The preface and combination of Chapter 4 when I was scanning through before actually diving into reading it seemed a little daunting and well, boring. I've been finding it easier to take notes on what I'm reading and then going back to highlighting points that our teacher covers in class which I have in my notes. I found this method to be most helpful for the next chapter because it shows me what I've focused on too much and what I seemed to skip over in a daze.
Out of Chapter 4 the most fascinating thing to me were the points about the Greek Golden Era. The 50+ years that followed after the defeat of the Persian allowed for a transformation from small competing city-states of Greek to come together and unify for a common purpose. This common purpose extended into a peace period where what developed would go on to be the most remembered thing about this Greek civilization. Like Prof Andrews mentioned in class the Golden Age of the Greeks gave way to the start of famous Greek culture, including the Parthenon, Greek theatre, philosophy and some of the greatest Philosophers, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, etc...
The play off the Golden Era I think allowed for the writings of our handout regarding the war between the Persians and Greeks. Before the peace period that came after this war there would not have been the unity or cohesion between the city-states of Greece for a document like this to exist. It's amazing to think that if one event had not had occurred that another event would not have either, as in the case of this war. If it had not occurred no document would have been written as I said before.
This golden era struck my attention most I think because it was what I happened to remember from my 7th grade World History class. I remember tracing maps of the Greek peninsula and the land mass, Peloponnesus stuck in my head and when it was brought up in class brought me back to the time of easy 7th grade classes... which I know miss compared to these college classes. However while I think that the Greek Golden Era is extremely fascinating I still can't help but wonder what other civilizations existed around them that Paleontologists or Archaeologists have not discovered.
Going back to the first wave of first civilizations I still have an interest in the Indus Valley civilization, like I said before they were a people of over 40,000 citizens! That's a huge number that cannot just go unnoticed as magnificent. I start to wonder if at the time of the Ancient Greeks and Persians if there were civilizations that existed in the Americas, Australia, or various parts of Africa. Maybe this is just me speculating and not being as well knowing in World History as our Professor but it still always makes me wonder to how many other civilizations existed in these similar time periods that have too gone unnoticed.
It is very interesting how you say that if we knew more about the Indus Valley, maybe we would be a different society. If at least we knew how to decipher their language we would understand their culture, religion, and of the why their city planning was important to them.
ReplyDeleteI like how you talked about the Greek civilization being able to advance its technology after defeating the Persians. I think it shows what people are capable of when left peacefully to work on their own society. I think it is good to question whether or not other regions that we don't talk about as much and if they had as many people as the ones that we do learn about.
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