Pastoral Peoples on the Global Stage(Chapter 12).

Jose Betancourt

World History 1

Dr. Patti Andrews

11/19/12

Pastoral Peoples on the Global Stage(The Mongol Moment: 1200-1500).

         When thinking about great civilizations, I tend to think of the Romans and the Greeks. The Mongols like the other civilizations may not be thought of as important, or as one that has made change but it dd.  Pastoral societies different for agricultural societies were less productive economically (334), but were supporting “far smaller populations”(334). This probably meant that the communities in the pastoral were less urban and more rural. This pastoral communities organized themselves into kinship groups and “clans that claimed a common ancestry”(334).

         In a modern sense this communities must have been more conservative because of the values and rules they held. One idea that struck my thoughts while reading was the way that the Mongols thought about remarriage of widows. They did not think like the Chinese. The Mongols had no such rules to not marrying if women were widows.

         Something interesting about the Mongols was also their sense of brotherhood. “Pastoral nomads interacted with their agricultural neighbors not only economically and militarily but also culturally as ‘they became acquainted with and tried on for size all the world and universal religions”(337). It is said that at some points Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam were found with the nomadic people in inner Eurasia. I just think that society has not changed much form our past generations. Our life is simply making more history that one day will be remembered by many future generations. We are still living in terms of not necessarily having surplus, but creating livestock.