Chapter 7

Question 1

What has been a prominent feature of human history, when exchanging goods among who?

Answer 1

The exchange of goods among communities occupying different ecological zones

Question 2

What the different areas that generated different products than their counterparts?

Answer 2

Coastlands and highlands, steppes and farmlands, islands and mainlands, valleys and mountains, deserts and forests all made different products

Question 3

What are a few examples of production of particular products in certain places?

Answer 3

Silk in China, certain spices in Southeast Asia, and incense in southern Arabia.

Question 4

In the world during what time did long-distance trade become more important than ever before.

Answer 4

During 500 to 1500, long-distance trade linked and shaped distant societies and peoples.

Question 5

Why was trade important?

Answer 5

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.

Question 6

Who did West Africans trade with, to import salt, which was necessary for human diets, from their distant mines in exchange for their gold?

Answer 6

The Sahara

Question 7

The incense of northern Somalia and southern Arabia, found eager consumers where?

Answer 7

In ancient Egypt and Babylon, India and China, Greece and Rome

Question 8

What were incenses used for, for example, frankincense and myrrh?

Answer 8

used for medical purposes, religious ceremonies and as an antidote to the odors of unsanitary cities, incense also bore the “aroma of eros.”

Question 9

What was another name that incense also bore?

Answer 9

“Aroma of eros”

Question 10

How did trade affect the lives of many working people?

Answer 10

It encouraged them to specialize in producing particular products for sale in distant markets rather than for use in their own communities.

Question 11

How did Merchants become a distinct social group?

Answer 11

They started to view with suspicion by others because of their impulse to accumulate wealth without actually producing anything themselves.

Question 12

Where was it seen how trade became a means of social mobility?

Answer 12

Chinese merchants were able to purchase landed estates and establish themselves within the gentry class

Question 13

Why was long-distance trade good?

Answer 13

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.

Question 14

What did trade become a vehicle for?

Answer 14

the spread of religious ideas, technological innovations, disease-bearing germs, and plants and animals to regions far from their places of origin

Question 15

Because of trade which religions spread?

Answer 15

Buddhism made its way from India to Central and East Asia, and Islam crossed the Sahara into West Africa.

Question 16

What was one of the most significant outcomes of the increasingly dense network of long-distance commerce during the era of third-wave civilizations?

Answer 16

the immense cultural and biological transformation

Question 17

What had the Eurasian landmass long been home to?

Answer 17

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.

Question 18

Geographically how did the Silk Road begin?

Answer 18

Eurasia was divided into inner and outer zones that represent quite different environments.

Question 19

What was the climate of Outer Eurasia?

Answer 19

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.

Question 20

What was the climate of Inner Eurasia?

Answer 20

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.

Question 21

What did the Inner portion of Eurasia rely on instead of agriculture?

Answer 21

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.

Question 22

What products did the Inner Eurasia exchange with the Outer Eurasia?

Answer 22

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.

Question 23

What are Steppes?

Answer 23

Semi-arid northern grasslands produced products of hides, furs, livestock, wool, and amber.

Question 24

What did the movement of pastoral peoples for thousands of years diffuse?

Answer 24

Indo-European language, bronze metallurgy, horse-based technology, and more all across Eurasia

Question 25

In the last five centuries B.C.E. from the south who did the Persian Empire invade?

Answer 25

invaded the territory of pastoral peoples in present-day Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan

Question 26

In the last five centuries B.C.E. from the west who did Alexander the Great's empire stretch into?

Answer 26

Central Asia

Question 27

In the last five centuries B.C.E. from the east, who did China's Han dynasty extended is authority into?

Answer 27

extended its authority westward, seeking to control the nomadic Xiongnu and to gain access to the powerful "heavenly horses"

Question 28

When did the Silk Road trade flourish again?

Answer 28

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.

Question 29

What happened in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries which empire briefly encompassed almost the entire route of the Silk Roads in a single state?

Answer 29

the Mongol Empire

Question 30

What technological innovations over many centuries, made a more effective means of transportation across the vast distances of the Silk Roads?

Answer 30

Such as yokes, saddles, and stirrups, made the use of camels, horses, and oxen more effective means of transportation

Question 31

How did the vast array of goods make its way across the Silk Roads?

Answer 31

Often carried in large camel caravans that traversed the harsh and dangerous steppes, deserts, and oases of Central Asia

Question 32

What made the products of the silk roads luxury?

Answer 32

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

Question 33

Which of the luxury goods came to symbolize the Eurasian network of exchange known as the Silk Road?

