What I Have Learned in History

What I have learned each week in this course

I feel this semester, only the first of many I will endure, was a successful one. The objective of the course was to make us understand the history of the world, and I certainly have learned a lot. I learned the different origins, many civilization, and how what people discovered a while ago makes a difference. I also learned that history is an effort to learn the thought, belief, in what they did.

This semester we started on chapter one, which focused on human origins to early agricultural centers. Chapter one explores the origins of civilization in the four major river valleys of the world from prehistory to the establishment and utilization of written records. From perhaps 600,000 to 10,000 B.C.E., people were hunters, fishers and gatherers, but not producers of food. The chapter develops the social relationships within prehistoric society and contrasts them with the changes dictated by the development of agriculture – the Neolithic Revolution. By about 3000 B.C.E. writing began to develop in the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys in Mesopotamia, which was then followed in the Nile valley. Somewhat later, urban life developed in the Indus Valley of India and the Yellow River basin in China. This development did not negate the nomadic lifestyle of many groups, and the constant tension between nomadic and settled lifestyles was an important aspect of the historical development. (Silvers, Desnoyers, & Stow)

The Sumerian culture developed in southern Mesopotamia, near the Persian Gulf. The Sumerians established the social, economic and intellectual foundations of Mesopotamian culture and were followed by the Akkadians and Babylonians who united the region. There were important advancements in writing (cuneiform), law, education and religious thought. For example, Hammurabi’s code (ca. 1750 B.C.E.) is the fullest and best preserved ancient legal code and reveals a society strictly divided by class, yet bound together by...