I find it fascinating that one of the long distance trade routes was the Sahara...while riding a camel. With this road civilizations in the Mediterranean would be able to own North Africa goods, and vice versa. This route was well known have having merchants of gold but it's main trading good was salt, which the merchants would later be trekking their ways to the transshipment. Slowly caravans came into the picture but this was all to help trade expand further faster. Basically creating the first integrating system of "international commerce", it was no longer a domestic trade. Moving on to...Nomads. I knew what a nomad was, but I took them as innocent people just following the beat of their own drum or should I say animals, but learning they were aggressive and extorting China of its goods was definitely a shocker. Nomads thrive off of their livestock. They relied heavily on China's produced agricultural goods such as grains for their livestock. This led to noma...
Chapter 4 covers my favorite topic, Religion. Although to many it’s a touchy subject, and in today’s day and age everyone’s biased in one way or another – it’s still one of my favorites. It’s pretty amazing that these religions weren’t just a duty of faith back then, they were a lifestyle and your cultural roots are solely built on the foundation of your religion. In the reading you see that some religions were started by individuals such as Jesus and Buddha – both trickling from an older faith like Judaism and Hinduism, but in the end they’re the most “average joe” like that teach everyone it’s possible to be an “average joe” but maintain a relationship with your God. And going back to chapter 3 with the Chinese and Roman empires, you now see that these two faiths had the biggest influences in those 2 regions and still being practiced today – it’s amazing!