Unit 1: The Global Tapestry(织锦)
1.0 History Stories
Themes of History
Humans and the Envirionment
Natural resources and climate shape human culture. That is why people in the Middle East believe hell is super hot, while the Vikings who came from frosty Scandinavia, imagined it must be a terribly cold.
- Agriculture
- Settlements
- Geography
- Climate
- Migration
- Population growth
- Disease
- Natural disasters
- Climate change
- Pollution
Cultural Developments and Interactions(CDI)
Culture is what makes us, us. It’s the fabric that ties our societies together through shared ideas, beliefs, and traditions.
Culture differs dramatically from place to place, but cross-cultural exchange has frequently produced entirely new cultural practices.
- Religion
- Conversion
- Syncretism
- Belief systems
- Music
- Art
- Architecture
- Literature
- Language
- Fashion
Governance
Who has the right to rule?
- Empires
- Governments
- Politics
- Nations
- Revolutions
- Military
- Wars
- Taxes
- Ideology
How a state is formed, expanded, governed, and collapsed?
Economic
How we make, distribute, trade, and consume stuff.
night soil = people poopl 大便
flotillas of feces 一排排粪便
Who does the labor and who makes the profit?
- Money
- Production
- Distribution
- Consume
- Resources
- Trade
- Labor
- Industry
- Capitalism
- Socialism
Social Interactions and Organization(SIO)
All societies develop ideas about how people ought to interact with each other. How communities in different parts of the world have organized themselves.
forbade 禁止
silver clasp, tobacco pouch 银扣，烟草袋
exiled 流放
- Gender
- Class
- Race
- Ethnicity
- Inequality
- Familial
- Kin group
- Hierachy
- Social norms
Technology and Innovation(TEC)
Lenscrafters 亮视点（眼镜品牌）
Technology changes over time.
- Technology
- Innovation
- Science
- Scientific method
- Scholar
- Method
- Development
- Technique
- Ideas
- Machine
- Knowledge
1.2 Developments in Asia
Anyone who knows, and knows that he knows, makes the steed of intelligence leap over the vault of heaven. 任何知道并知道自己知道的人，都能使智慧的骏马跃过天穹。
Anyone who does not know, but knows that he does not know can bring his lame little donkey to the destination nonetheless. 任何不知道的人，但知道他不知道的人，仍然可以把他的瘸腿小驴带到目的地。
Anyone who does not know, and does not know hat he does not know is stuck forever in double ignorance. 任何一个既不知道，又不知道自己不知道的人，永远陷在双重无知中。
– al-Tusi
Islamic Golden Age(8th-14th centuries)
At the center of Afro-Eurasia, a series of Islamic political entities connected the regions of this landmass with each other.
欧亚非中心是中东伊斯兰。
But as well as raising questions of geography (space), it raises questions of chronology (time).
plague 瘟疫
rice paddies 大米稻田
mulberry leaves (for silkworms to eat)
In the 1120s the Song government itself began issuing money, producing the world’s first government issued paper money.
Song Dynasty(960 CE - 1279 CE), cultural achievements
- China: silk
- India: cotton/spices
- West Africa: gold
- Rome: Wool
over land by caravan 大篷车
- gunpowder
- movable type printing
- compass
- silk production
Yuan(Mongol) Dynasty(CE 960 - CE 1279)
Dar-al-Islam 1200–1450
In the thirteenth century, the Islamic golden age ended with the political fragmentation of the Abbasid Caliphate. However, Islam as a belief system emerged stronger than ever.
A golden age
The conquests and prosperity of the Abbasid Empire started the Golden Age of Islam that would last until the thirteenth century. Many of the foundational ideas and technologies of our modern world are based on the innovations of Islamic scholars of this period. It was these scholars who preserved ancient Greek and Roman texts.
We have translations of the work of Socrates and Plato today because they were translated and preserved in Arabic.
