Chapter 3

If I would of lived during the Ancient Greek Empire when Pericles governed the Greeks in a democratic government, I would agree with the people and respect the laws and the way of living. The people were very respectful towards one another. For instance, Athenian people would easily stay away from conflict and thought highly of the authorities and laws that were in place.  After reading this, it made me think twice of the government we live by and the laws we follow. 

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 was an interesting chapter; the documents on the laws captured my attention. The Crime Punishment, Justice laws were interesting because of the consequences for the law that was broken. For instance, jumping off the cliff or even worst death. Jumping off the cliff was something they turned to a lot and used more often as a consequence. However, could that really be the cause of someone learning a lesson. I am not sure people were aware of the death consequences and the outcome. These consequences were definitely extreme and out of the ordinary.  As well as the laws of gender, and who had more power than the other gender and who was at fault. It seemed like the women would take more of the blame and suffered the penalty after.

chapter 5

After reading chapter 5 I came to understand how the slaves were treated during 1750 B.C.E. Different cultures had different beliefs on how to treat slaves; for instance "In some societies, the children of slaves inherited the status of their parents, while in others, such as the Aztec Empire, they were considered free people." In India you can be considered a slave if you were in these categories: criminal, debtor, or prisoners of war. I think it is a good idea that they made criminals and prisoners of war, slaves because it would deterrer future crimes and also future attacks. However, I disagree with them using debtors as slaves because I think people should have the right to speak their mind regardless of their opinion. I also disagree when women slaves gave birth the babies would grow up to be a slave as well because I think babies are born pure and should have a chance in succeeding in life rather than living the same way as their parents.
Women during this time had no say in what they were allowed to do; after all it was a "Man's World". They were not allowed to disagree with their husbands, nor have any rights. I disagree with this belief because I think both men and women should have the same rights and should be treated equally.

Nisa's story

Nisa's story was very interesting! Here is a story of what I imagine to be a "stone age" girl, or woman rather and how she lives her life. She has love, she has lust, she works, she has friends and she has haters. I feel these are typical themes in human history. Such timeless tales that any human can relate to. The only difference between a woman today and Nisa's story is the way societies expectations. IN Nisa's time it was completely fine to get married more than once and it was fine to have sexual relations outside of marriage. Nowadays divorce can be granted for such reasons and in some Muslim the only person who can be granted divorce is the man and women are persecuted for having other sexaual relations. I had already been thinking about the complications of material things that humans acquire since chapter one. Nisa's story only heightened my curiosity. Here, Nisa's neighbors consider her to be poor because she carries along few things, she doesn't have any animals ( I suppose animals are to cars and phones now a days) 

As far as egalitarianism goes I would have to say that paleolithic society was most likely pretty equal amongst men and women. Women seem to hold their share of physical duties within the society and of course men did much of the heavy lifting and labor, but evidence in Nisa's story shows that women helped build a hut. As of the context of the story it did not read as if this was an unusual thing to see women doing "construction". Another reason which leads me to believe that paleolithic society was pretty much equal is the laxity of the marital and sexual relations. Nisa, is a woman who sought sexual relations out of her marriage and was not frowned upon. Now a days women who do that are slandered and almost socially marked but men who do that can easily brush off the reputation and typically end up with a good girl. Everyone is very aware of the double standard between the amount of women that a man can sleep with and the number of men that women can sleep with…. but this doesn't seem to play a factor in Nisa's story.

Chapter 1

It was interesting to read about how society got started and how our furthest back ancestors survived. it seems that in todays times all are concerned about is how to move forward; it would do us some good to look at our history and see how everything was started in the first place. These were peoples who have little evidence of violence, my mind wonders towards all the places as to how, at such a time of primitive survival, they did not resort to violence when today people get shot over a pair of shoes on Black Friday. It leads me to my personal theory that when humans are kept busy they are more concerned with being busy than looking for trouble: humans are inherently good. There was no surplus of greed and obviously there was no material things to cling to or create outright jealousy. 

I've always wondered, who would think to pull rice out of the ground …. and then to boil it? and wait…. then eat it? 

same thing with marijuana… how did the person who discovered its medicinal properties discover it in the first place? If you eat the marijuana plant it does nothing for you… it has to be smoked. Maybe there was a fire and everyone got high? That would be funny now wouldn't' it? In the end the whole chapter had me really thinking about how society has evolved. It actually made me sad, we are so concerned about material things, if our black shirt fades we go buy a new one and throw the faded one out. We complain about the food in the caff.. how ungrateful. Our ancestors had to make a weapon, track down an animal or plant, kill or chop it down, prepare it and then eat whatever was left. And we have bags of chips and meat at the tips of our fingers and complain. 

this chapter was eye opening. 

I'm done!