Reflection 3

Through out the readings for chapters 8,9, and 10, I became very interested in cross cultural interaction and how it was so important to human development and the development of societies . 
Furthermore,  as Strayer noted, trade being one of the primary forms of cross cultural interaction has certainly sparked my attention.  I'm also intrigued by the other benefits besides product exchange that trade has brought to humans which includes but not limited to religions, technologies ,and cultural ideas.  Also of much interest, is the spread of disease as well, which in one way was very unfortunate, but in  another way may have been the beginning of a more advanced understanding of medical conditions and risks for the future.  The ideas given in the text opened my eyes to premodern trade and the trade that we have today. It's facinating to think about primitive forms of trade occurring locally between communities and how it eventually evolved into long distance trade.   This makes me think about the large modern cargo ships that I see out in the ocean and the large shipping containers stored in the Oakland Estuary.  Prior to the readings in our text, I never related these modern ways of shipping to the old world and how our form of trade actually evolved.  It's amazing to imagine how some of the long distance trade was executed and how much difficulty they may have had compared to our modern day methods.  I also continue to marvel on the fact that trade which was developed so long ago, has influenced our present life in every way.   
As I continue on with the readings, I found the piece about women in the Song Dynasty to be interesting.  As women lead less restrictive lives in the Tang Dynasty , a shift to more of a restrictive lifestyle occurred in the Song Dynasty which had more confucianism based ideation.   Although with these changes, Strayer noted that the Song Dynasty witnessed more positive trends in the lives of women which for the most part was gaining more control of their lives as they were afforded more responsibility and they were able to be employed.  Was this possibly one of the precursors of the modern day women's rights movements? 
The mention of the Chinese "examination systems" we're also quite interesting .  It seems as if this may have been the first systematic approach to regulating and filtering out incompetent and untrustworthy individuals.  I guess this is similar to things in our world today such as job interviews, and background checks.  It's quite obvious that Chinese were up on their game when it comes to control and regulations.
Another fact that Strayer noted, that I found quite interesting, was the invention of a recipe for gunpowder that unbeknownst to me, was the product of  an Indian Buddhist monk's experiment while traveling on Chinese soil. 
Going further through these readings the importance of religions becomes even more evident.  The detail mentioned by Strayer in the text clearly portrays the important role of religion in world history.  Wether it be Buddhism,  Hinduism, Islam or Christianity, religions basically set a foundation in structure for how people lived.  Religious influence seemed to be found in just about any part of societal development.   This continues to amaze me as all of these practices are still widely used in our modern day.