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The Nile is divided into sections by cataracts.  A cataract is a rocky area that creates a waterfall or rapids.  There are six cataracts in the Nile river.

 As the water level lowered, it would leave behind rich fertile soil for farmers

Fresh water, irrigation, fertile soil--this is why people called it the "gift" of the Nile.

Around 6000 BCE the climate began to change, which might explain why many humans changed from hunting and gathering to farming.  Before civilization, early humans came to the Nile River to hunt, fish, and gather food, but gradually as people learned to farm and domesticate animals (about 7000 BCE and 5500 BCE), and therefore live in permanent settlements, areas around the Nile became more crowded.

The change from nomadic hunter-gatherers to civilized living followed the same pattern as other places around the world: farming provided extra food, which allowed the division of labor, which allows the development of government and religion and creates social classes. 

Historians call them Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt

We know so much about the Egyptians because there are so many written resources and because their culture lasted so long with few interruptions

Another reason we know so much about Egypt is because they made their architecture out of stone, which has lasted for the most part. 

Religion was a the center of Egyptian life.  Egyptians believed in many Gods, so they were polytheistic.

Later Egyptians would call their kings “pharaoh”.  Egyptian people believed the pharaoh was a living God, so the Egyptians developed a theocracy, or a government ruled by religious leaders.  This is important to understanding why Egyptian people were so willing to give their grain to the Pharaoh and build him or her incredible temples—they thought the Pharaoh was a living God that would be with them forever in eternity.

The most well-known ritual was mummification.  Egyptians believed in life after death, and they wanted the body to look life-like.  Anyone could be mummified if they had enough money

Egyptians were a very advanced civilization due to their inventions and technology.  Egyptians developed a writing system called hieroglyphs that combined pictures and symbols.  Eventually, they created an alphabet from their symbols.  In 1822 CE a European explorer found what is called the Rossetta Stone (left picture)--a stone with the same message written in 3 different languages, which finally allowed historians to translate ancient hieroglyphs. Egyptians developed a 365-day calendar and used a number system based on 10. Egyptians figured out amazing ways to cut stone to use in their temples and obelisks.  An obelisk is a tall narrow monument that becomes more narrow as it goes up.  They created a writing material similar to paper called papyrus from reeds found in the Nile.  Egyptians were excellent ship builders and excelled at mathematics.  They used fractions, decimals, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and basic ideas of geometry.  Egyptian art and architecture is famous and has been reused and copied by many other civilization including Greece, Rome, and even the United States

Egyptian life depended on what social class you were a part of.

At the top of society was the Pharaoh.  Below the Pharaoh was the royal court (Pharaoh's family), high priests, government officials, and scribes and nobles (rich land owners).  Below them were doctors and engineers, craftsman, and then farmers and unskilled workers at the bottom.  Egyptians did use some slaves, but slavery is hardly mentioned in their writings.

Bread was the main food source, but they would have eaten meat during festivals. 

Egypt's history is divided into six different time periods

creating Egypt's first dynasty.  He defeated some enemies and united Upper and Lower Egypt into one civilization.

One of the first major Pharaohs of the Old Kingdom was Djoser.  His temple was one of the first pyramids Egyptians tried to build.  It was a "step pyramid" and it started the tradition of building pyramids as a burial ground for Pharaohs. Although the term "Pharaoh" wasn't used until much later, we will keep using it to refer to Egyptian kings.   

Hatshepsut was a women Pharaoh.  Her tomb is an amazingly long ramp leading to a temple that has been cut out of a mountain.  Pharaoh Akhenaten tried to start a new religious tradition of worshipping only one God.  Worshipping one God is called monotheism.  This did not sit well with the polytheistic population that has honored many gods for thousands of years.  After Akhenaten's death his monuments were destroyed and his name was removed from the list of kings. Years later he was often referred to as, "the enemy". Akhenaten's son would also become famous, thousands of years later when his tomb was found perfectly preserved. His name was Pharaoh Tutankhamen--he is known and King Tut. He became Pharaoh at age 9 or 10 and ruled for only 9 years.

very little known about the detailed life of peasants in Europe because the lords and the clergy did not keep records of the peasants

only

early records were concerning

duties

peasants owed their masters

slaves and serfs.

manors were divided into two:

Those who were full time servants would work every day of the week and would get a break to attend Mass on Sundays. Peasants were forbidden from leaving the lord’s manor without seeking permission. The condition of serfdom was hereditary and one would be tied to his master unless he saved enough to purchase some land or if he married a free person.  At the end of the twelfth century, the ties that bound peasants to their masters began to loosen.

