Oct 26 part 3 & Chapter 7

Part 3 was a fun and easy read. I think what I found most interesting was the part about people trading Goods. It made me think of how we today like imported items. Of course some people love the made in the USA motto but then there's the other part about traveling the world. With today's technology we love taking our pictures with their cell phones. There's a good chance then if we were in Hawaii we will be taking pictures of the great landscapes and water I would also think we would try the local food. Let's travel overseas to a different country. If I was in Germany I'm going to try schnitzel, try many different beers, drive really fast on the autobahn in a Porsche or Mercedes, which I did. If I was in Japan I'm eat all types sushi, try the Kobe beefs, ride the super safe trains and the super fast bullet train and probably climb My Fuji, which I did. So back to part 3, it's good to know that people traveled a long way to exchange goods and to know other people's cultures.
Chapter 7 starts with silk and how it became huge demand for the rich. The good thing is it everybody prospered from it. Farmers/peasants had to care for the silkworms. The middle class and poor had jobs making the material and transport of material. The cost of transportation was high back in those days it was all by Caravan/animals hauled the goods and people walked the distance if they were not riding the animals. It would take weeks to get from point A to point B. Let me put this in prospective. Luoyang, China to boarder of Iran is about 4200 km is about 2600 miles. San Francico, CA to Tallahassee, FL is about 2670 miles. That would be about 35 days if you did 74 miles per day according to google maps. So if you were to walk from San Francisco to Santa Cruz in a day just do that for 35 straight days with goods.  But it was more like 30 miles a days (NDNU to San Jose) which would take them a bit under 90 days for 4200 km not to mention the stops on the way to trade.  Now that sounds pretty crazy. I'm sure that add more value to the silk. The silk would be made in China and then travel across Asia to the Mediterrean sea mapped through places like Turkestan, Bactria, India, Persia and Arabia. Now to make it even tougher for the travelers were the other tolls on their bodies such as the horrible negative cost of disease. People are traveling to foreign lands their bodies would transport infectious diseases such as smallpox measles the plague anthrax Etc. Not only would it make people sick he killed over 25% of their armies.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sep 7

Evidence Document I.I A Paleolithic Woman in the Twentieth Century In 1971 Marjorie Shostakovich the anthropologist meet a "bush lady" on the border of Botswana and South Africa in the Kalahari desert. She name was Nisa and was about 50 years old.  What I found interesting is that she lived a life that is interesting in many ways. As a child she played like a child and big sister. She would carry her new born little brother on her shoulders to play. Some parents would think this would be a bit dangerous and not a good idea. An instinct of a crying baby might be that he was hungry and Nisa as a child brought him to their mother to nurse. Awesome baby sitter in my opinion. As they grew older they played often.  Some parents might consider some of it to be rough and dangerous in the wild bush which formed a strong family bond. They would gather food like berries and beans together and sometimes help father with the animal traps. Their father would often be out hunting and ret...
Read more

Sep 5

Chapter 1 - First Farmer Humans were giving the guidance to subdue the earth.  In time some decided to explore, wonder and claim new land for ourselves. I like to wonder and discover new stuff.  It started off in the area of what we know as Africa and went to the Middle East.  Many years later we did pretty much cover the entire earth which was livable. Place like Antarctica have land but why too much cold to survive. Along the travel we found and learned so many things such as new plants to eat and animals to hunt. This brings us to the first human societies which were in the range of 25-50 people. We probably discovered that we are strong and more efficient working as a team than solo.  At the time men and women were equal. The men did most of the hunting and fishing while the women did most of the food gathering. By the numbers the food gather consist of about 70% and the meat was about 30%.  You would think by these numbes the women provided most of the fo...
Read more

Chapter 19 Empires in Collision

Who knew that in the early 1900s there was a drug problem with opium.  The British used it as a powerful trade advantage.  In the 1835-1836  opium made up over 50% of their trading commodity.  It damaged China because so many people were addicted to it that it destroyed so many families. There was also a rise of the New East Asian Power.  Japan created it own empire at the expense of China and Korea.  Japan had 250 years of peace. 1600-1850.  During that time they created a separate  currency, law, military, ect. By 1902 Japan made a name for themselves and known as one of the great powers of the world. During the war with China, Japan prevailed in 1895.  During the war with Russia in 1905 the same happened.  The Japanese military was strong.
Read more