The Ming Empire’s population in 1500 was about 125 million. The next largest empires were Southern India’s Vijayanagara Empire (16 million), followed by the Inca Empire of South America (12 million), the Ottoman Empire (11 million), the Spanish Empire (about 8.5 million), and the Ashikaga Shogunate of Japan (8 million). Keep the immense mass of China

At the age of ten Zheng He was captured, castrated, and sent to serve Prince Zhu Di in Dadu. Castration was a common practice throughout the ancient and early modern world, used in China to insure loyalty by eliminating conflict between family and duty.

the English alphabet uses 26 letters and the average American has a practical vocabulary of about 10,000 words. While a foreigner learning Chinese today would be judged proficient on the national exam (the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi or HSK) with a vocabulary of about 9,000 words, they would need to know the 2,865 characters that made up these words in order to study at a Chinese university or work in a Chinese business.

population was originally divided into several small kingdoms whose ruling families were connected through political marriages. Beginning in 221 BCE, the Chinese created an empire

In 610 CE, the Prophet Muhammad began preaching and organizing a new religion—Islam—on the Arabian Peninsula in the region of Mecca. The Prophet’s teachings, later gathered in the Holy Quran, built upon Judaism and Christianity. Mecca itself was long a site of religious pilgrimage honoring the Hebrew patriarch Abraham, and Jesus is considered as an important prophet in Islam. By the time of Muhammad’s passing in 632, Islam was well-established in the eastern Arabian Peninsula; within the next one hundred years, it became the dominant religion in North Africa, the Middle East, and Persia. By 1200, Muslim rulers also dominated South Asia and the Iberian Peninsula.

Ancient Rome was a republic for nearly 500 years, expanding its territory from the city of Rome on the western coast of the Italian peninsula to nearly all lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, including the former Greek and Egyptian empires and even England. The Romans spread their language (Latin) and their Latin alphabet to western Europe in particular.

Agriculture probably began when hunter-gatherers began favoring certain plants and weeding around them to help them grow larger and make them easier to reach. At some point, people discovered that seeds dropped into rubbish heaps sprouted into new plants. People probably began planting or transplanting their favorites closer to home, so they would not always have to go far, looking for food.