa. They are the very descendants of the first peoples from their own countries or their tribes. We are one family of many descendants spread around the world.

Although migrating to other places took many years for our ancestors, one could consider that is was much easier to do it by feet since they did not have all the luxuries that we have today for transportation. Today even if we tried to make this journey by feet it would be practically impossible since the earth has shifted and separated the land masses that make today's continents. Back when the world was being populated the earth was one big land mass that could be traveled by foot from place to place. If the earth would have been separated like it is today the population of the earth would have taken even longer, modern day can not compare because now we have great technologies like the airplane or ships that can make this journey in just a few days, where as to our ancestors took thousands of years to go around the globe populating and making new civilizations. 

As I have said before we all come from Africa, from the San People, the oldest living people, the people we come from. When they migrated they started new civilizations and new countries rose from those ancient civilizations. After the spreading of the people around the world people changed physically and those people who were grouped together and had similar physical features were now a civilization. Many new civilizations arose from this in the the Middle East, Europe, and  Eurasia this were some of the first people to appear in the beginning of what we call today Western Civilization. The Middle East, Greece, Italy, Anatolia ( Turkey) had great impact on our development. 

Economic development increased due to agriculture, people now had more to trade and they also wanted more things, the idea of luxuries could come into play now. People now new how to grow crops and how to harvest, they also learned to cook the things they were harvesting, this type of new developments made life much more complex, yet they had more variety of foods rather than just the gathering and the hunting they had before. Trading with the new growing civilizations gave way to economic growth for certain people. People who made other people believe they were better than them, the Elites collected goods to increase their properties and have more power over the people who had less. The elites have always made people of lower classes work for them making them even more rich. The average people work for their elites for religious reasons, because they believe that these people who rule them were sent by their God to be their mediator between the mortals and the Godly spirits. 

Economics also increased because there was new ways to transport things from one place to another, the rivers in the Middle East and Europe played a major role in the economic development of the ancient civilizations. New trade routes that could take and bring new goods to different peoples. They also had newer technologies in which other peoples were interested in. Trading goods for goods always increases the economic development of a civilization.

Political system had to be developed, as in every developing civilization there had to be a ruler who kept the people at peace with each other and some whom the people could look up to for solutions to their problems as a living community. People developed the idea of Pharaohs, monarchs, priests, they had to have some one whom they could worship, at this time religion played a major role in the ruling of civilizations, Christianity, Islam, Judaism all played major roles in the development of many civilizations. At this period of time only the religious leaders could manage the people and make decisions about what was to happen in the community. Politics is one of the reasons why we have different social classes, someone wanted to be worshiped so they had to get someone who would worship them. Taking all power to themselves and ruling the people.

Cultural diffusion happened as it happens all the time. People migrate, trade, share and learn from each other. Ancient peoples traded and migrated to different places taking with them their culture and sharing them with the new people they meet, they also learn from that new culture. The development of trade made cultural diffusion much easier. The rivers were the main gate ways to cultural diffusion because people traveled by river to get to their destination and on that journey they would trade their things for the things they found along the way. Culture as we all know is not something that we are born with, but rather something we learn as we grow. People made up their own cultures and religions influenced on the parts of the world in which they were living, all cultures are influenced by each other, every one takes a small part of what they like from a culture and include it in their own, there is no unique culture because we all have the same ideals as humans beings. We all want the same things and it is this way that our cultures merge and become our own in different ways. 

We have learned that we all came from the same ancestor, there is no elite race or skin color. Human beings change because we have to adapt to our surroundings and if that means changing color, changing height, changing facial features than the body must do it, we must adapt to survive, if we do not we will get left behind and the others will move along. We also know that we learn culture, all of our cultures intertwine there is no unique culture so there is no reason to think we are better then someone else because of our culture. Politics has always been run by those smarter than others, those who can grab the power and tell other what to do, and those less smart will follow no matter what because if they are not leaders they are followers and need to be led the way. Politicians will always make one believe the most obvious lies if the society is completely lost and need some one to tell them what to do. Economy has all to do with culture, without culture there is no economy, because why would we want to trade what we have for what we already have? Cultural diffusion means economic growth and political exchange as well. Ideas from one powerful to the other to keep the people in line, so that they can keep the power. People change, the earth changes, the environment changes. Evolution is happening as we read this, we do not realize, but we are evolving everyday. We have influences from all over the world that make us who we are today and what out generations will be tomorrow. We are not more than or less than any other people, we're one big family that keeps on changing everyday. 

