Religions and cultural traditions all being created around the same time frame was extremely interesting, to give meaning to the phrase, " the Three Great Religions" as a basic foundation most other religions of the world were born. The word "Zoroastrianism" I had never heard before? In all the years of attending Sunday school, sometimes Friday night temple services, and bar/bat mitzvahs, weddings, of never hearing this word is strange. Probably because it became a part of the Jewish religion around 1000 B.C. had something to do with it? Another word I didn't recognize was "Yahweh" as a powerful and jealous deity. In the Old Testament and the first of the Ten Commandment, the Jewish religion only and absolutely believes in one God. This would make a great topic of conversation the next time I ever see a Rabbi. Also, our textbook said some of the key ideas of the Jewish religion were : morals and the principals of social justice. Move time forward to the future in the Holocaust, tragic, horrible genocide done to the Jews from the Nazis who had no morals and/or any principals of social justice. By the way, yes, I do know people with evidence and witnesses testimony to support the case that there actually was a Holocaust.
Slavery has always caught my eye, with no pun intended, for several reasons. Mainly of course, here we go again, for morals and principals of social justice. Similar to India with their caste-based social structure, Chinese civilization with their dynasties, and other Persian, Greek, and Roman Empires, all inequalities of class and caste were dumped on slaves. I always wondered how human nature got started on those boundaries? Who ever had the right for ownership by a master, to be treated less than human? Slavery catching my attention in the visual sense, why I said no pun intended, is because I am an art major. The divine Greek statues, pillars, Roman structures, Egyptian pyramids, Persian mosaics,  fresco paintings, glorious churches, magnificent buildings, were built by slaves. They were designed by someone else, but the labor was done by slaves.
On the subject of art, relative to the perspective of an art major: Paleolithic and Neolithic art involved around female figures, scenes depicting food gathers and/or hunters, with usually symbol representing a spiritual person, animals, and a leader. As time progresses to empires and civilizations, with writing and symbols to tell a narrative with art scenes, the art becomes more advanced. For example, the early stage drawings of people look like stick figures, then they appear with one sided profiles in Egyptian pictures, as we get to Roman frescoes they are realistic people images!

Just found out how to read other student's blogs! Apologize to anyone who read mine yesterday because it was so boring, uck! Now realize a blog is like having a conversation explaining the most interesting topics in our reading assignments. So I am going to overhaul my notes and put a different thinking cap in mode to write this next blog for chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7, which is what I read according to the syllabus.

Catching-up on first assignment: Chapters 1, 2, and 3

Chapter 1 : first people populating the planet to 10,000 B.C.
Chapter 2: first farmers and revolutions of agriculture 10,000 B.C.- 3,000 B.C.
Chapter 3: first civilizations, cities, states, and unequal societies 3,500 B.C- 500 B.C.

"Paleolithic" term means the "old stone age" and refers to food gathering and hunting as a way of life. 95% of these humans survived on the climate of geography, wild plants and animals. Agricultural people had their own food supplies in small settled villages.
Homo sapiens were first known 250,000 years ago from southern and eastern Africa.
Humans in Europe were 40,000 years ago, and cave art was 25,000 years ago was first seen here.
Into Australia, about 60,000 years ago, was the creation of an out on their world known as "The Dreamtime."
"Great Transition" was the change in lives of Paleolithic people with global warming because of the Ice Age, ending 10,000 years ago.
Paleolithic societies in Japan were called Jomon, and they settled down in seaside villages.
Two societies that continued to survive their ancient ways of life: the San of southern Africa and the Chumash of southern California.
Major invention to transform societies was the planked canoe, "tomol" (vessel 30'ft. long) changed the Chumash with wealth, power, and commerce trade.
The Neolithic Age, or Agricultural Revolution was the intentional farming of particular plants and breeding of special animals.
Agriculture  gave a new relationship between humans and nature with animals to the changing environment, which is another way of saying "domestication."
Civilizations came from the foundation of the Agricultural Revolution. Large scale irrigation projects (aqueducts), rich farming soil, geography for villages near ocean ports, mountains for protecton, pastures for animals to graze and surrounding area to hunt.
Urban Revolution represents one of the first ancient civilizations Mesopotonia, with it's largest city Urnk.
Ancient civilizations were held together even amid complicated inequalities of societies because they were organized around particular cities, larger territories, or states. By officials replacing kinship for authority, as the basic organizing leaders.
Writing created the next powerful transforming innovation and was regarded as a gift.

Hurray, I did it! It will be interesting to figure out the student blogs site as my next challenge?

hey, I did it!