Peasant life in the Middle Ages was confined to the manors,

The lords had great influence over the lives of the peasants;

Majority of the peasants worked three days a week in their lord’s land but they would work longer during the harvest and plantation periods

was where the peasants worked, tilled the land, planted and harvested on

he Church offered help to the neediest peasants in the form of food and necessities.

behalf of the lord

he peasants would receive a larger piece of land as long as they adhered to the condition that they work on the lord’s land before working on their own.

The plows and horses were so few and the peasants themselves spent the entire day working in the “demense”.

peasant also tended to the horses and cattle in meadows

Most peasants did not do much other than working, going to church and the occasional celebration.

hardly travelled outside their villages but they did have a sense of community amongst themselves

Peasant life was generally marked by having few possessions in the home

houses were basic shacks with benches, stools, wooden cups, bowls and spoons. Most households had a chest of drawers where the family would keep their valuable items. Peasants hardly slept on beds; they slept on straw mattresses on the floor. Given that they had few possessions even in terms of personal attires, they typically slept with their work apparels and covered themselves with animal skin.

Women

a small garden behind their house.

one part of the land, the “demense”

Church was also a source of education mainly for the peasant’s children who attended the local school that was part of the church. The peasants looked to the priests for baptism, marriage, and performance of last rites for the dying.  Christianity guided the moral decisions that peasant men and women made in their day-to-day life.

Education was meager and only available to a select group of boys.

young girls helped with chores in the house and they were married off as soon as they attained maturity; this was usually at the young age of thirteen or sixteen years.

Societal and economic development saw the rapid rise of cities and towns. As the ties between serfs and their masters became lose, the peasants were able to rent land and some even migrated to the towns. Catastrophes such as the Black Death, a plague that killed thousands of peasants made it difficult for lords to find peasants to work in their farms.

deeply affected by the invaders’ interactions with indigenous groups—interactions that, through a combination of violence and disease, resulted in massive declines in indigenous populations.

The Spanish Empire

Colonial expansion under the Spanish Empire was initiated by the Spanish conquistadors and developed by the Monarchy of Spain through its administrators and missionaries.

motivations for colonial expansion were trade and the spread of the Christian faith through indigenous conversions.

The Exploration and Conquest of the New World

Major French exploration of North America began under the rule of Francis I, King of France. In 1524,

A major French settlement lay on the island of Hispaniola, where France established the colony of Saint-Domingue on the western third of the island in 1664.

Shortly after Columbus’ first voyage to the New World, the British Empire funded an exploratory mission of its own led by John Cabot. Cabot explored the North American continent,

Upon the death of Christopher Columbus,

Spears were very popular medieval weapons as they were cheap and easy to make and very effective,

Bill and Staff weapons on the battlefield and these consisted of bladed weapons such as polearms, pole hammers and mainly long staff weapons were very popular.

Great swords, and lets not forget one of the battlefields most treasured weapons in medieval times because of their effectiveness, Longbows (Popular in England) and Cross Bows (Popular in Europe).

geo means “earth” and -graphy means “to write.” 

located in relation to other places,

what their own and other places were like, and how people and environments were distributed. These concerns have been central to geography ever since.

Throughout human history, most societies have sought to understand something about their place in the world, and the people and environments around them.

More importantly, they also raised questions about how and why different human and natural patterns came into being on Earth’s surface, and why variations existed from place to place. The effort to answer these questions about patterns and distribution led them to figure out that the world was round, to calculate Earth’s circumference, and to develop explanations of everything from the seasonal flooding of the Nile River to differences in population densities from place to place.

Advances in geography were chiefly made by scientists of the Muslim world, based around the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa. Geographers of this Islamic Golden Age created the world’s first rectangular map based on a grid, a map system that is still familiar today. Islamic scholars also applied their study of people and places to agriculture, determining which crops and livestock were most suited to specific habitats or environments.

