Blog 2

Last night I read Ways of the World- chapter one, and surprisingly, it grabbed my attention. Like most history books it lists facts and facts and well more facts; however, this book was different. This book has facts but it tells a story within it. For some odd reason I found it interesting. For instance, I liked how the book has graphs to show the differences between the life expectancies like on page 23. The organization of the sections made more sense to me because it formed a way for me to compare the other continents to each other: from Africa then Eurasia to Australia to America then Pacific.

History is, well let’s say not one of my strengths. I am majoring in Fine art but for some reason it is impossible for me to remember dates and names. So when I read a history book I usually dread it, but for Ways of the World it seems as this scenario is not the case. Ways of the World has pictures, graphs, and short questions to help bring all the information together, which for me helps a lot. In the chapter, it talks about how the different eras varied from each other. It seemed as if each one differed from the other. The book also went into great detail about how the art varied in different continents such as the Eurasia specialized in cave paintings representing reindeers, horses, bulls, and humans. Also in Australia, I earned that they were the first to use boats. Maybe that is why they are the known as the beach country.  They also created Dreamtime, a way of networks for migration, communication, and exchange between the continents.  Then the book talked about America and how they created Clovis point, Clovis point are people who camp near rivers, waterholes, and springs. They are people who hunt for large mammals, for example, mammoths and bison. What I found interesting is how the book taught me that since Clovis people did hunt for large mammals, is that why these animals are extinct- due to the hunting or was it because the climate changed due from the ice Age? This is when the book made me think; I felt as if I actually understood what a history book was discussing about.

I later realized that as the book mentions the different continents they listed it in order from the first civilized to the last, which I thought was even cleverer. The last one that is discussed is the Pacific Ocean, near New Guinea and islands of the Philippines. In this era they were fighting with technology times. Soon after being settled animals started becoming extinct because of the technology demolishing the forests.

When discussing religion, many Paleolithic cultures referred to their ancestors, such as Venus. One of the most famous female figures that are listed in the book is the Venus figurine found in Austria. The picture of this magnificent Venus figurine made me giggle because it is a stone with curves and bumps. This stood out to me because it shows how different our society is now, compared to how it was back then. They look at beauty by the voluptuous lumps a women has rather then the tightness the women’s body is. It makes me wish our society still were in that mindset. Throughout my time that I spent reading, I learned a great amount of how our world got brought to be, and how I appreciate the difficulties it was to get our world started.