Week 2 Journal

In Chapter four Strayer discusses all of the different empires and how they came to be. The Eurasian Empires Strayer talks about are the Persian Empire, Greek Empire of Alexander the great, The Roman Empire, The Chinese Empire, and India. Strayer gives his opinion on why he thinks Empires have always been fascinating. A few reasons he states are, because size was imposing, satisfaction in witnessing the fall of the mighty when the empire collapses, and just how important the empires were because of how humans before the twentieth century all lived in Empires. To be honest I haven't learned much about all the different Empires so it was interesting to read and learn a little bit about each one. It was interesting to me that a lot of our cultures and values present today, started within these empires. It gives us insight on how certain cultures came to be today. The most interesting part to me was reading about the differences in the Roman and Chinese Empires and how they were not really connected but had a lot of similarities. They both started off so small and then ended up becoming huge and controlling almost half the world's population. I feel like this is still true to this day.   

Chapter five discusses the Eurasian Cultural Traditions. Some of the big religions Strayer talks about are Judaism, hinduism, Confucianism, buddhism, Daoism, and Christianity. I don't know much about religion. I have never been very religious so anytime I get the chance to even learn a little bit about the different religions in the world I find it intriguing. I like how in the book Strayer gives a little chart of all the different religion and then a basic idea of what that religion is.

Chapter Six basically outlines the Eurasian social hierarchies. Strayer starts off by telling us about the Chinese society, then the class and Caste in India, then he goes on to talk about Slavery. It is interesting to me that slavery goes back this far in our history. All of these civilizations Strayer talks about had some form of slavery, the reasons for it were interesting to me. Because slavery has been apart of our society for this long I don't think it will ever really go away completely.

Chapter 7 is about Africa and the Americas in the Classical Era. Strayer tells us a little bit about how Classical Era civilizations are not just European, they consist of The Americas and Africa. The Americas were known as the Maya and Moche. Africa was known as Meroe, Axum, Niger river valley. As Strayer goes into more detail on these civilizations it is fascinating to compare them to the European ones he already spoke about. I found the African cultures very interesting.