By Emily Wexler
Sorry this is so late!!!
During class, we talked about three main areas. We talked about Europe, China and the Song Dynasty, and the Muslim world. The over-all theme of the chapter seemed to be nomadic invaders and how each place dealt with them, and how that affected the success of that empire. The Europeans generally fought off the invaders, whereas the Muslims immediately let in the invaders. This completely eliminated the idea of continuous conflict and gained more allies and supporters of Islam. The Song dynasty essentially payed off the invaders to not attack them and kept them at arm’s length until the invaders decided to become Chinese. This was more effective than fighting them off, but the process of waiting for the invaders to become Chinese took a while and they had to give up a lot of their wealth.
In the Islamic world, the Turks invaded and completely altered the political framework of the Islamic world but did not change the culture of it.
We also discussed the crusades and how they were an outgrowth from pilgrimage. They essentially turned into armed pilgrimages. The notion of holy war came out of this and Christianity justified the violence of these crusades.
Sufism was also talked about in class. Sufism is a mystical version of Islam. It was not widely accepted by legal-minded Muslims because Sufis tolerated cultural differences among Muslims and non-Muslims in a way the legal-minded Muslims could not.
By Adam Horowitz.Today in class we discussed many different empires and kingdoms. We started off focusing on the four main regions of the world in terms of empires: China, Rome, India, and Persia. We began looking around 200 A.D., with the Han, Mauryan, Parthian and Roman empires in these places. We saw how nomads affected almost all of the empires and how China’s circular geography, its economic independence and openness to foreigners made them less vulnerable to nomads. We looked forward to around 500 A.D. where China was separated into many kingdoms, Rome was separated in the poorer Western Rome and the Byzantine Empire, India was fragmented and Persia was united under the Sassinians. We looked onward as Arabs took over the Sassinian Empire and Germanic kingdoms were permanently set up in Western Rome while the Byzantine continued Roman tradition with things like similar law codes. Next we discussed the development of new small kingdoms all over the world in places like Japan and Tibet as large empires like the Han were temporarily weakened, allowing these kingdoms to exist and sometimes even expand.
By Emily Wexler
Today during AP history, we discussed chapter 5 of the textbook. We talked about how trade played such an important role in the development of the Pheonecians, the Assyrian Empire, and the Greek culture. Trade was facilitated in different ways in each society. The Pheonecians were known for developing an alphabet which made communication easier which, in turn, makes trade with urban communities a lot easier. In the Assyrian Empire, mega structures facilitated trade because they brought different people and cultures together. In class, we established that the main question of this chapter is why some societies flourished in this time (between 1000 and 500 B.C.E) while others didn’t? We came to the conclusion that the amount a society flourished is dependent on their ability to maximize trade. The more trade, the more successful the society is.
By Philip Schmiege
Today in class we went over all of the questions in chapter 4. We discussed the features of the river vallies, and how those 5 features were spread in 3 different ways over Eurasia, especially the Hittite, Mycenean, Cretian, Harappan, Egytian, and Chinese civilizations. Aside form these features and how they spread, we also talked about how the environment influenced the societies and even helped some of them collapse. That a society needs to work in balance with nature, and with a changing environment they will either die, change, or survive. After going though the questions, we discussed how this period was a climacteric, and not a revolution.
By Molly Ratner
Today in class we talked about the four great river valleys and how these places developed differently than the rest of the world. Furthermore, we discussed the positive and negative effects of the environmental transformations caused by humans such as population increase, sex economic specialization, a new social ranking process, and heirarchy. In addition, we discussed the ecology of the four civilizations and how their environments allowed them to flourish. All four of the civilizations had different seasonal patterns which allowed them to exploit their environment. We also talked about political and state power in the valley societies and the power of the rulers. Then we discussed the advantages and drawbacks of writing.
By Adam Horowitz
Today in AP class we discussed agriculture. We started off with the disadvantages of agriculture, like vulnerability to natural disasters and lack of population control. We tried to answer where agriculture might have begun, and were tricked by the question because it began in different places at different times independently. We went over 7 theories of how agriculture might have begun and the problems with these theories. We ended the class discussing why the switch to agriculture was more of a climacteric than a revolution, slow and likely unintentional.
P.S. I only have three categories that I can post my blog under for some reason, so this is going under classroom.
So, we began the class with a wonderfully academic discussion about Youtube, which, might I add, brought up some very funny videos which I have now enjoyed. Afterwards, getting serious, we discussed the first developments of three major parts of human society: the ability to adapt to new situations, beginning specialization, and the start of culture. Beginning from before the ice age, and ending after the ice was retreating, we discussed how people lived their lives according to these intense changes in their environment. Generally, when climate changes, people’s way of life changes because they need to find new food sources. Unlike what is generally perceived about the ice age about it only bringing hardships to the people of the time period, we noticed how the Ice Age was actually a very productive – concerning obtaining food and developing culture – time period. This tells us how the people after the Ice Age began to think more and more about culture and their roles in it. Focusing not only on food gathering allowed new roles in society to arise.
One thing that we discussed briefly in class that interested me is that our first notion when we think about people in previous time periods is how much worse their lives must have been without the aspects of culture that we have now. It’s very hard to believe that because they didn’t know of things we have now, they were perfectly content with what they had then. It’s very surreal to me to not even be able to conceive of everyday items that we have now and noticing how the measurement of wealth changes over time because of new advances.
The blog for the World History AP course is designed to supplement the main blog for the World History course. We will only be using this blog to record summaries of the discussions we have in class on Thursday.
The first class was on Wednesday, 12 September. During this class we discussed Alfred Crosby’s The Children of the Sun. In this book, Crosby argues how human history can be understood by the changing relationship between humans the energy produced by the sun. Since the beginning of human history, humans have been dependent on the suns. Major shifts have occurred in human society based on the different ways in which humans have managed to exploit the energy of the sun. With each new method, the demand for energy has increased, and humans have needed to search for new ways to get access to solar energy. The book concludes with the recent experiments with fission and fusion that are would provide humans with a new and important source of energy. Some of the interesting points raised in the discussion was how Crosby seems to assume that technology is the answer to humans’ problems. He does not consider the alternative of trying to conserve energy and finding more ways to maximize what energy we do use.
