Introduction to The Romans Forum

In our opinion we think that this course has been a wonderful travel of learning because during this amazing trip we were able to learn a lot more of the different civilizations we studied. We also had the chance to learn more about important events which changed the history of the world.  Considering this, we'll hope that you can enjoy our forum.

Armando Daniel Zamorano Gutierrez

Jahaziel Tirado Zamudio
Claudia Cristina López Vega 

Primeval Civilizations

 

Babylon was a small kingdom in Mesopotamia when Hammurabi became its ruler in 1728 BC. Hammurabi provided a strong central government that was fair to all citizens. Babylon society was divided in three classes: the awilu, a free person of the upper class; the mushkenu, a free person of the low state; and the wardu, or slave. Babylonians maintained their systems of canals, dikes, weirs and in mathematics and arithmetical they use Sumerian sexagesimal systems of numbers. They were skilled in metallurgy and in the preparation of paints, cosmetics and perfumes. The system of writing they used was another strong attribute of the Babylonian civilization. Only a small percentage of the populations were scribes in Babylon and they were the only citizens who could read and write. He defeated his rivals in the region, and established a society based on the rule of law. However, in 1531 BC Babylon was destroyed by the Hittites but Babylon re-established itself a century later. In 625 Nabopolassar, founded a new dynasty in Babylon. Nabopolassar attacked Assyria allying himself with the Medes. In 612 Nineveh was captured and destroyed. That was the end of Assyria. Nabopolassar was succeeded by his son Nebuchadnezzar in 605. The successors of Nebuchadnezzar on the throne of Babylon were less effective. Cyrus the Great ruled in Persia in 540 when he turned his attention to Babylon; in October 539 his general entered in the city. Many in Babylon (including the Jews in captivity) welcome the Persians as liberators. Finally, mighty Mesopotamia became a Persian province.

The Chinese built a civilization that has lasted longer than any other in the world. The Chinese Civilization had a military monarchy and they religion had gods from heaven and earth, its economy was based on tea and rice agriculture. In 5000 B.C., Chinese lived in the fertile Huang He river valley. In the 1700s B.C., invaders called the Shang entered their valley. These invaders built the first permanent, organized civilization. Since the Shang takeover, China has mostly been ruled by dynasties. The founder of the Ming dynasty brought China under one rule. Later, his grandson rebuilt the capital and renamed it Beijing. He also built a palace complex called the Forbidden City. The city got this name because only the rulers and a few officials could enter it. In 1664, the Manchus invaded China, creating the Qing dynasty. This lasted until 1911. Their knowledge and research allowed them to develop in medical area and their inventions are still used today such as kites, silk cloth, fireworks, compass, and paper, between others. Nowadays we can see one of their most famous constructions the Great Wall of China.

A civilization started in the Indus Valley more than 4,500 years ago. It lasted around 700 years. There are signs of more than 1,500 ancient cities and towns in the Indus Valley. No one knows why the Indus Valley civilization ended. Around 1500 B.C.E. the Aryans spread their culture to the area. Over time, Aryan and Indus Valley beliefs became the Hindu religion. The Buddhist religion also started in India. New civilizations grew in India. King Asoka ruled from 273 B.C.E. to 232 B.C.E. He became a Buddhist and spread his belief across his kingdom. The ancient Indians developed the number system we use now. We call them Arabic numbers. Indian history is characterized by different ages, like The Bronze Age, where there was an advanced civilization which emerged in Mature Harappan period from 2600 to 1900 B. This was followed by the Iron Age with the vedic civilization which extended over the Indo-Gangetic plain and which witnessed the rise of major polities known as the Mahajanapadas. Most of their territory was conquered by Maurya Empire. This period is known as Golden Age of india where aspects of India like administration, culture and religion (Hinduism and Buddhism) spread to much of Asia.

The civilization of Ancient Egypt dates back to around 3000 BC when the first pharaoh was established as ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt. Daily life in ancient Egypt revolved around religion. The land was filled with temples. All families had to help with the pyramids. They could work as laborers or bring food for the workers. Building pyramids was hard because there were no cutting tools or machines. Ancient Egypt developed one of the earliest forms of writing, hieroglyphics, but very few people could read and write. Only a certain group of people were allowed to train to be scribes. People believed that pharaohs were related to the gods. Pharaohs were not only important in government, but they were also religious figures Egyptian burial practices reveal information about religious beliefs, including the belief in an afterlife. This required the body to be preserved. We call this process mummification. Only wealthy, important Egyptians were buried in pyramids (preserved or mummified). Egyptians used to fill the tombs with objects which their dead people could use in the afterlife. Its history occurred in a series of stables kingdoms: The old, middle and the new kingdom. Egypt reached the pinnacle of its power during the New Kingdom, in the Ramesside period, after which it entered a period of slow decline. Egypt civilization is developed along of the Nile River, which played an important role in the success of this civilization; they learned to profit the Nile resources and became an excellent agriculture developing advanced irrigation systems. All the Egyptians’ achievements facilitated the construction of monumental pyramids, temples, and obelisks.

Ancient Greece and The Romans Mindmaps

Ancient Spain Timeline

Medieval Times

Introduction
According to Professor Tom Beaumont James who teaches archaeology and history at the University of Winchester, “the Middle Ages were a period of massive social change, nationalism, international conflict, terrible natural disaster, climate change, rebellion, resistance and renaissance”. In this essay we will discuss the following three sections which are: The Middle Ages, the Italian Renaissance and the Reformation. We hope this is to your liking.

The middle Ages
The middle ages occurred between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance. The early middle ages are often referred as the Dark Ages. This period of time was known in Latin as the medieval era. During this time, live in Europe was really hard, most of people couldn’t read or write and as a result nobody had a real expectation that their situation had possibilities to improve.

