Week One Blog

Let's try this again...

Key Points from Intro, Chapter 1, 2, and 3.

Intro: We, Homo sapiens don’t come onto the scene until December 31^st in the Cosmic Calendar.  January 1^st of this calendar being the Big Bang.

Chapter 1: Hunter-gatherers had a relaxed schedule for hunting and household tasks.  Deep spiritual connections with past relatives and practiced trance healing. Complex social structure with naming rules.  They were egalitarian in nature.  As the primary gatherers women provided the majority of the families income.  Europe’s worship of the great goddess or Venus, with her importance being the creation of life. Female fertility also mirrors the cosmos with similar patterns of regeneration and destruction. This differs from Western “straight line” thought.

Chapter 2: About 12000 years ago as well as the taming or breeding of animals.  Many of these new domesticated plants and animals couldn’t survive in the wild anymore and humans couldn’t survive without them as they lost the ability to hunt and gather like generations before.  The size of human populations wouldn’t allow for basic H&G anyway.  As populations grew the need for farming to maintain that population grew with it.  Cultural achievements such as pots and metallurgy became necessities for farmers, as well as discovering new uses for domesticated plants and animals. Milk, wool, and the use of manure all come from this period.  Where farming was not possible herding animals became a distinct part of agriculture.  They relied on all parts of the animal.  Conflicts arose between herders and more traditional farmers.

Chapter 3: The oldest civilization is found in Sumer, southern Mesopotamia (Iraq) is 3500BC to 3000BC.  Sumerians have the world’s first written language.  Simultaneously the Nile valley also was the home of the Egyptians around the same time.  A civilization had also developed in Peru between 3000BC and 1800BC.  Another civilization to emerge was in the Indus valley in modern day Pakistan.  Unlike the Middle Eastern city states the people of the Indus Valley had no palaces, temples, kings, or warrior classes.  This area was abandoned in roughly 1700BC.   China’s early civilization dates back to perhaps 2200BC.  It was a stark contrast to the Indus Valley as it had great dynasty where the ruler was seen as the “son of heaven” and could communicate with God.  These rulers also made great leaps with organized roads and aqueducts.  The final civilization is the Olmec’s and it took place around 1200BC in the Gulf of Mexico.  Thought to be the mother of all Mesoamerican cultures (Mayans) it is believed they created writing in the Americas in 900BC.  Also the Aegean Greeks who pre date the classical Greeks we know so well today.