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The Mongols were traders and herdsmen

The Felt Tent People because their homes were round tents made of felt.

They did not live in towns. The Mongols were nomads. They traveled in small groups composed of perhaps only two or three families.

It was incredibly dangerous to travel along the Silk Road

There were three main routes, and all were dangerous.

more than 150 miles from the nearest settlement,

Well, since you have traveled this far, you might as well come in.'

omething from the middle ages. Jerry-built from whatever materials came to hand, the dwelling was not much more than a burrow—"a low, soot-blackened log kennel that was as cold as a cellar," with a floor consisting of potato peel and pine-nut shells. Looking around in the dim light, the visitors saw that it consisted of a single room. It was cramped, musty and indescribably filthy, propped up by sagging joists—and, astonishingly, home to a family of five:

Have you ever eaten bread?

he daughters spoke a language distorted by a lifetime of isolation. "When the sisters talked to each other, it sounded like a slow, blurred cooing."

a member of a fundamentalist Russian Orthodox sect, worshiping in a style unchanged since the 17th century.

Peter was a personal enemy and "the anti-Christ in human form"—a point he insisted had been amply proved by Tsar's campaign to modernize Russia by forcibly "chopping off the beards of Christians."

Things had only got worse for the Lykov family when the atheist Bolsheviks took power. Under the Soviets, isolated Old Believer communities that had fled to Siberia to escape persecution began to retreat ever further from civilization. During the purges of the 1930s, with Christianity itself under assault, a Communist patrol had shot Lykov's brother on the outskirts of their village while Lykov knelt working beside him. He had responded by scooping up his family and bolting into forest.

our Lykovs then—Karp;

wife, Akulina

son named Savin

Natalia, a daughter who was only 2.

wo more children had been born in the wild—Dmitry in 1940 and Agafia in 1943—

d neither of the youngest Lykov children had ever seen a human being who was not a member of their famil

new there were places called cities where humans lived crammed together in tall buildings. They had heard there were countries other than Russia. But such concepts were no more than abstractions to them. Their only reading matter was prayer books and an ancient family Bible. Akulina had used the gospels to teach her children to read and write, using sharpened birch sticks dipped into honeysuckle juice as pen and ink. When Agafia was shown a picture of a horse, she recognized it from her mother's Bible stories. "Look, papa," she exclaimed. "A steed!"

e traversed 250 kilometres [155 miles] without seeing a single human dwelling!"

They fashioned birch-bark galoshes in place of shoes. Clothes were patched and repatched until they fell apart, then replaced with hemp cloth grown from seed.

pinning wheel a

A couple of kettles served them well for many years, but when rust finally overcame them, the only replacements they could fashion came from birch bark.

heir staple diet was potato patties mixed with ground rye and hemp seeds.

bundance

stream. Stands of larch, spruce, pine and birch yielded all that anyone could take.... Bilberries and raspberries were close to hand, firewood as well, and pine nuts fell right on the roof."

rmanently on the edge of famine.

not until the late 1950s, when Dmitry reached manhood, that they first trapped animals for their meat and skins. Lacking guns and even bows, they could hunt only by digging traps or pursuing prey across the mountains until the animals collapsed from exhaustion

Agafia's unusual speech—she had a singsong voice and stretched simple words into polysyllables—convinced some of her visitors she was slow-witted; in fact she was markedly intelligent, and took charge of the difficult task, in a family that possessed no calendars, of keeping track of time. 

mitry, a

urious and perhaps the most forward-looking member of the family

Perhaps it was no surprise that he was also the most enraptured by the scientists' technology.

many happy hours in its little sawmill, marveling at how easily a circular saw and lathes could finish wood.

he Lord would provide, and she would stay, she said—as indeed she has. A quarter of a century later, now in her seventies herself, this child of the taiga lives on alone, high above the Abakan.

A Medieval monastery received pilgrims and travellers, at a period when western Europe was almost destitute of innsA Medieval monastery performed many works of charity, feeding the hungry, healing the sick who were brought to their doors, and distributing their medicinesA Medieval monastery provided education for boys who wished to become priests and those who intended to lead active lives in the worldA Medieval monastery copied the manuscripts of classical authors preserving valuable books that would otherwise have been lost A Medieval monastery kept records of the most striking events of their time and acted as chroniclers of the medieval history of the Middle Ages

the lavatorium was a room which contained a trough with running water where monks washed their hands before meals Misericord - a misericord was the part of a monastery where monks were disciplinedNight Stair - A staircase used by the monks to enter a church directly from their dormitory in order to attend late night and early morning servicesRefectory - the refectory was dining hall of a monasterySacristy - the sacristy was a small building, usually attached to the chancel in which vestments and sacred vessels were keptScriptorium - the scriptorium was the room in a monastery used by clerics or scribes copying manuscriptsWarming-house - the warming house was the only room in a monastery, apart from the infirmary and kitchen, where a fire was allowed. Also called a Calefactory

