Chapter 3

One thing in found interesting was that the Persian Empire was the largest empire in the world in 500 B.C.E. Their empire was essentially run by a monarchy. When the king dies the people have to shave their heads as a sign of mourning. Persians believed in a God known as Ahura Mazda. The Conquest reached from Egypt to India obtaining new languages, cultures, and states. Moving on to the Greeks. The population consisted of nearly 3 million people. Unlike the Persians, the Greeks had a society where the people had some political say on what goes around. We can see this today with totalitarian regimes and democratic countries.

First Civilizations

The term " civilization" was created due to the Agricultural Revolution. This is interesting because out of the Industrial Revolution we obtained more mass beneficiary products and out of the Agricultural Revolution we obtained a term. This term comes from the word cities which is important to this particular part of the chapter because in this section of history, societies started to see an increase in population. It's also fascinating because out of this particular revolution we obtained Pyramids, temples, palaces, sculptures, literature, complex calendars, gender hierarchies, and even slavery. All these concepts and structures are seen in today's modern society. We still see pyramids in Egypt, we see palaces in India, we see well written literature in England, we still these unfortunate gender hierarchies and we went through period when slavery was still used, especially here in America. What also caught my attention was the idea of states. In order to keep people calm and in order the concept of a state was created. Unlike most countries today, these states were ruled by a king. These "totalitarian:" regimes were common in this period of history. Although these societies were under totalitarian rule, there were still check and balances. These checks came from "the temple" and  the "private economy." Like today we live in habitative environments in order to survive.  The same concept applied back then. Civilizations lived by water to ensure they had foos to eat and water to drink.

"Neolithic"

The Neolithic era is where new plants were blooming and the meddling and breeding of certain animals. I find this interesting because we see these effects today. We see chickens and cows being farmed for the sole purpose of feeding us unhealthy food. The difference between wild and man raised  animals as that they produce more of what they can be used for. Cows produce more milk, sheep produce more wool, and chickens laid more eggs. We could possibly see this also with dogs. Just like we are similar  to apes, dogs are similar to wolves.  This process is known as domestication.  An issue with domestication is that humans, animals and plants alike get dependent in certain aspects. Plants and animals maintained by humans won't be able to survive like its wild counterpart. Humans are dependent of plants and animals to eat. We evolved from these ancestral creatures to what we are today. Furthermore, Global Warming was an asset in the past compared to today. Today global warming is seen as an eventual mankind killer. In the Agricultural Revolution global warming was useful for the creation of new plant specious and "resource-rich areas." Just as there were flourishing communities, animals and plants were also becoming extinct. These extinctions are the same as present time because this was a natural warming. Today were seeing the extinction of plants and animals, dryer land due to man made pollution. Who knew that  disaster today would be a beneficial factor back then. In the Neolithic Times there existed a concept known as chiefdom. This is basically a government structure to maintain order. Unlike today, leaders of these societies didn't punish people to sustain obedience, they used generosity to keep their followers happy. This Neolithic and agricultural time brought upon the idea of tampering with animals, plants and other humans as well. This era was the birth societies that implemented rules maintain order.