Reading Blog #7

Chapter 7 was interesting because it touched on things that I had heard about and also things that I had never heard about before. The thing that I had heard about before was the silk road. I had never heard about the sand road or the sea road before this text though. One interesting thing that was traded that one normally does not think about is disease. A disease that was transmitted by sea trade plagued Athens and caused about 25% of the army of Athens to die. Small Pox and Measles affected the citizens of the Roman Empire and Han dynasty through the Silk Road. In most of my previous world history classes I only learned about the silk road because it pertained to the western world, but Strayer focuses a lot on the whole world in his textbook, and therefore focuses on the eastern world also. This is why he includes the sand road and the sea road. The sand road focuses mostly in western Africa. Gold, slaves and salt were major things traded on this road. This chapter focused on trade was overall very interesting because it focused on all areas of the world, not just the western world.