Lavatorium

Lavatorium

Lavatorium

Lavatorium

Cellarium - store-house of a monasteryChapter-house - The chapter house was a room in which monks met daily, to discuss business and to hear a chapter of the monastic ruleCloister - the cloister was a covered walkway in a monastery often situated around an quadrangle A cloister often comprised of a plain wall or colonnade on the outer side and a series of windows on the inner side Dorter - a dorter was a monastic dormitory. Sometimes the monks slept in isolated rooms called cells

Frater - a frater was another term for a refectory (dining room)Garderobe - a garderobe was a lavatory in a medieval buildingGranary - A monastery storehouse for threshed grainInfirmary - the infirmary was the part of a monastery which housed the monks who were too sick or old to take part in the normal monastic lifeKitchen - The monastery kitchen where food was prepared and cookedLavatorium -

The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809

Two years later he heard that Frances Allan, the only mother he had ever known, was dying of tuberculosis and wanted to see him before she died. By the time Poe returned to Richmond she had already been buried. Poe and Allan briefly reconciled, and Allan helped Poe gain an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. 

Humiliated by his poverty and furious with Allan for not providing enough funds in the first place, Poe returned to Richmond and visited the home of his fiancée Elmira Royster, only to discover that she had become engaged to another man in Poe’s absence.

Before going to West Point, Poe published another volume of poetry

. After only eight months at West Point Poe was thrown out, but he soon published yet another book.

Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families.

Poe was living in poverty but had started publishing his short stories

“Panic of 1837,” Poe struggled to find magazine work and wrote his only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. 

bruise-like purple blotches, called buboes, on the victim's skin. It is from this word, buboe, that the bubonic plague takes its name. The hemorrhaging causes an intoxication of the nervous system, which produces neurological and psychological disorders, including insomnia, delirium, and stupor

Septicaemic plague is, like the bubonic plague, carried by insects. Its distinguishing feature is its rapidity - death occurs within a day of infection, even before buboes have had time to form. This form of the plague is the rarest rare, but is almost always fatal

victims suffer a sharp drop in body temperature, which is followed by sever coughing and discharge of a bloody sputum

airborne transmission.

None of these plagues are native to Europe.

bacteria normally resides in Central Asia, Yunan China, Arabia, East Africa, and limited areas of Iran and Libya.

Their spread to Europe from these areas has always been through global commerce - trade which carried with it plague- bearing rats and fleas.

From China, the plague is known to have been carried along the Silk Road into Central Asia, where there are records of outbreaks in 1339.

The Mongol expansion throughout the Asian continent from around 1207 to 1360 helped bring political stability and re-establish the Silk Road (via Karakorum). It also brought an end to the Islamic Caliphate's monopoly over world trade. Since the Mongol had dominated the trade routes, it allowed more trade to come in and out of the region. Merchandise that did not seem valuable to the Mongols was often seen as very valuable by the west. As a result, the Mongol received in return a large amount of luxurious goods from the West.

The 13th century also saw attempts at a Franco-Mongol alliance, with exchange of ambassadors and (failed) attempts at military collaboration in the Holy Land during the later Crusades,

Some research studies indicate that the Black Death, which devastated Europe in the late 1340s, may have reached from Central Asia (or China) to Europe along the trade routes of the Mongol Empire.[28]

Fall of the Roman Empire

Public Health

Decline in Morals and Values

Political Corruption

Unemployment

Inflation

Urban decay

THE FINAL BLOWS For years, the well-disciplined Roman army held the barbarians of Germany back. Then in the third century A. D. the Roman soldiers were pulled back from the Rhine-Danube frontier to fight civil war in Italy. This left the Roman border open to attack. Gradually Germanic hunters and herders from the north began to overtake Roman lands in Greece and Gaul (later France). Then in 476 A. D. the Germanic general Odacer or Odovacar overthrew the last of the Roman Emperors, Augustulus Romulus. From then on the western part of the Empire was ruled by Germanic chieftain. Roads and bridges were left in disrepair and fields left untilled. Pirates and bandits made travel unsafe. Cities could not be maintained without goods from the farms, trade and business began to disappear. And Rome was no more in the West. The total fall of the Roman empire.

Inferior Technology

Military Spending

most difficult problems

choosing

new emperor

new emperor

empero

never

created

effective system

determine

new emperors

began

selling

throne to

highest bidder

37 different emperors

assinatio

25 of whom