Chapter 12

I never attempted to address how pastoral life or paleolithic life made it into the modern period. In Australia, the Americas, and North Africa had thriving civilizations that had not yet converted to the modern way of life. Australia remained gather hunters well into the 18th century, America had chiefdoms and small village societies. Other nations had tribes like the Igbo and Iroquis who were present and updated with agriculture but had nothing to do with other large empires besides trade. DUring this time period China and Europe were both recovering from the fall of the mongouls. Both went back to their pre mongoul views and ways of life. China during their Ming Dynasty had a chance to become a real powerhouse due to their strong naval system. They gave up on maritime which lead the Europeans to control the oceans and the land that it surrounded. At the time the land was need because they were searching for help against muslim powers.. Muslim powers grew substantially over this time but also divided as the practice spread. Five empires  all with turkic influences took over  southeast asia.

Mongals

Were the Mongals more than just cruel barbaric people? They are introduced  in most history books just as they are threatening or conquering civilizations. What they fail to talk about is how the Mongals took advantage of their land by building an empire or the influx of cultural and the effect of the interactions they had with people of different regions. Russia's land was used to continue their pastoral way of life and exploited pesant Russians into slavery. They even produced a trading network that further connected trade between the two ends of the eurasian world. This lead to a diplomatic relationship across the Eurasian countries especially China and Persia. They also brought the black death across the Western europe and the middle east.

Chapter 10 Christianity

Although Christianity is popular in western civilizations today (the Americas) a majority of the religion resides in eastern civilizations such as  Asia and Africa, I found that interesting due to the fact the Europe was the main adopter of the Christian religion. In Africa and Asia, Christianity was prominent, but with the adoption of certain ideas come different interpretations from different people and groups. Surprisingly there are multitudes of denominations of the Christian faith and that leads to conflict and contoversy everywhere. While they were seen in these areas they also werent the main religion. Most places like the Middle East already had and established religion or practice embedded into their culture. So how was it able to spread? Especially since Rome the home of Christianity ceases to exist the way it once did. The book doesnt really explain how it happend but it talks about how Western Rome rebuilt itself after its collapse. With no central government western europe was succeotable to conquest and became the victim to many invasions. Even with this the bounce back in the New Age of european civilization was immense. They expanded bringing Christianity with them and grew into independent states which had their own distinct languages and cultures. Monarchs held rule over these nations and the upbringing of urbanization helped women find job oppotunities. While the western rome empire was coming back the eastern part of the Roman empire was fending off Arab and turkish invasions. To answer the question from earlier, the Crusades allowed for the expansion of Christianity as the europeans and other nations fought to gain control of the holy ground they claim as their own.

Chapter 8

Now of all the countries and nations we have talked about thus far,China had the greatest chance at becoming  a nation that ruled all of Asia. I mean for crying out loud they had EVERYTHING and even found the time to invent things like gunpowder and paper that still has a large impact on life today. They acknowledged thair superiority and had a hold on early nomadic nations. After a while however it turned out that more nations were extorting China and really didnt fear them as much as a nation like Rome or even Athens wouldve been feared. The ending of the Han dynasty seemed to  be the ending of a strongly feared nations as the Tang and Song dynasties focused more on attempting to unify all of China. Out of their reign came an emergence of a state structure and a political presence that nations from all over eastern Asia would come to adopt. Civilizations like Korea and Vietnam were victms of conquest but slowly got their freedom as time progressed. They used this freedom to come into China's tribute system and allowed them to access goods and adopt their rendition of the Chinese political system. They differ from each other in ways that made vietnam more independent and allowed for women to be more free. Vietnam was able to obtainirrigation systems from China before having their own unique identity, they had their own language and placed women at a high role than in the more confuscian Korea. Japan voluntarily yielded to Chinas's tribute system and for the same reasons as most nations; to exploit goods and services from China. Being an island of the coast, Japan beilieved they had no immeadiate threat from China allowing them to be more risky with adopting their polotical systems and beliefs. One idea that varried from nation to nation was the acceptance of buddism. Because of the silk road buddism was able to make it all the way to China but didnt really sit well with cinfuscian views of native China of all nations has been the one that couldve had the most power yet continually be taken advantage of? Maybe that could be a new research topic.