Chapter 7 Flashcards
What has been a prominent feature of human history, when exchanging goods among who?
The exchange of goods among communities occupying different ecological zones
What the different areas that generated different products than their counterparts?
Coastlands and highlands, steppes and farmlands, islands and mainlands, valleys and mountains, deserts and forests all made different products
What are a few examples of production of particular products in certain places?
Silk in China, certain spices in Southeast Asia, and incense in southern Arabia.
In the world during what time did long-distance trade become more important than ever before.
During 500 to 1500, long-distance trade linked and shaped distant societies and peoples.
Why was trade important?
Economically, commerce often altered consumption and human diets and shaped daily life. Trade diminished the economic self-sufficiency of local societies even as it altered the structure of those societies as well. Trade transformed political life. Trade also became a vehicle for the spread of religious ideas, technology, disease-bearing germs, and plants and animals, also it encouraged people to specialize in producing particular products.
Who did West Africans trade with, to import salt, which was necessary for human diets, from their distant mines in exchange for their gold?
The Sahara
The incense of northern Somalia and southern Arabia, found eager consumers where?
In ancient Egypt and Babylon, India and China, Greece and Rome
What were incenses used for, for example, frankincense and myrrh?
used for medical purposes, religious ceremonies and as an antidote to the odors of unsanitary cities, incense also bore the “aroma of eros.”
What was another name that incense also bore?
“Aroma of eros”
How did trade affect the lives of many working people?
It encouraged them to specialize in producing particular products for sale in distant markets rather than for use in their own communities.
How did Merchants become a distinct social group?
They started to view with suspicion by others because of their impulse to accumulate wealth without actually producing anything themselves.
Where was it seen how trade became a means of social mobility?
Chinese merchants were able to purchase landed estates and establish themselves within the gentry class
Why was long-distance trade good?
It enabled elite groups in society to distinguish themselves from commoners by acquiring prestigious goods from a distance - silk, tortoiseshell, jade, rhinoceros horn, or particular feathers.
What did trade become a vehicle for?
the spread of religious ideas, technological innovations, disease-bearing germs, and plants and animals to regions far from their places of origin
Because of trade which religions spread?
Buddhism made its way from India to Central and East Asia, and Islam crossed the Sahara into West Africa.
What was one of the most significant outcomes of the increasingly dense network of long-distance commerce during the era of third-wave civilizations?
the immense cultural and biological transformation
What had the Eurasian landmass long been home to?
to the majority of humankind as well as to the world’s most productive agriculture, largest civilizations, and greatest centration of pastoral peoples. But it also gave rise to one of the world’s most extensive and sustained networks of exchane known as the Silk Roads.
Geographically how did the Silk Road begin?
Eurasia was divided into inner and outer zones that represent quite different environments.
What was the climate of Outer Eurasia?
Consists of relatively warm, well-watered areas, suitable for agriculture, which provided the setting for the great civilizations of China, India, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean.
What was the climate of Inner Eurasia?
the lands of eastern Russia and Central Asia - lies farther north and has a harsher and drier climate, much of it is not conducive to agriculture.
What did the Inner portion of Eurasia rely on instead of agriculture?
Herding their animals from horse-back, the pastoral people of this region had for centuries traded with and raided their agricultural neighbors to the south.
What products did the Inner Eurasia exchange with the Outer Eurasia?
Products of the forest and of semi-arid northern grasslands known as the steppes - such as hides, furs livestock, wool, and amber were exchanged for the agricultural products and manufactured goods of adjacent civilizations.
What are Steppes?
Semi-arid northern grasslands produced products of hides, furs, livestock, wool, and amber.
What did the movement of pastoral peoples for thousands of years diffuse?
Indo-European language, bronze metallurgy, horse-based technology, and more all across Eurasia
In the last five centuries B.C.E. from the south who did the Persian Empire invade?
invaded the territory of pastoral peoples in present-day Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan
In the last five centuries B.C.E. from the west who did Alexander the Great’s empire stretch into?
Central Asia
In the last five centuries B.C.E. from the east, who did China’s Han dynasty extended is authority into?
extended its authority westward, seeking to control the nomadic Xiongnu and to gain access to the powerful “heavenly horses”
When did the Silk Road trade flourish again?
During the seventh and eighth centuries C.E. as the Byzantine Empire, the Muslim Abbasid dynasty, and Tang dynasty China created an almost continuous belt of strong states across Eurasia.
What happened in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries which empire briefly encompassed almost the entire route of the Silk Roads in a single state?
the Mongol Empire
What technological innovations over many centuries, made a more effective means of transportation across the vast distances of the Silk Roads?
Such as yokes, saddles, and stirrups, made the use of camels, horses, and oxen more effective means of transportation
How did the vast array of goods make its way across the Silk Roads?
Often carried in large camel caravans that traversed the harsh and dangerous steppes, deserts, and oases of Central Asia
What made the products of the silk roads luxury?
They were in high demand and hard to find, with their goods destined for an elite and wealthy market, rather than staple goods, for only readily moved commodities of great value could compensate for the high costs of transportation across such long and forbidding distances
