WW Chapter 7: Commerce and Culture - The Significance of Trade

     The chapter starts out with us being told a story about someone who bought his son an iPod for his college graduation. The story goes on to explain how the iPod was going to be shipped from China. It makes us sit down and really think about this. You order an iPod. You receive it (not even two days after you placed the order). This is what we, as humans, are capable of. Back in the day it would take a lifetime to travel such a distance. Nowadays we can travel across the globe in a matter of hours.

     Thinking back when there were no planes, cars, or any technological means of transportation, trade was extremely significant. One thing it was significant for was that it encouraged specialization. People had to become good at one thing. maybe if was harvesting a certain crop and having a product so that someone who specializes in trading and traveling could go to other places and get the product out to the masses. 

     Another thing that made trading significant was that many societies became less dependent of the products they were capable of producing. For example, if the area where you lived in didn't have a certain crop or resource, you could trade one of your best resources in exchange for another good that another society or region may provide. This also allowed people who received goods to have a taste of what other people had to their disposal in their natural resources.

     One major reason that trade was so significant was that it helped spread many things; good and bad. Among those things that were spread was religion. This makes total sense. You had people from different cultures, locations, and belief systems come together and interact with one another. It only makes sense that among the topics that they may have communicated about that religion was one of them. Another thing that was spread were animals and plants. Like religion, this must have come up pretty frequently when people were trading. Given the fact that Eurasia is so diverse in settings, many people could have thought that the animals in another part of the continent would be an extreme use to them in whatever they may need them. In addition to all this, an unfortunate thing that was able to spread was disease and understandably so. Traveling long distances really wore people out. They traveled for months on end and may not have had the privilege to bathe or take care of themselves. I imagine that a major factor they had to get used to was the weather. You could be from a desert area and be used to the heat, yet you travel across the continent and up into the mountains where it is extremely cold and you may not have expected that; thus, you did not come prepared and you didn't pack the appropriate attire.