But inhabitants of the Islamic world in this period did more than preserve past knowledge. They also innovated. The conquests of the Abbasids had connected a network of scholars and merchants, spreading ideas quickly across vast distances.
sorghum 高粱
Merchants spread sorghum from Africa and rice, cotton, and sugarcane from India.
The Islamic Golden Age was centered in Baghdad(伊拉克的首都), the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, where caliphs built a “House of Wisdom”.
Today, we still use Arabic numerals, algebra, and the concept of zero, all of which were pioneered by Islamic scholars.
https://www.worldhistory.org/Mongol_Empire/
The Mongol Empire (1206-1368) was founded by Genghis Khan (r. 1206-1227), first Great Khan or ‘universal ruler’ of the Mongol peoples. Genghis forged the empire by uniting nomadic tribes of the Asian steppe and creating a devastatingly effective army with fast, light, and highly coordinated cavalry. Eventually, the empire dominated Asia from the Black Sea to the Korean peninsula.
Ibn Battuta’s experience was very different. A Muslim scholar from Morocco, his extensive travels took him from Mali in West Africa, along the Mediterranean coast, all over the Indian Ocean, and possibly to China in the early fourteenth century. Unlike Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta found himself at home everywhere he traveled. Moving through the vast, unified cultural world of Dar al-Islam, Ibn Battuta met merchants, scholars, and rulers who could speak the same language (Arabic) and who shared many of the same beliefs and values.
Whether you’re Venetian, Moroccan, or Martian, you can’t deny that the expansion of a unified cultural world of Dar al-Islam after 1200 still has relevance today. A great deal of our modern science, math, and medicine rests on foundations pioneered in the Islamic golden age. The spread of Islam across the Indian Ocean shaped the religious, social, and cultural geography of our world. Of the world’s over 1.8 billion Muslims alive today, two-thirds live outside the Middle East.
1.8 billion people around the world are Muslims. Centered around the Middle East.
Muslims believe in a single god, Allah.
Muhammad who lived in the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century CE received a revelation from god, a holy book called the Quran.
The Five Pillars of Islam:(伊斯兰教的五功)
- Declaration of faith
- Daily prayer
- Fasting during Ramadan(勒紧，斋戒)
- Giving to the poor
- Pilgrimage to Mecca（一生去一次）
Islam was created by Muhammad(穆罕默德, 先知, Prophet) in Mecca(Arabian Peninsula) since 622.
Islam spreading time period(600-1500)
Islam or Quran’s teachings are somewhat a kind of repeated or refined teaching of Jews and Christians, it retains certain aspects of the faith and practice of Jews and Christians.
herders or foragers 牧民和觅食者
steppes 草原
pious Muslims 虔诚的
Lesson 3: 1.3—State Building in the Americas(1200-1450)
The communities of the Americas—from political organization to cultural practices—remained diverse before 1450. No “single story” can cover the history of this vast area in this period. Overall, it was an era of increasing connections between societies. It was also an era, as these three stories reflect, in which some very large states emerged in several separate regions.
Aztec(1700s, North America)
their worship of polytheistic deities often related to the Sun, Earth, and water. Three major cultural groups,
The Aztecs built pyramids in the Mesoamerican style, dedicated them with human sacrifices, and created city zones for priest-leaders, artisans, families, and merchants, and major markets. Their religion included careful calculation of calendars with a 52-year cycle which predicted an impending apocalypse that had to be postponed with the blood of human sacrifices. Food included hydroponically grown vegetables, and such delicacies as avocados.
Mayapan(Yucatán,Mexico,central america, 1200,墨西哥的考古遗址)
Mayapan was built with a typical plaza, pyramids, and ball courts, and it became increasingly important as a trading power dealing in cotton, salt, and other products of the Caribbean.
Maya culture achievements—especially its mathematical, calendrical, astronomical, writing, and artistic development—continued in Mayapan, with clear influences from the Toltec culture. Nevertheless, the city was abandoned about 1450.
Inca(1100, South America)
Inca ruled the Andes from today’s Colombia into Argentina, from the Pacific coast into the Amazon rainforest.
to pay tribute 上贡