Notes: Difference between revisions
→Section VI
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**"IIRC, the wealth accumulated by the Dutch via the VOC would total over USD $7 trillion today." | **"IIRC, the wealth accumulated by the Dutch via the VOC would total over USD $7 trillion today." | ||
*"Most of the ancient history trade routes had massive and wide ranging effects across the globe, much more than anyone could have predicted. Mostly things like the Silk Road and Indian Ocean trade. On the Silk Road no one really traveled very far along it, small time merchants bought goods one place and sold them not far away in another place but this process was repeated from China to as far as Rome. You would think this was rather innocuous but it was so profitable it dictated social policies of entire countries, caused the rise and fall of kings and allowed the spread of social ideas and infectious diseases. The black death killing 1/2 of all Europeans? Caused by the Mongols reinvigorating the Silk Road. Buddhism taking over in SE Asia? Spread from India along the Silk Road. The wealth in China that allowed for the centuries of the dynastic system to work? The Silk Road. Islam taking over in Indonesia? The India Ocean trade. All in all, if you really want to understand why things played out in ancient history the way they did you should keep an eye on the big trade routes." | *"Most of the ancient history trade routes had massive and wide ranging effects across the globe, much more than anyone could have predicted. Mostly things like the Silk Road and Indian Ocean trade. On the Silk Road no one really traveled very far along it, small time merchants bought goods one place and sold them not far away in another place but this process was repeated from China to as far as Rome. You would think this was rather innocuous but it was so profitable it dictated social policies of entire countries, caused the rise and fall of kings and allowed the spread of social ideas and infectious diseases. The black death killing 1/2 of all Europeans? Caused by the Mongols reinvigorating the Silk Road. Buddhism taking over in SE Asia? Spread from India along the Silk Road. The wealth in China that allowed for the centuries of the dynastic system to work? The Silk Road. Islam taking over in Indonesia? The India Ocean trade. All in all, if you really want to understand why things played out in ancient history the way they did you should keep an eye on the big trade routes." | ||
*"Glass and more specifically lenses and prisms paved the way for some ground breaking discoveries in navigation, astronomy and chemistry. It paved the way for the age of discovery which lead to the west dominating the entire globe and over taking China's dominance in science and technology." | |||
**"Also eyeglasses. European scientists and scholars could still continue their work for decades even if their eyesight was failing. The earliest mentions of eyeglasses in China occur in the 15th century, and those Chinese sources state that eyeglasses were imported." | |||