Feudalism
Feudalism was the system of loyalties and protection during the middle ages. As the Roman Empire crumbled, emperors granted land to nobles in exchange for their loyalty. These lands eventually developed into manors such as a castle, a small village or a farmland. During the middle ages peasants could no longer count on the Roman army to protect them. German as well as Viking tribes invaded homes, farms and lands all around Europe. The peasants became the new landowners but not all of them remain free because most of them became serfs which were bound to the land. The following picture can illustrate the way that the feudalism worked in the middle ages.

The Huns
The Huns are considered as the most destructive people in history. They were from Central Asia, 200 years BC they invaded the Chinese Empire ruled by its Emperor Shih Huang-Ti who were forced to build the Great Wall of China in order to get rid of the Huns. In 445 Attila became the leader of the Huns after murdering his brother. He was called by the Roman people the scourge of God. The threat of the Huns died with Attila’s death in 453.

The Barbarians
In AD122, Emperor Hadrian built a wall to separate the Roman part of Britain from the land which nowadays we know as Scotland. The Romans used to call the Scottish people Barbarians because of their native language. This term was use to describe the people who lived in the border of the Roman Empire such as the Vandals, Lombards, Alamanni, Goths, Franks and Burgundians. Germanic tribes ruled over what was left the Roman Empire, on the other hand, the Ostrogoths conquered most of Italy and Greece. The Vandals ruled over North Africa which was part of the Roman Empire, the Franks invaded France, while the Saxons conquered the South part of England.

The Byzantine Empire
In 330, Constantine moved the Capital from Rome to Byzantium; the reason was to be safer from a Barbarian invasion. The emperor changed the name from Byzantium to Constantinople which also was known as the Byzantine Empire. This Empire conquered Greece, the Balkans, Syria and Egypt. When the Turks moved into the Byzantine Empire in the eleventh century the Emperor feared the fact of losing the Christian influence that his Empire had by the Muslim influence of the Turks. This was the time when the Holy wars or the crusades began. At the last, the Turks won the battles and the city which once was called Constantinople is nowadays known as Istanbul, Turkey.

The Moors
The Visigoths ruled Spain until 711 when the Moors crossed from North Africa into Spain and drive the Visigoths from Toledo. For the next three hundred years the Moors ruled Spain by establishing a religious center in Cordoba until King Ferdinand from Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile forced the Muslims and Jews to leave Spain in 1525.

The Vikings
The Vikings came from Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The Vikings were skilled sailors and brave warriors, by the tenth century they conquered parts of Britain, France and Russia and raided lands such as Egypt. 

The Bubonic Plague
Almost half of the people from the Western Europe died in a great sickness known as the Bubonic Plague which was also called the Black Death. It apparently began in China’s Gobi Desert and it killed 35 million Asian people, when sailors traveled to Asia, rats returned with them to Europe. The Black Death killed from thirty to sixty percent of Europe's population. This plague reduced the world population from 450 million to between 350 and 375 million in the 14th century.

Italian Renaissance
The term “Renaissance,” means “rebirth,” and it was a time where a conscious awareness marked a new way of living of the people.


Humanism
The Renaissance was manifested in new attitudes. An example of this was the way that the humanists loved the classical learning; these are the names of some remarkable humanist thinkers:
Lorenzo Valla: (1407-1457).
Giovanni Boccacio: (1313-1375)  
Niccolò Machiavelli: (1469 – 1527)
Renaissance thinkers and artists demonstrated their talent in more than one field. The first example of this kind of artist was Michelangelo, who was a painter but also a sculptor. The last example was Leonardo Da Vinci who was an artist as well as a scientist. 

Renaissance Art
Renaissance architects, painters, sculptors and musicians were deeply influenced by the culture of humanism. Renaissance artists tried to describe their reality, for example, they showed the human body as it really was, rather than the artificiality highlighted in the medieval art. Renaissance artist had two important concepts of its own art which were realism and perspective. 

The Reformation
The reformation was a period where the Catholic Church was reformed and reorganized. In 1517 Martin Luther appealed to the Pope to send a message to the clergy in order to stop the abuses that they were committing in the name of the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope excommunicated Martin Luther for insubordination; as a result many wars erupted in Europe and continued intermittently for the next two hundred years. Martin Luther became the leader of the Reformation in Germany; his main complaint to the Pope was the fact that some of the clergy were selling indulgences to the people such as the monk Johann Tetzel. 

Other scholars who helped spreading the ideas of the Reformation were Phillip Melanchthon, Johannes Reuchlin of Heidelberg, Johannes Tauler of Strasbourg, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Lefevre d'Etaples of France, Huldrych Zwingli of Switzerland, John Colet of England and John Calvin of Geneva. All of them participated in The Reformation which was an outgrowth of the Renaissance. In 1555 Charles V made a peace treaty in which he was letting the people to choose from Catholicism and Lutheranism. Although the Catholic Church underestimated this treaty, they realized that the movement was been spreading from one country to another. At the end, the Church took action and started to correct abuses and reaffirm ancient doctrines and traditions. As a result, by the end of the sixteenth century, the Catholic Church regained the faith of the people in lands when they have lost it because of the Protestantism.  

Conclusion
In sum, we agreed that the middle ages were one of the hardest episodes in the history of the human being. Fortunately, that period has passed and the Renaissance appeared bringing a sign of improvement. Europe was transformed by increasing its food production and population as well as its economy. A new society emerged from their ashes letting us a legacy in which they made us believe that big changes can occur in our lives if we fight for an ideal.