WW Chapter 6: Commonalities and Variations

Meroitic Cursive

(Source: https://scriptsource.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=script_detail_use&key=Merc)

Joseph Randall Cali

Patti Andrews

World History HST 2020-01

16 May 2019

Commonalities and Variations
500 B.C.E. - 1200 C.E.

A Balancing Act

In previous chapters, I've found it helpful for me to summarize what I've found to be interesting and important in the text - basicaly typing my notes.  As I get further into the text, however, I'm observing  a couple of things I'm finding helpful to keep me more focused on the forest instead of the trees.  First of all, the subtext in the margin notes are pretty good in helping me look for specifics so I don't end up annotating the entire text - thinking everything is important and losing sight of delicate threads.  These are usually comparisons of civilization's similarities and differences.  Secondly, I'm finding that specific dates and historical individuals aren't as important as periods and resulting change - since everything seemed to be happening around the same period, and change seems to be what makes history.  This leads me to my conclusion so far (at least for THIS chapter).  In Strayer's "Reflections" (263) at the end of the chapter, he wrestles with how historians should balance their attentions between civilizations to give them equal importance.  How much discussion should we devote to each of the civilizations in the period and just what sort of rubric do we balance that discussion with?

I'm going to ramble here (more than usual), but indulge me for a few minutes.

Strayer proposes a few standards we could apply for the study of each civilization, such as: duration, population, range of influence, availability of evidence,  and even location of the historian.  These are all valid standards to be sure, but rather than worry about which cutural identity is getting more time than another in hopes of treating every civilization equally, I might look at it differently.  What I find most important are the defining elements that make up the category of the period.  What are these elements and how do the civilations we know about fit into them?  This makes it easier for me to extrapolate the similarities and differences between the cultures that are represented by these civilizations.  We can best balance our study of ancient civilizations by listing the elements that define the historical period and then studying how each civilization fits into them rather than looking at each civilization and coming up with the elements that we have already defined.

For example, our period of study is confined to the time from 500 B.C.E. to around 1200 C.E.  Assuming this corresponds to the "Classical" period (supposedly between around 600 B.C.E. and 600 C.E.), we can enumerate the elements that define the period and see how the second wave civilizations of the time shared (or didn't share) these elements.  This allows me to better see the influence each might have on those specific elements, which gives me a sense of the importance of that civilization in a larger context.  It also subordinates the percieved importance of the civilization to the defining element of the period.  Ok, indulgence over.  Let me know if you think I'm full of horse manure (with respect to this at least).  By the way I found something that did this in a similar fasion here:www.npenn.org/cms/lib/PA09000087/.../162/Review_book_overview--classical.doc

I like it.

That's over, so what's interesting enough to reflect on?

The Greeks, Romans, Persians and Chinese get all the press but I never thought much about about "Alternatives to Civilization" until I read about them here.  These sorts of social settlements formed out of necesity more than anything else, but the interesting part about them is how they flourished.  The text discusses three of these; the African Bantu society, the Hopewell and the anasazi of North America, and the Pacific Oceania culture.  Although the Bantu never spread by military might, they slowly disperesed their influence through trade and their superior farming techniques, replacing foraging.  This was how the Bantu are expressed in one of the elements of the classical period - the replacement of foragers with farmers.  They organized their society through what Strayer refers to as "kinship structures" and "lineage principles" (254) which was hard for me to understand, but I can only assume that he means some clans and anscestory have more juice than others.  These clans were identified through specialization of trade.  The concepts of Alternative Civilization - or Stateless Societies still intrigue me though.  I'll look elsewhere for a better example of how this works, since it wasn't clear in the text.