They were the first to use the compass for navigational purposes.

split Rome into two empires. One was the Western Roman Empire and was ruled out of the city of Rome. The other was the Eastern Roman Empire and was ruled out of Constantinople (today's Istanbul in Turkey). The Eastern Roman Empire would become known as Byzantium or the Byzantine Empire.

The fall of Rome generally refers to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. It fell in 476 AD

Colosseum and the Roman Forum.

Circus Maximus, a huge stadium built for chariot races, could seat around 150,000 people.

fall of Western Rome is considered the start of the "Dark Ages" in Europe.

The highest position in the Roman Republic was the consul. There were two consuls at the same time to make sure that one didn't become too powerful.

was Latin, but they often spoke Greek as well.

In ancient Greece, many cities had land that was used for farming within the city, but most of the people lived in small towns and villages outside of the city.

Rome's naturally defenses made the city almost immune to attack,

The soil and the mild climate helped the Romans grow surplus olives and grain. Reliable food production allowed the population to grow, and the trade in olives and olive oil helped the Roman economy expand.

the republic had virtually no naval forces. To facilitate their invasion of Carthage, the Romans had to build 150 ships from scratch

lack of viable ports.

Rome's geography forced the Romans to rely on overland transportation much more than other empires. The absence of ports and small number of major rivers lead the Romans to build a massive network of roads.

80,000 kilometers of roadways,

transportation system made the city of Rome the critical trade hub

disease.

They go as naked as their mothers bore them, even the women, though I only saw one girl, and she was very young. All those I did see were young men, none of them more than thirty years old.… They do not carry arms and do not know of them, because I showed them some swords and they grasped them by the blade and cut themselves out of ignorance

They ought to make good slaves for they are of quick intelligence, since I notice that they are quick to repeat what is said to them, and I believe that they could very easily become Chirstians, for it seemed to me that they had no religion of their own. God willing, when I come to leave I will bring six of them to Your Highnesses so that they may learn to speak

Columbus believed he had every right to take their land and make them into “servants.

With the native population gone, the Spanish began to import slaves from Africa to grow their sugar cane

superiority to their enemies who had rejected Christianity, and they developed rules of war based on that superiority — including the right to enslave the people they conquered. Once Spain was reconquered, Muslims and Jews were forced to convert to Christianity or be expelled from Spain.

In 1519 Hernán Cortés arrived in Mexico from Cuba with 11 galleons, 550 men, and 16 horses — the first horses on the American continent. Within two years his conquistadores, conquerors, had won control of the Aztec kingdom that spanned most of present-day Mexico and Central America.

One of Cortés’ soldiers had smallpox, and he started an epidemic that killed a third of the population of the Aztec empire.

Cortés for the deity Quetzalcoátl, or Plumed Serpent, who according to prophesy would return from the east to reclaim his kingdom — perhaps in 1519. When Cortés arrived — from the east, with fair skin, riding four-legged creatures never before seen in Mexico, wearing shining armor and looking for all the world like someone who wanted to reclaim a kingdom — Moctezuma feared that he might be Quetzalcoátl and did not immediately meet him in battle.

What Cortés and his men saw in Tenochtitlán horrified them.

The Spanish, more convinced than ever of their superiority, forced most of the people of Mexico to convert to Christianity. Priests burned Aztec books and destroyed idols and temples. Indigenous people were enslaved to work in gold mines. Disease reduced the population of Mexico from more than 20 million when Cortés arrived in 1519 to about 2 million by 1600.

By the 1600s, Spain was easily the most powerful kingdom in Europe.

We can estimate very surely and truthfully that in the forty years that have passed, with the infernal actions of the Christians, there have been unjustly slain more than twelve million men, women, and children. In truth, I believe without trying to deceive myself that the number of the slain is more like fifteen million.…

They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house.

With still others, all those they wanted to capture alive, they cut off their hands and hung them round the victim’s neck, saying, “Go now, carry the message,” meaning, Take the news to the Indians who have fled to the mountains.

studying the world around them.

Rich families became patrons and commissioned great art. Artists advanced the Renaissance style of showing nature and depicting the feelings of people.

matter and light were linked together

rapid expansion

light-matter crystallizing and forming the outermost sphere — the so-called "firmament" — of the medieval cosmos.

The medieval philosopher realized this problem, too. To deal with it, he added an extra reason to explain why there were "exactly nine celestial spheres plus one, an 'imperfect' Earth," Bower said.