Join Carole P. Roman and travel through time to visit the most interesting civilizations throughout history in her exciting new series. Learn what kind of food you might have eaten during the Middle Ages, the clothes you might wear, what your name could be, and children did for fun. If You Were Me and Lived in...does for history what her other award-winning series did for culture. So get on-board this time-travel machine and discover the world through the eyes of a young person just like you.
If You Were Me and Lived In...Ancient China: An Introduction to Civilizations Throughout Time (If Yo
The temple towns grew into city-states, which are considered the basis of the first true civilizations. At a time when only the most basic forms of transportation and communication were available, the city-state was the most governable type of human settlement. City-states were ruled by leaders called ensis. They were probably authorized to control the local irrigation systems. The food surplus provided by the farmers supported these leaders as well as priests, artists, craftsmen, and others.
Meso-America is the term used to describe the ancient settlements of Mexico and Central America. The earliest elaborate civilization known in the Americas is that of the Olmec of central Mexico. The Olmec lived in the lowlands of what are now Veracruz and Tabasco states from about 1200 bc. They left artifacts ranging from tiny jade carvings to huge monuments such as the volcanic rock statues at San Lorenzo. These monuments suggest the existence of an organized and diverse society with leaders who could command the work of artisans and laborers. Among the many other complex pre-Columbian civilizations in Central and South America were the Chavín, Nazca, Moche, and Inca of Peru, the Chibcha and Tairona of Colombia, the Marajoara and Tapajó of Brazil, the Maya of the Yucatán Peninsula, and the Aztec of Mexico. (See also American Indians; Middle American Indians; Central American and Northern Andean Indians; Central Andean Indians; Rainforest Indians; South American Nomadic Indians.)
Archaeologists working in conjunction with medical anthropologists have established that our ancestors up through the beginning of the Industrial Revolution incorporated strenuous physical activity as a normal part of their daily lives - and not only for the daily, subsistence requirements of their "work" lives. Investigations of preindustrial societies still intact today confirm that physical capability was not just a grim necessity for success at gathering food and providing shelter and safety (Eaton, Shostak, Konner 1988). Physical activity was enjoyed throughout everyday prehistoric life, as an integral component of religious, social, and cultural expression. Food supplies for the most part were plentiful, allowing ample time for both rest and recreational physical endeavors.
Public health has always been a major factor influencing the ways how water supply has been solved by societies. The source of water supply was chosen according to its salubrity: clear, odourless water e.g. from springs or wells was preferred. Already from antiquity it was known that certain kinds of water caused health problems. Stagnant and marshy waters were avoided throughout times. New waterborne health hazards were recognized from the 19th century onwards: microbes, chemical pollutants.
Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the scale of the Greek economy grew during the Archaic period and if not per capita, at least in proportion to the clear growth in population. Population increases and the desire for more land were the primary impetuses for a colonizing movement that established Greek poleis throughout the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions during this period. These new city-states put more land under cultivation, thereby providing the agriculture necessary to sustain the growing population. Moreover, archaeological evidence for the dispersal of Greek products (particularly pottery) over a wide area indicate that trade and manufacturing had also expanded greatly since the Dark Age. It is probably no coincidence that the end of the Archaic period witnessed for the first time a divergence between the designs of merchant vessels and warships, a distinction that would become permanent. Also, after the invention of coinage in Asia Minor in the early sixth century B.C., even though various other forms of money and barter continued to be employed throughout the course of ancient Greek history, the Greeks were quick to adopt coinage and it became the predominant means of exchange from the end of the sixth century onward. The aforementioned economic trends are traced in an important recent book by David Tandy, who argues that they had a fundamental impact on the development of the social and political organization and values of the Archaic polis.
King Manual I of Portugal had a large influence on bringing spices to his country. Several sea voyages helped establish a trade route to India. By AD 1501, via the port of Lisbon, Portugal had large quantities of Indian spices such as cinnamon, cassia, ginger, pepper, nutmeg, mace, and cloves. The King sent trade missions to develop new markets for his spices throughout Europe, especially in Germany. As the spice wealth poured into Lisbon, the Portuguese crown monopolized the lucrative but risky pepper trade. Cargoes of East Indian vessels were sold at high prices by the King of Portugal to large European syndicates. As in medieval times, the price of pepper served as a barometer for European business in general.
In early times, writing system and paper were the main medium to convey cultural symbols. People from outside could investigate the culture, then wrote down the introduction of a certain symbol in their own languages, and record the whole history of how meanings were constructed through generations. As a type of media, books are expected to be formal, knowledgeable, overall and logical when conveying information, in both the content and the way of narratives. So for Others, if they read a book about Dragon, they will very likely to be informed of the context and the process of how meanings are constructed behind this cultural symbol.
Among all of the ancient Near Eastern prophetic voices, I find a Judean prophetess named Huldah to be the most interesting. She lived in Jerusalem during the second half of the 7th century B.C., and after a scroll of the Torah was found during renovations in the Temple, the highest officials of the kingdom (who were baffled about its meaning) brought the scroll to Huldah, a prominent woman (2 Kings 22), and she provided an accurate (and damning) interpretation. By the way, this reminds me to emphasize two very common misconceptions about ancient prophets: (a) many people assume that pretty much all prophets were men. This is not actually the case: throughout the ancient Near Eastern world, there were male and female prophets; and (b) many people assume that prophecy is an ancient Near Eastern phenomenon that was limited to Israel and Judah. This is not actually the case either: in reality, prophets are a broadly attested ancient Near Eastern phenomenon, as we have references to prophets and seers in texts written in Akkadian, Egyptian, Aramaic, Ammonite, and Hebrew (among others).
In the USA, the slave-based begotten wealth has mostly been passed down to present beneficiaries like you, me, and mostly non-Black people. Additionally, this slave-begotten wealth has been distributed throughout the entire world, and the energy of injustice attached to it. This kind of wealth, when not reconciled, becomes a ticking time bomb of a curse that degrades our humanity, relationships, mental health, emotional health, intellectual reasoning, logic, peace, happiness, and stability in general. The viruses of injustice and hypocrisy that were first visited upon the foundational wealth builders (Black slaves and their descendants) have been in the works for hundreds of years, waiting for the right time to manifest in the form of worldwide communism. 2ff7e9595c
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