C. Echevarria's Blog

Blog 3 The Pros of the Columbian Exchange The Columbian Exchange is where exchanges of produce, animals and biological processed took place between the old world and the new after Columbus in 1492. Even though the exchange brought positive change to the European diet, deadly disease was also exchanged that decimated the Native American populations because they were not immuned to them. New world foods improved the European diet but improving tastes and improving the way to feed more of their own starving people. Wheat, rice, sugarcane, grapes, and many garden vegetables and fruits made its way to America where they transformed their landscape that changed the European diet and way of life for the better (Strayer, p. 624).   Horses, pigs, cattle goat and sheep were new and revolutionary animals to the Americans and they were able to breed them in large numbers that helped them especially living on land with hardly any predators. These animals brought ranching and cowboy c...

Blog 2 It has always interested me about the teachings of the Quran and how Muslims perceive it. When I deployed I met some really humble Muslims that would say that the Quran teaches love and other positive things but the extreme terrorists groups believe themselves to follow the Quran but not in the right way leading to war and murder. The core message of the Quran is the remembrance of God and was summarized as a set of five requirements for the believers, known as the Pillars of Islam (Strayer, 2015). The first pillar is the heart of the Islamic message that there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of God. The second pillar was for ritual prayer performed five times a day. I remember witnessing prayer that the Muslims did every day. There would be speakers all over the city I was deployed to and it would play their “call to prayer” which sounded to me like a song being hummed and repeated many times a day. Muslims would then stop where they were at and what ...

Ch. 8 China and The World- Women of the Song Dynasty           The Golden age of the Song dynasty China was filled with arts and literature, setting standards of excellence in poetry, landscape painting, and ceramics (Strayer, 2013, p. 367). While the Song and Tang dynasty renewed unity, many women of that era marked another turning point in the history of Chinese patriarchy. Before the Son Dynasty, Chinese women from the steppe nomads to the elite led less restricted lives and participated in a social life that more freedom than how it was in earlier times. When the Song dynasty approached there was the reviving of Confucianism and when the economy grew so did the tightening of patriarchal restrictions of women. Female submission and passivity from the earlier Han dynasty came into play in women’s roles during the Song dynasty.           It is interesting that when Conf...