La misma bacteria provocó todas las epidemias posteriores a la peste negra Una única cepa de la Yersinia pestis, la bacteria causante de la peste, está detrás de todas las epidemias de esta enfermedad que han castigado a los humanos desde la Edad Media. El ADN bacteriano recuperado de varios apestados confirma además que el patógeno que provocó la pandemia de peste negra en la Edad Media europea vino de Asia. También estaría detrás de la tercera gran epidemia que, tras regresar al continente asiático, se extendió desde China al resto del planeta. La peste es la zoonosis o enfermedad de origen animal que más humanos ha matado. A lo largo de la historia se han sucedido al menos tres grandes pandemias: la plaga de Justiniano, que devastó el Imperio bizantino en el siglo VI, la peste negra, que acabó con el 60% de la población europea en el siglo XIV rebrotando en los siglos siguientes y, por último, la tercera pandemia de peste, surgida en China en el siglo XIX y responsable de la gran mayoría de casos de peste de la actualidad. ampliar foto
145 años de cerezas y barricadas: la banda sonora de la Comuna de París La música popular es un buen termómetro de la degradación de una sociedad. El hecho, muy cacareado, es que los movimientos y mareas surgidos alrededor del 15M tienen que recurrir a la banda sonora de las viejas canciones antifranquistas de los 60. Una constatación palpable del abismo que existe entre la realidad de nuestra sociedad y lo que los medios nos hacen llamar "música": mero bien de consumo sin otro valor que los 99 céntimos de iTunes Store. En cambio, en Estados Unidos, la lucha de los negros por los derechos civiles tuvo la mejor banda sonora posible de soul, funk y free jazz. No olvidemos los corridos de la revolución mexicana, ni a los soldados de nuestra Guerra Civil que convirtieron en consignas sus canciones favoritas. 1. (Antoine Renard, Jean Baptiste Clément, 1868). Es una canción romántica sobre el triste recuerdo de un amor perdido: la primavera, los pajaritos, las cerezas y las locuras amorosas. 2. (Joseph Darcier, Alexis Bouvier. 1863). 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Muy pimpante.
La antigua Roma aún importa A finales del siglo IV d. C., el río Danubio era el paso de Calais de Roma. Lo que solemos denominar las invasiones bárbaras, la llegada de hordas (quizá muchedumbres) al Imperio Romano, podrían calificarse también como unos movimientos masivos de inmigrantes económicos o refugiados políticos del norte de Europa. Y las autoridades romanas tenían tan poca idea de afrontar aquella crisis como las nuestras, además de que, por supuesto, eran menos compasivas. En una famosa ocasión, que incomodó incluso a algunos observadores romanos, vendieron carne de perro para alimentar a los que habían logrado cruzar el río en busca de asilo (entonces, como ahora, el perro no estaba destinado al consumo humano). Es tentador pensar en los antiguos romanos como una versión de nosotros mismos. En Italia, la vida romana también tenía aspectos que nos resultan familiares. También había debates interminables sobre el reparto de cereal gratis o subvencionado a los ciudadanos que vivían en la capital.
Medieval History Lectures: Dr. Lynn H. Nelson | Lectures in Medieval History | Professor Emeritus, Medieval History, University of Kansas | www.vlib.us/medieval Please take into consideration the purpose and audience for which the lecture notes listed above were written. For a good many years, I taught a three-credit-hour freshman survey entitled Introduction to Medieval History to enrollments of room-size - generally three hundred students. During those years, the University of Kansas maintained an open enrollment policy in which all graduates from accredited Kansas high schools were admitted to the University. Since the only history courses required by the State of Kansas at the secondary level were in American History, students enrolling for this course varied widely in their knowledge of the European past. Consequently, my lectures were both basic and episodic, concentrating on major events and topics that would prepare the students for further enrollments in Humanities courses and attempting to demonstrate that the study of History could be both useful and enjoyable.
‘The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu,’ by Joshua Hammer Photo THE BAD-ASS LIBRARIANS OF TIMBUKTUAnd Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious ManuscriptsBy Joshua Hammer278 pp. Simon & Schuster. $26. In the summer of 1826, a Scotsman named Alexander Gordon Laing became the first European to set foot in Timbuktu, a city that would become synonymous with mysterious remoteness. The inhabitants of Timbuktu would have been amused by the British imperialist assumption that their city had been “discovered.” By the time Laing reached the place, it had been a thriving international center for centuries, the economic and intellectual heart of the sub-Saharan world, where travelers, traders and thinkers, Africans, Berbers, Arabs, Tuaregs and others gathered to trade gold, salt, slaves, spices, ivory — and knowledge. While Europe was still groping its way through the dark ages, Timbuktu was a beacon of intellectual enlightenment, and probably the most bibliophilic city on earth. Continue reading the main story
Moorish Spain: A Successful Multicultural Paradise? Part 1 The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise:Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spainby Dario Fernandez-Morera Wilmington: ISI Books, 2016 Dario Fernandez-Morera, of Cuban extraction, is associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Northwestern University. He has previously published American Academia and the Survival of Marxist Ideas (1996), as well as numerous papers on the literature of Spain’s Golden Age. In this new book he tackles one of the anti-European left’s most cherished delusions, viz., that al-Andalus, or Moorish Spain (711–1492 AD), was a successful multicultural society in which Christians, Jews and Muslims flourished together beneath the tolerant eye of enlightened Islamic rulers. So popular has the romantic image of enlightened Muslim Spain become that it has been publicly endorsed by such distinguished historical scholars as Barack Obama and Tony Blair. Advertisement - Time to SUBSCRIBE now! A Christian chronicle described the conquest as follows:
Book: Guns, Germs and Steel Fascinating.460 pages, ★★★★★ Guns, Germs and Steel does three things: It counteracts the misconception that “since the fifteenth century, enlightened Europeans have colonised simplistic New World natives”. Author Jared Diamond demonstrates how stronger societies have colonised weaker societies for all of human history, not just in the last 500 years.It counteracts the idea that “European society was advanced compared to the rest of the world because European people were more intelligent”. Some notes I made on this book are listed below. Why farm? Nutrition decreases.Risk of starvation decreases.Settlements, villages and towns are built.No need to carry babies when migrating, so birth rate increases.Population increases. Food production originated in four main places: Iran/IraqMexico/AndesChinaAfrican Sahel We domesticated plants that were: Humans first domesticated animals with the following characteristics: Therefore… Why was Europe so advanced by the year 1500? What helped unify China? Related
Historians and the surplus approach An interesting feature of the literature in history, particularly when related to ancient history, is that ideas that are clearly in the tradition of classical political economy, that is the developments from William Petty to Marx including mainly, but not uniquely Quesnay, Smith and Ricardo, are often used in contrast with the dominant supply and demand approach of the literature in economics. The typical discussion of development presumes that it was the surplus obtained with the domestication of plants and animals, and the transition from hunter/gatherer to agricultural societies, that allowed specialization (the division of labor) and the development of social classes. The figure below comes from William McNeill's classic The Rise of the West, and the essential concept of surplus is at the center of the stage.