Bibliography

Armesto-Fernandez, Felipe The World  2011. (ch. 1,2, and 3)

Wells, Spencer The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey PBS.com, 2002 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBJDGzzrMyQ

Understanding History

History has always been difficult to understand and keep up with. History does not stop, In fact we are history in the making. Almost all of what is happening right now in the world will be history the new generation. There are many things happening today that we don't even imagine will be in text book in the future. This is exactly how our ancestors felt, they did not know that one day we would even exist or much less be reading about them and how we came to be from them. We try to understand our ancestors as much as we can from what we know from them. As Fernandez-Armesto points out in his introduction to The World, history does not make perfect sense, we must keep asking the right questions even if we do not get the right answer. The study of history is not intended to tell us how people really lived in the past, but to give us an idea of what it felt like to live in it. In the episode Fort Raleigh of Time Team America archaeologist are sent out to investigate the first Americans that settled in North Carolina and the way they lived and how they adapted to their new environment. Eventually they abandoned the camp, to this day what really happened to them remains a mystery because they left no traces of where they were going or why they left their homes. In another investigation the History Detectives investigate the Woolworth signs that were in the stores when the historical human rights sit ins happened. Many people take small parts of history for granted, but there are people who want a piece of history to keep to remember where we come from and how it is that we are all now in some sense equal. We want to honor those who were brave enough to make history and give us the freedom that we have today. History is unexpected and surprising. As we will learn further on in the readings ahead.

To try to understand history questions must be asked, they may not always be answered because as I said before history is uncertain. Time Team America went on a quest to find where the first Americans settled and to try to understand how they lived and how they survived their new surroundings. Archaeologist dug many trenches to find where their houses were and what they looked like, they had drawings from John White who was the artist at the time they settled in North Carolina and who recorded the way the houses were made and what the environment looked like. This drawings made it much more easier for the team artist to come up with a sketch of what the settlement might have been like, of course the environment changes with time so there really is no certain drawing that tells us how exactly the first Americans lived, we can only assume. The first Americans had to adapt to their new environment since they came from a city like life style to a rural life style that did not have all the luxuries that they were used to. Trying to find out how this first Americans lived takes a long time of hard work and although they might find many characteristics of their live no certain answer will be found because there are many changes that have occurred through out time that make it hard for archaeologist and artist to have a real sense of these peoples lives.

The arrival of new people to America gave way to a change in the geographical make up of the land. This new people had to make way for their survival changing the way the land had been before. First they had to build their new houses and make enough ground space to live together as a community. The changes to them might have been small, but this changes affect the environment and the living creatures that inhabit that environment. To survive the first Americans depended on agriculture because they did not have any other sources of food. Agriculture changes everything because the land is being exploited and planted at the same time. We must keep in mind that geography changes with time as the environment changes.

Demography was obviously affected by the arrival of new people to America. New people means an increase in population and maybe even intermixing of different peoples to become one. People who settled became a self sustaining community. A new community that brought about more diversity. These people had a way of live before they came to America and tried to make life here similar to the one they had before. These people migrated from one place to another as suggested by the evidence, they abandoned their settlement, some of them probably separated from the rest as it usually happens with migrating groups, this means that the same people could have populated other areas of the country at the same time making them a bigger group, because obviously reproduction was going on even though migration was happening too. Reproduction is one of the most important parts of demographic change, every day there is new people being born into this world, making and shaping our demography.

