Blog #4

In this part of the reading, I learned a lot about an age of accelerating connections. I really enjoyed reading about different things during this Era from 500-1500.

The first thing though caught my eye was about Women and Men in Early Islam. This stood out to me because in history you hear a lot about the men and occasionally about women.  I really wanted to see how women were looked at and treated during the early part of Islam.  So how was the relationship between men and women? In this chapter is stated that women were viewed as being inferior and subordinate. The men had control over the women because according to Islam and who they worshipped, Allah.  The men had authority over women because they were superior and they spent their wealth to maintain them. During the early part of Islam and even today, women are obedient; they are taught to not show any part of their body because they should keep it guarded just as Allah has guarded them. I also found it interesting when the book mentioned about “honor killing”.  An honor killing is when male relatives punish women for violating sexual taboos. When a woman is seen in a negative light they don’t only affect how people perceive them but as well as how the men are looked at.  This brought “threat to men and social stability, emerged in the hadiths, traditions about the sayings or actions of Muhammad, which became an important source of Islamic law” (p316).  I found the early part of Islam to be interesting because it is so different from how we in the United States operate. Also taking a religion class this semester has helped me understand the different concepts in religion, which has helped me with this part of the text.

Continuing in the reading I learned about the exchange of peoples and cultures. The Mongol policy made skilled people to relocate to different parts of the empire that were either educated or a craftsmen.  With the development of people consistently traveling to different parts of the empire, it brought on exchange of ideas and techniques.  One thing that was brought by the Chinese that was interesting was acupuncture. Even though it was not really like in the Middle East because of the bodily contact, I didn’t realize how long acupuncture has been around. Going along with all this new technology brought in what everyone feared the plague also known as the Black Death.  The Black Death was brought by trade routes, from all the bacteria.  Trades routes carried “rodents and transmitted by fleas to humans, the plague erupted initially in 1331 in northeastern China and by 1347 had reached Western Europe” (357). Who would have thought that trade being such a great thing to be established to bring such a deadly experience?  The plague was known to be the first reported instance of “biological warfare” (357). Many even thought because so many had died from the Black Death, that it was the end of the world.  I just think how lucky we are to have vaccines that help maintain the spread of a disease that could kill thousands of us. But going back to the plague, the plague did not only bring death but it also hurt their economy. They did not have enough people to do the jobs, there really was not any funding for workers that wanted higher wages, but it did bring more opportunities for women to be employed.  It’s sad that it took something so drastic, but it got their foot in the door.

Lastly, I found interesting that the merchants called Pochteca were people who provided “every kind of merchandise such as can be met with in every land is for sale there, whether of food and victuals, or ornaments of gold and silver, or lead, brass, copper, tin, precious stones, bones, shells, snails and feathers” (384).  They were merchants that were willing to satisfy, that they even brought slaves to the Aztecs in order for bloody rituals.  The Aztec’s “cyclical to all of life and identified with their patron deity Huitzilopochtli, tended to lose its energy in a constant battle against encroaching darkness.”(385). So in order for them to boost energy, and end endless darkness, they believed they had to use human blood.  They believed that offering human blood would nourish the gods.  They see it as the gods before them shed blood in order to establish humankind, so it was only right if they offer blood to them. Which I found interesting, because many other religious groups offer food, or something spiritually, but they gave blood, which was pretty extreme. But I can understand how they thought offering blood would make the gods happy.