The deep causes of the Great Divergence: or why China fell behind In the last post, I suggested that Kenneth Chase's explanation of why China invented, but did not pursue the development of gunpowder and guns to its ultimate consequences, could be seen as the very deep cause of the so-called Big Divergence, i.e. of the rise to dominance by Western Europe. Chase explains the lack of interest in the development of firearms in China as the result of geographical conditions and how they affected warfare. He argues that two types of warfare developed after the invention of firearms. "Where there were technologically advanced agrarianate societies that were not threatened by steppe or desert nomads, we find the combination of firearms and pikemen, with an emphasis upon infantry (western Europe, Japan). Where there were technologically advanced agrarianate societies that were threatened by steppe or desert nomads, we find the combination of firearms and wagons, with an emphasis upon cavalry (eastern Europe, the Middle East, India, north China)."
Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World Italian fisherman recovered this statue from the Adriatic Sea in the 1960s. Commemorating a successful athlete, the figure stands in the conventional pose of a victor: he is about to remove his victory wreath of laurel or olive leaves and dedicate it to the gods in gratitude. His eyes were originally inset and his nipples are inlaid in copper, which would have appeared red in contrast to the once golden brown color of his bronze flesh. Victorious Athlete ("The Getty Bronze") 300 - 100 BC; bronze and copper. The Macedonian king wears a royal diadem in his wavy hair, and a short cloak (chlamys), cuirass, and laced military sandals. Alexander on Horseback, 100 - 1 BC; bronze, copper, and silver. Youth ("Idolino), c. 30 BC; bronze, copper, and lead. Portrait of Aule Meteli ("The Orator"), 125 - 100 BC; bronze and copper. Portrait of a North African Man, c. 300 - 150 BC; bronze, copper, enamel, and bone. The Marshall B.
Why the Mongols? | Haquelebac The real question about the Mongols is, “Why did they win, and why did they win so big?” The Mongol empire is the great singularity in human history (though I’m sure that there are others in human prehistory): how did two or three million nomads — a nation without cities or writing — manage to conquer over half of Eurasia in less than a century? Invasions and raids on wealthy states by their poorer neighbors are a historical constant, but nobody asks “Why the Petchenegs?” or “Why the Xianbei?”, or “Why the Sarmatians?”. Genghis Khan’s Mongols are a real puzzle, like nothing that had ever been seen before. The military advantages of nomad armies It begins with the military advantages of the steppe. The nomads are sometimes described as having had a pastoral economy, trading livestock and animal products for grain and other supplies, but periods of peaceful, equal trade were relatively short and infrequent. Click to enlarge. (The Wiki map will have to do. The turning point Conclusion
Rethinking the Social Structure of Ancient Eurasian Nomads: Current Anthropology Research : Nature First Posted: Feb 24, 2012 02:49 PM EST Rethinking the social structure of ancient Eurasian nomads: Current Anthropology research (Photo : Flickr.com/Lyalka) Prehistoric Eurasian nomads are commonly perceived as horse riding bandits who utilized their mobility and military skill to antagonize ancient civilizations such as the Chinese, Persians, and Greeks. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement In the article, recently published in the February issue of Current Anthropology, Frachetti argues that early pastoral nomads grew distinct economies across the steppes and mountains of Eurasia and triggered the formation of some the earliest and most extensive networks of interaction in prehistory. Around 3500 BC, regionally distinct herding economies were found across the Eurasian steppes. Although the mobile societies that fueled these networks came to share certain ideological and economic institutions, in many cases their political organization remained autonomous and idiosyncratic.
Race May Be a Social Construct, But Racism is Very Real “Race is a social construct.” I saw this sentence on the projector in my Race and Ethnic Relations class and jotted it into my notebook. Figuring that the statement was simply being used as an indication of how ridiculous and harmful racism is, I was on board with it. Yes, race is socially constructed rather than biologically based. The ‘alarm’ is a reflex most minorities have, it’s a rising anxiety that signals you are surrounded by people too privileged to know they’re hurting you. If you are a member of any oppressed group, this feeling is probably familiar. Because race was socially constructed by Europeans, white people are seen as “raceless,” whereas people of color are racialized.