As population grew, so did economy. People needed things that they did not have. How than did they obtain the things they wanted, but had no access to?  Trading. Trading is the most convincing theory since I assume their currency was not worth very much when they arrived to their new home. Trading has been the path to a great economy. People get what they want giving other people what they need, this is a win- win situation for everyone. Economy plays a major role in our lives. Without economy we would not have developed into the first world country that we are today. Economy is what makes a country thrive. Back when our ancestors were roaming the world trying to find a better living, they had to deal with economy as well. They needed to get from one place to another, they also needed food to survive, this world does not move without economy, we must pay for what we need, with whatever it is that we have within our reach, it does not matter if its currency, animals, or other types of goods. 

A good economy brings stability to people, a good economy makes a stronger nation. A nation that will not collapse rapidly. We all depend on economy. Even the most isolated people around the world depend on their own type of economy. As long as economy is fair to everyone there will not be an up-rise from the poorer to try to destabilize the ones with a better economy prospective. We can see now with what is happening with the One Percent trying to overthrow the 99% in Wall Street. In a good economy there needs to be a balance between the poor and the rich, so no one can feel like they are being left behind. If the people with a better economic status get too greedy the people with less monetary resources will rise and disturb the peace that there once was between the two groups. We do not need to refer to text books to see this. This is happening right now, this will be part of our history.

Any civilization to be successful needs a ruler. Politics are fundamental for any nation, civilization, or tribe to be successful. Without a ruler everyone would do what ever they wanted. A ruler sets rules to his or her group, although historically almost all rulers have been men, we can not discard the idea that some past civilizations also had female rules. Politics goes hand in hand with economics, politicians set rules for economic prosperity, good politicians want to better their community with having a good economic status. Good politicians want a fair treatment of their people it does not matter if they are poor or rich.  The fist Americans who settled down in this new country had a ruler or someone whom they followed. Some one who made plans and kept them together as a group. Once they moved they moved because their ruler believed that they had better chances of survival out of the place where they had first settled. In modern day a country could not function without a ruler, maybe not the entire nation agrees with what the ruler decides to do with the country, but without a ruler the nation would be lost and collapse. 

Politics are often misunderstood by normal people like us, because we are promised many thins by the politicians who try to gain our trust so we can choose them as our rulers, but once they are in the ruling chair they forget about all the promises they made and take a different on what they call politics. This happened in ancient times as well, that is why many nations came to an end or separated. Many nations came to be by the fall of other nations. 

Cultural diffusion happens everyday in modern day world. But back in the time of our ancestors cultural diffusion took too long to happen because for many years people were isolated. Even though our ancestors migrated most of their lives cultural diffusion was hard because most of the world was not populated and making contact with other people was difficult. Most cultural diffusion started to happen when trading began. People everywhere were trading not only goods, but culture as well. When the English settled in North Carolina they had to have contact with Native Americans and their culture, same for Native Americans who had contact with the new people settling in their land. The new Americans had to share land with people who had a very different cultural background, they had to learn from them to survive and adapt to the new environment. It is believed that when they abandoned their camp ground they could have united with the Native Americans to become one group and settle together as one. We will never know because they left no traces of where they were going when they left. But living with the Natives could have given way to a whole new culture that includes both Native American and New American roots. 

All in all, we have learned that history is hard to fully understand and that it is ever changing and on going. We are making history today, that will be read in text books in the future. Culture, Politics, Demography, Geography, and Economics are all part of our history. They are the most fundamental part of who we are today and they are what shape out future, weather its a good thing or a bad thing. We depend on all these things because with out them we would not be able to exist. We all strive towards a better tomorrow and without this fundamentals we would not be able to have a developing world. 

Bibliography

Armesto-Fernandez, Felipe. The World. 2007

Time Team America. Fort Raleigh, North Carolina. PBS.COM. 2009

http://video.pbs.org/program/time-team-america/

History Detectives. Titanic Picture Frame, Woolworth Signs, Nazi Spy Toys. 

http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives