Chapter 6: Commonalities and Variations

Hello and welcome back to my blog! A lot has happened in the last few days, including the Call to Action Day. I had a memorable experience and I hope to be able to do more works of service in the future. Now, let's get back to the discussion!

For this post, we will be discussing Chapter 6: Commonalities and Variations. In this chapter, we will compare and contrast Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific Oceania. If we look at our timeline, this falls under the 500 B.C.E - 1200 C.E.

Continental Comparisons 

- By the second- wave era the continent with the biggest population was Euroasia followed by Africa, North America, Central/ South America and lastly, Australia/ Oceania

- Euroasia was home to more than 85% of the world's population

- In terms of writing, in the Americas, the writing was limited to Mesoamerican regions and was highly developed among the Maya. On the other hand, writing Africa was limited to the northern and northeastern part of the continent

-The North African coastal region was incorporated into the Roman Empire and used to produce wheat and olives on large estates labor

- Christianity spread widely across North Africa, giving rise to some of the early more permanent footholds in the lands now known as Ethiopia.

Civilizations in Africa 
- Africa had many environmental variations. Mediterranean climate in the northern and southern extremes, large deserts, larger regions of Savanah grasslands and tropical rainforests

-The Kingdom of Meroë: governed, by an all-powerful and sacred monarch. The city housed urban centers with a wide variety of economic specialties-- merchants, weavers, potters, masons, The wealth and military power 

- Axum: the making of a Christian Kingdom - introduced to the Christian World

Civilizations of Mesoamerica 
- geography: rugged mountainous terrain, sharp changes in the landscape ascending from sea level to summit gave rise to an enormous range of microclimates

- Accounts often focus primarily on the Aztec and Inca empires

- The Maya: Writing and Warfare- intellectuals, probably priests, developed a mathematical system that included the concept of zero and place notation and was capable of complex calculations

- The Maya drained swamps, terraced hillsides, flattened ridgetops, and constructed an elaborate water- management system

- Teotihuacán: The Americas' Greatest City- an enormous city with broad avenues, the largest urban complex in the Americas at the time

Civilizations of the Andes 

-  a separate center civlization in the Americas

-  Was near the Pacific Ocean which provided a rich marine environment with an endless supply of seabird and fish

-The Andes had towering mountain chains and highland valleys

-The most well-known of the civilizations to take shape in this environment was the of the Incas which encompassed practically the entire region

Alternatives to Civilizations 

- Bantu Africa: Cultural encounters and Social Variation- accelerating movement of the Bantu- speaking peoples, cultures and technologies into the enormous subcontinent.

- Pacific Oceania: Peoples of the Sea- covering about one-third of the world's surface, the Pacific Ocean encompasses thousands of islands which were too many distinct societies but also constituted a cultural region that shared numerous commonalities and connections.

This is the end of this blog post. I hope you were able to learn a lot! till the next post!