Hello Everyone! It's time for another Blog and it feels like it has been a while.
For some reason the beginnings and ends have always been the most interested to me. I have always been quite astounded of how things came to be or how things got to how they are now. In tonight's reading, the Ways of the World goes over the first civilizations that began it all.
At the very beginning of the chapter we get a little insight on how today people want to escape civilization, but the chapter primarily speaks about what started civilization. I kind of felt that this little section may have been interesting to bring up, but however it was really feels pointless. People will always complain, but a world outside civilization is not an easy one.
It is interesting how the creation of writing really had a big part in the creation of civilization. Written documents is extremely valued in today's society. If something is not in writing, it is not considered valid. Agreements, stories, lessons, expressions are all put down in writing. It plays a large role in our world and created a large role on the first civilizations.
Most of the first civilizations seems to have been created around the Europe and Asia areas which is no surprise because that's where the last chapter left us off at. Also the civilizations that existed in the desert areas had little rainfall so they had to rely greatly on the rivers that crossed their regions.
I am not sure if this is commonly known but what was a surprise to me is that the first civilizations didn't start 100s of years ago but it is believed and through a lot of evidence that the first civilizations began around 3500 to 3000 BC! That actually doesn't really feel so long ago especially since we already have about over 2000 years of written history, and double what we already have, civilization feels like it isn't such an old thing.
One thing I haven't touched up on in this blog is that this era was known as the Agricultural revolution. Which I always found it quite surprising that it took thousands upon thousands of years for groups of people to figure out how to grew their own plants and gardens. I personally believe that it is possible that people before this era did know how to grew their own plants, it just wasn't as wide of a practice. Let me explain my theory. If you think about it, there was definitely rainfall even in the distant past. So this should had caused plants to grew later which brought fruit. Unless the early people completely ate every seed in the fruits, they may have just thrown their waste on the ground. Over time the seed would get berried into the ground and when rain came, there began to grow a plant into that same spot. Sooner or later I am sure some people would had notice that there is some kind of occurrence or at least catch onto some kind of pattern.
Anyways, as we may have guessed, with the up-rise of agriculture came greed. People could grow as much as they wanted and perhaps not all people were fair. Also, since growing takes work, I am sure there was thieves so these people had to protect their food, and store it. From these steps came a chain of events, such as laws, someone to keep these laws in order, and so came the beginning of a new culture and kind of government. This lead to the first civilizations that we come to study today.
I can keep going on about this chapter, since it is a relatively long chapter, but that perhaps I can leave the rest in another blog. I want to cap up this blog by talking about the world Civilization. It is in the title of the chapter, but what is civilization? This is a question that can actually take up an entire blog as the main topic. The entire chapter talks about the first civilizations and how it all began, but briefly at the end talks about its definition. Today it can be seen as a completely different kind of definition such as meaning what is up to date or what matches up with today's standards.I personally say it means a person or culture of people who can communicate, get along, understand each other, and live together. The opposite of this would be uncivilized. Of course, people fighting amongst each other may not be considered civilized. Now, other ways I have heard people describe the word is by saying it is when people are up with today's dastards, or on par with today's society. So basically if you don't keep up with the latest trends or what is going on in the world today you are uncivilized. I personally, disagree with this view of it. First off I would be then uncivilized because I don't care about having the latest things or keeping up with pop culture or having to follow the newest trends or even having to do things in a new way, I am very true to keeping things the same way I was raised, or how I always put it, old fashioned. This doesn't make me uncivilized, maybe boring to some people, but I still my life normally like anyone else, I just don't have all this extra stuff. Well, no matter how you look at it, this word may just be a word or opinion.
Andrew Murillo
No comments:
Post a Comment