Answer 33

Silk

Question 34

Where did Silk originate?

Answer 34

In China, by 3000 B.C.E. or earlier.

Question 35

After 300 B.C.E. or so what happened to silk?

Answer 35

the precious fabric increasingly found a growing market all across the linked commercial network of the Afro-Eurasian world.

Question 36

How did woman play a process in the supply and demand of silk?

Answer 36

Chinese women, mostly in rural areas, were responsible for every step of the ingenious and laborious enterprise of silk production as they tended the mulberry trees on whose leaves silkworms fed, they turned these fibers into thread and wove them into textiles

Question 37

What type of tree did Silkworms feed on?

Answer 37

Mulberry trees

Question 38

Which thirteenth-century writer talked about how many rural families persisted into poverty?

Answer 38

Wen-hsiang

Question 39

WHich places held silk in high demand?

Answer 39

"barbarian" invaders from the north, India, Roman Empire, and many women.

Question 40

Who was the writer in the first century C.E. who was outraged at the moral impact of wearing revealing silk garments?

Answer 40

Seneca the Younger

Question 41

What understanding of silk had spread by the sixth century c.e.?

Answer 41

The knowledge and technology for producing raw silk had spread beyond China

Question 42

Which other peoples learned how to produce the precious fabric of silk?

Answer 42

Koreans, Japanese, Indians, and Persians

Question 43

Where was silk used as currency?

Answer 43

In central Asia, it was used as a means of accumulating wealth.

Question 44

In both the Byzantine Empire and China, what was silk soon seen as?

Answer 44

Silk became a symbol of high status, and governments passed laws that restricted silk clothing to members of the elite.

Question 45

Which religions had silk become associated?

Answer 45

Silk became associated with the sacred in the expanding world religions of Buddhism and Christianity.

Question 46

By the twelfth century who was wearing silk?

Answer 46

The West African king of Ghana was wearing silk, and that fabric circulated in Egypt, Ethiopia, and along the East African coast as well

Question 47

How did the Silk Road have important economic and social consequences?

Answer 47

Peasants in the Yangzi River delta of southern China sometimes gave up the cultivation of food crops, choosing to focus instead on producing silk, paper, porcelain, lacquerware, or iron tools many of which were destined for the markets of the Silk Roads.

Question 48

By the twelfth-century which Persian merchant made a personal fortune from his long-distance trading business and with his profits purchased an enormously expensive silk covering for the Kaaba, the central shrine of Islam in Mecca?

Answer 48

Ramisht

Question 49

In which cities did Buddhism quickly spread known as the oasis cities of Central Asia?

Answer 49

such as Merv, Samarkand, Khotan, and Dunhuang

Question 50

Who were the Sogdians?

Answer 50

A central Asian people, whose merchants established an enduring network of exchange with China.

Question 51

In the second-century c.e., what did two Sogdians do?

Answer 51

They were instrumental in translating Sanskrit Buddhist texts into Chinese

Question 52

Since the Sogdians dominated the Silk Road trade for much of the first millennium C.E., what spread?

Answer 52

Their language became a medium of communication all along that commercial network

Question 53

What was a set back in the spread of Buddhism among pastoral peoples of Central Asia?

Answer 53

The absence of a written language was an opstacle to the penetration of a highly literate religion and their nomadic ways made the founding of monasteries, so important to Buddhism, quite difficult.

Question 54

Who were the nomadic Jie people?

Answer 54

They controlled much of northern China after the collapse of the Han dynasty.

Question 55

Who was the ruler of the Jie people?

Answer 55

the ruler in the early fourth-century C.E., was Shi Le

Question 56

Who did Shi Le become acquainted with?

Answer 56

He became acquainted with a central Asian Buddhist monk called Fotudeng, who traveled widely on the Silk Road

Question 57

Who was the Central Asian Buddhist Monk called Fotudeng?

Answer 57

The monk's reputation as a miracle worker, a rainmaker, and a fortuneteller and his skills as a military strategist cemented a personal relationship with Shi Le and led to the conversions of thousands and the construction of hundreds of Buddhist temples.

Question 58

What does "begging bowls" mean?

Answer 58

A symbol rather than a daily activity of the monks

Question 59

What did the Sculptures and murals of the Buddhist monasteries depict?

Answer 59

Musicians and acrobats, women applying makeup, and even drinking parties.

Question 60

What was Kaaba?

Answer 60

The central shrine of Islam in Mecca

Question 61

What happened in the Sogdian city of Samarkand that changed Buddhism?

