Printing was a Chinese invention that was improved by Johannes Gutenberg, a German goldsmith who understood that moveable type was much more useful for an alphabet-based language than for a character-based system like Chinese.
Gutenbergs improvements made it easier and cheaper to print books in Europe. That helped more people learn to read and be able to share more ideas which leads to big changes like the Renaissance and the spread of science and new knowledge.
The Russian Empire grew out of resistance to Mongol rule and the fall of Constantinople. A ruler of the Grand Duchy of Moscow named Ivan III (later called Ivan the Great) refused to pay tribute to the Golden Horde and after the death of the last Greek Orthodox Christian emperor, Ivan decided his kingdom would become the new Rome.
This is interesting to see how one leader, Ivan III, helped turn Russia from a group of small states ruled by outsiders into a powerful empire. By standing up to Mongols and claiming that Moscow was the new "Rome", he gave Russia a big new role in the world.
The Safavid’s greatest ruler, Shah Abbas the Great, moved his capital to Isfahan in central Iran. The ancient Persian city had once been a home for Israelite refugees freed from the Babylonian Captivity by Cyrus the Great in the 6th century BCE. Shah Abbas continued the tradition of settling refugees in Isfahan, welcoming hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the early 1600s from the disputed border region separating the Shiite Safavid Empire from the Sunni Ottoman Empire.
This is really important, it shows how Shah Abbas made Isfahan a safe place for refugees By welcoming Armenians, he helped the city grow and become stronger. It also shows he followed old traditions and helped people in need.
The Ottomans were actually quite tolerant of ethnic, language, and religious diversity, and their empire was multi-ethnic and multicultural. Local languages, religions, and even self-government were allowed as long as people remained loyal to the empire and paid their taxes.
This was a good thing because it helped keep the empire peaceful and untied together. When people were allowed to keep their own culture, language, and religion, they are waya more likely to be happy and stay loyal. This meant fewer arguments and upbringings and more cooperation. It also most likely made the empire stronger because different groups could share ideas, skills, and trade with each other.
During his three-decade reign, China’s population recovered from plague and famine, and grew from 60 to 100 million.
This is huge, just in this short period of time the growth grew that much which is pretty amazing. It shows how much people liked what he was soing ans supported him. It shows how hard he worked at his projects and how Hongwa cared about the people there which meant all those people wanted to be there.
Young men who wanted to become civil administrators in China entered training schools that concentrated on calligraphy and the teachings of Confucius. Calligraphy in China equaled literacy. Chinese language is based on characters rather than on an alphabet, and is said to be the world’s oldest continually-used writing system
To be one of the worlds oldest continually used writing system that is pretty interesting to me. And it surprised me because this is China but really this shouldn't be surprising. China has made such huge differences to the world and this is just one of those few. Also how different it is from other languages. I think about all the other ones around the world and i think this is one that is just so different and so unique.
The social stability that allowed Chinese culture to produce these innovations was based on not only the imperial form of government, but on an elaborate system of professional civil service. The early establishment of a professional administrative class of “scholar-officials” was a remarkable element of imperial Chinese rule that made it more stable, longer-lasting, and at least potentially less oppressive than empires in other parts of the world.
This is pretty amazing how China figured this out to work for them. But it also makes me wonder why other places didn't see how this worked for China and didn't do the same? China succeeded with there government system and we can all see that, they did something different that other places did not do and that is why they have succeeded so well.
China held a monopoly on the creation of silk, which was a closely-held state secret for millennia, and led the world in iron, copper, and porcelain production as well as a variety of technological inventions including the compass, gunpowder, paper-making, mechanical clocks, and moveable type printing.
We know today that China has been extremely successful for all the important things they have produced there. Now so many things here in the United States come form China and even years ago China was ahead of most creating things like silk and iron and so on, things we still use today created from there.
The Meso-Americans also ground cocoa beans and added hot water, peppers, and honey to make hot chocolate–even today, millions of Latin Americans begin and end their day with a cup, prepared in a traditional olleta with a hand-held batidor, using chunks of chocolate. However, such a delicious drink was originally reserved for the nobility, and cocoa beans themselves were often used as a kind of currency.
Seeing how the indigenous people and really most people years ago think that food we ear today and don't even think about it and really appreciate it because were so used to it but reading this I think we sometimes forget how years ago most people didn't have the nicer things and just the simple things like the food we ear can change so much and how I think lots of us take advantage of it now.
The societies of ancient Greece, particularly in Athens, directly influenced culture and intellectual life in Europe and the Middle East to the present day. Greek dramas and tragedies continue to be studied and performed; Pythagoras’ mathematical discoveries are still taught in schools; and the thinking of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are the basis for Western philosophy and political science today.
This information is really interesting seeing how we still use the culture and intellectual life form the Middle East and Europe today I think is just so amazing. How we can still learn from them now in schools.
The transition from nomadic hunt-and-gather groups to more complex societies based on agriculture (and the specialization and segmentation of work) allowed for the development of sedentary cultures which established governments, writing and number systems, and hierarchal social systems able to build impressive structures, defend (and sometimes expand) their borders, and create art and music.
Reading about this I find its pretty amazing how seeing how farming started and developed to seeing how the transition from the hunt and gather group to societies more similar to our society now with governments, number systems, and so on and seeing how much things can change.
In the early millennia of their spread across the connected continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia, modern humans lived mobile lives as hunter-gatherers. According to archaeologists, many left traces of their presence in the area north of the Black Sea from about 80,000 to about 50,000 years ago.
I think it is pretty crazy how even after 80,000 years ago archaeologists can still find traces of humans and how they moved and traveled from Africa, Asia, and Europe.