My professor said make a blog post so i made a blog post
Hey Tumblr! This is not my usual content, but my history professor gave us a “Blog Post” assignment and I thought it would be funny to post here. The instructions are to identify and discuss three moments in Eurasian history in which interaction between regions happened. My first thought was the Silk Road, but unfortunately I’m a chapter ahead in our textbook. The following will be in chronological order and largely based on the textbook. The textbook, as well as any additional resources (if used), will be listed at the bottom. Also, for the sake of clarity, the three moments will be underlined.
The earliest large-scale representation of different areas mingling was during the agricultural revolution. Many of us know the story about early humans shifting from nomads to farmers. Many people had to tend their own crops for reliable food, so they were forced to put down roots, literally and figuratively. There’s a theory that the earliest farmers shared their seeds with neighboring villages. This theory’s largest piece of evidence is the overlapping maps of agriculture’s spread and the spread of languages. “Each of the original nine places of domestication seems to have passed its language along to those who adopted its foods” (Reilly 26). The textbook uses a few examples, such as the Indo-European language family (which would descend into romantic, germanic, and slavic language families, etc) spreading from the, “northern band of the territory that received the crops of the Fertile Crescent" (Reilly 26). The agricultural revolution was the first instance of large-scale trade and spread of ideas.
For all of you booing me for only talking about the domestication of crops in the last paragraph, you’ll like this bit. As the settlements brought on by the agricultural revolution grew, the urban revolution took hold of the world. Early cities kept different animals inside them (such as chickens and sheep), but as the animal populations grew so did the need for grasslands. These animals especially thrived in the dry grasslands of central Asia, but the crops in the settlements didn’t. “From 2200 to 1900 BCE, … low rainfall reduced the number and size of northern Mesopotamian settlements by about a third, turning many farmers who did not flee south into pastoral nomads” (Reilly 55). During the amount of low rainfall, another animal became domesticated: THE HORSE! This was a very exciting development because it meant people could move quicker across land, allowing them to have a greater number of animals. The creation of chariots made it possible for these pastoral nomads to carry belongings with them, and many people began adopting this new take on the nomadic lifestyle. “Their mobility brought them physically closer to new cities. They entered a closer relationship of reciprocal wants and needs” (Reilly 56-57). Not all relationships were peaceful however, with the nomads forming their own armies. “Their forces transformed the balance of power from southern Europe to China” (Reilly 57). Both Mesopotamia and Egypt were taken over by these armed chariot riders. Eventually the chariot would become a useful tool in the creation of empires.
The final significant example of interaction between areas involves our favorite Epic Rap Battles of History loser, give it up for Alexander the Great! Even though I know I’m supposed to use my textbook, I feel like ERB really does explain his accomplishments well. “I brought foes to their knees in Phoniecia, / breezed through Gaza to Giza, / had the Balkans, Persia, Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan in my expansion pack” (ERB 0:39-0:46). The textbook does offer some insight into what the work of Alexander the Great did, saying, “The huge empire of Greek learning that Alexander forged and left to his generals after his death has been called Hellenistic to describe the continuing importance of Greek political and cultural models” (Reilly 89). Through Alexander’s Macedonian empire, he spread Greek thoughts such as democratic political structure and the Greek language. He also created a large network of trade routes through the cities he conquered which would lay the groundwork for the Roman empire’s Silk Road.
ERB. “Alexander the Great vs Ivan the Terrible. Epic Rap Battles of History.” YouTube, 12 July 2016, https://youtu.be/NVbH1BVXywY?si=lwFUE_slb3exDune.
Reilly, Kevin. The Human Journey: A Concise Introduction to World History. 2nd ed., vol. 1, Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.
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