Xerena'sWorldHistoryBlog

In chapter 12, The Worlds of the Fifteenth Century, reading about the Aztec and the Inca empire caught my attention the quickest. I will admit that a good portion of it has to do with the fact that they are Latin places and since I am a Latina who is half Guatemalan and half Nicaraguense, I tend to lean towards things that are a bit similar. To me, reading about the past of all these different places, and the way things are and seeing the images makes me want to learn some more. For example, seeing the picture of Machu Picchu, led me to looking at other pictures of different places and gave me the idea of wanting to travel to all these other spanish speaking countries to learn about them presently since there are things I have learned about them from the past. Of course, the top places i would love to go to would be the two i listed above, but of course with all the political problems most places are going through, there is a hold off.  I loved the idea of reading,"female person ...

In the chapter of China and the World, what shocked me the most was the section on foot binding. I found this as a shock, but at the same time not surprised. I had heard a bit about foot binding in the past, but I had never seen images of what it was like/what the end result of it was. It's sad to know that that was how a society treats the women they have. Also, it's weird how having small feet was a "beauty" thing when in reality, all it did was make women's feet fairly ugly. It was interesting how "little feet" was more important than being mobile. They were limiting the abilities and such of women for something that in a way defeats its purpose. the way that they would basically bend a womans foot to a point where ones toes were bent over to where the heel was, was something so unpractical.

In this chapter reading about Asian Christianity and African Christianity were very interesting. It was a huge eyeopener and shock when it talked about the Jews and how Abraham offered to sacrifice his own son. To me it was a very "wow" and unexpected thing to read because it's just shocking to me how someone was willing to sacrifice their kid for God. It might just go back to the fact that I wasn't born religious, but even if I was, I don't think I could ever do that. No matter the time period. I also found it interesting how some people voluntarily turned to Islam and some people were "recruited" to different things. It's an interesting thing to think about how people easily turned when they had been following something for however long before that. As well as in Africa how there was a decline due to the rise of conversion to Islam. Overall, I generally have the same question in the back of my mind when it comes to the whole conversion thing.

I never grew up in a religious household but reading about other religions is fascinating in it's own way. Learning about how other religions do things and the growth on them is interesting especially since some similarities and the difference sometimes show.  Learning more about Islam was pretty interesting considering in past history classes the only thing that was really ever discussed was the Five Pillars, Allah, not eating pork and the Koran. While reading this chapter, it was interesting to learn more about it and the development of it. Especially when the growth of the city into about half a million people. To me that really stood out because a lot of what we have read about so far talked about a lot of development and growth in civilizations, so for a place to be able to expand to about half a million people, overall tied up a lot of what we learned in that aspect in my mind.

In chapter 7, the thing that fascinated me the most was the introduction of the camel. To know that an animal is capable of going 10 days without water was the first thing that pretty much shocked me. I always knew they could go sometime without water but I never knew it was for 10 days. It was cool to learn about how an animal  could make so much of an impact on a society. Even after all this time they are still being used, which shows how dependent they ultimately are. I remember learning about camels in school, but not much was told about where they originally started being, as well as how/what they used for and how they eventually expanded out, as well as what they were then used for after being expanded out.