Answer 61

The use of Zoroastrian fire rituals apparently became a part of Buddhist practice.

Question 62

What statues appeared in the area northwest of India that had been influenced by the invasions of Alexander the Great?

Answer 62

Statues of the Buddha reveal distinctly Greek influences

Question 63

What was the Greco-Roman mythological figure of Heracles, the son of Zeus associated with?

Answer 63

With great strength, courage, masculinity, and sexual prowess, was used to represent Vajrapani, on of the divine protectors of the Buddha.

Question 64

Beyond goods and cultures what also traveled the trade routes of the Eurasian Silk Roads?

Answer 64

Diseases

Question 65

An early example of disease on the Silk Road can be seen where?

Answer 65

In the Greek city-state of Athens which in 430 - 429 B.C.E. was suddenly afflicted by a new and still-unidentified infectious disease that had entered Greece via seaborne trade from Egypt, killing perhaps 25 percent of its army and permanently weakening the city-state

Question 66

What disease of the Silk Roads affected the Roman Empire and Han dynasty China?

Answer 66

Smallpox and measles devast3ed the populations of both empires, contributing to their political collapse.

Question 67

What disease saw an intermittent outbreak during 534 and 750 C.E. that ravaged the coastal areas of the Mediterranean Sea as the black rats that carried the disease arrived via the seaborne trade with India, where they originally lived?

Answer 67

The bubonic plague

Question 68

Which capital city of the Byzantine Empire, lost thousands of people per day during a forty-day period in 534 C.E. to the Bubonic plague?

Answer 68

Constantinople

Question 69

Paradoxically the disease strengthened what?

Answer 69

Strengthened the appeal to Christianity in Europe and Buddhism in China, for both of them offered compassion in the face of immense suffering.

Question 70

The most well-known dissemination of disease from the Silk Road was associated with which Empire?

Answer 70

The Mongol Empire, which briefly unified much of the Eurasian landmass during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries C.E.

Question 71

During the brief unifying of the Mongol Empire what happened in the period of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries C.E.?

Answer 71

The spread of the Black Death - identified variously with the bubonic plague, anthrax, or a package of epidemic diseases - rom China to Europe.

Question 72

How many people did the Black Death kill?

Answer 72

Between 1346 and 1348 up to half of the population of 'Europe perished from the plague.

Question 73

What did the Italian writer Boccaccio write about the Black Death?

Answer 73

"A dead man, was then of no more account that a dead goat."

Question 74

How did the people benefit from the Black Death?

Answer 74

Tenant farmers and urban workers, now in short supply, could demand higher wages or better terms, Some landowning nobles on the other hand, were badly hurt as the price of their grains dropped and the demands of their dependents grew.

Question 75

How did the Silk Roads link Eurasia?

Answer 75

It linked Eurasian societies by land, sea-based trade routes like-wise connected distant peoples all across the Eastern Hemisphere.

Question 76

What Italian city emerged by 1000 C.E. and was a major what?

Answer 76

The Italian city of Venice emerged as a major center of that commercial network, with its ships and merchants active in the Mediterranean and Black sea as well as well as on the Atlantic coast.

Question 77

Until the creation of a genuinely global oceanic system of trade after 1500, which represented the world's largest sea-based system of communication and exchange, stretching from southern China to Eastern Africa.

Answer 77

Indian Ocean trade

Question 78

What goods were desired from different countries?

Answer 78

Such as porcelain from China, spices from the islands of Southeast Asia, cotton goods and pepper from India, ivory and gold from the East African coast, incense from Southern Arabia - provided incentives for Indian Ocean Commerce

Question 79

What were the more transoceanic trade routes called that were kind of like the Silk Roads?

Answer 79

the Sea Roads

Question 80

How were the Sea Roads different from the Silk Roads?

Answer 80

The Sea Roads could eventually carry more bulk goods and products destined for mass market - textiles, pepper, timber, rice, sugar, wheat - whereas the Silk Roads were limited largely to luxury goods for the few.

Question 81

What made Indian Ocean commerce possible?

Answer 81

the monsoons, alternating wind currents that blew predictably northeast during the summer months and southwest during the winter

Question 82

An understanding of monsoons and a gradually accumulating technology of shipbuilding and oceanic navigation drew on the ingenuity of many people -

Answer 82

Chinese, Malays, Indians, Arabs, Swahilis, and others. Collectively they made "an interlocked human world joined by th4e common highway of the Indian Ocean"