Theme: International Trade along the Silk Route

Officially, we are beginning the study of human history.

Our first topic is trading. We will attempt to answer the following questions:

1. who is merchant?

• her answer: someone who exchanges things such as 'delvi','kilimi', jewels.
• my answer: they can produce the goods they trade or they can buy the goods they trade. if the merchant is a farmer and his cows give too much milk, he can trade the extra milk for flour, or for some other good he needs. if  the merchant  has bought something, he can sell it to someone who does not have anything to exchange; the customer will give him money and the merchant can exchange the money from the transaction for something he needs. people have done this in the past; people still do this today. 
• my follow-up question: what things people trade today?

1. what is trading
2. is trading necessary?
3. who is doing the trading?
4. what is being traded?
5. who takes risks and why? What is a payoff?

We will talk about the exchange of goods in the ancient world (spices, glass, silk, etc.), germs (the plague) , knowledge (numbers astronomy, medicine), plants, animals (horses), people (slavery) and religious beliefs.

We will discuss the same questions as they are realized in the world today- and observe how little or how much the world has changed from the past until today.

My children love the stories from 1001 nights. They are very familiar with three that deal with merchants- Ali Baba and the 40 thieves,Alladin and the magic lamp and Sinbad the Sailor. We will start with these and answer the questions- what is a trade, why it is done, is it needed, what is profit, who was telling these stories and why, is it one story or many stories retold many times and morphed into what we read today (this will lead us into understanding why books are useful, why print is useful and how it has helped the knowledge of the world spread and expand by not having to be recreated/re-discovered constantly). Update 9/22/2014: We read the travels of Sinbad, and we did discuss what a trader is. We did discuss how the merchant becomes richer and richer. The adventures were a little too fantastic and scary for my kids and as a result were not loved but were tolerated. What we actually learned from the book was the location of Baghdad, the port of Al-Bassrah, the Tigres river which connects the two and the location of Persia, as well as why rivers were essential as gateways for merchants and travellers.



We will then read A single pebble, Silk Route and we will read a few books about camels to understand more about the journey people back in the day took on foot. We will, hopefully, end with the need for new routes which led the Spanish and the Portuguese to start exploring the seas. The Spanish exploration of the New World will be next month's topic. Update 9/22/2014: A single pebble travels along the Silk Route from the hands of one child in the East to the hands of another child in the West. If you want you can even relate it to messages contained in the other two books we have read earlier in the summer: Dear,Primo or Same, Same but Different. Silk Route is a fabulous picture book on the subject. 

 Update 9/22/2014: This book is fabulous. Since along the Silk Route people relied on camels during the toughest portions of the trip I figured it is only natural to read about camels. And we learned a lot. We learned a lot about how the camels have adapted to their environment to survive. We learned about their roaming habits which is yet another adaptation. We learned about their evolution and closest relatives. Overall, I highly recommend this book by itself or as part of a unit study on the Silk Route.

Update 9/22/2014: Last year when we read about the Silk Route I read this book but it seamed very detailed so I was not planning on including it this time around. I am so glad that I made the trip to our library in order to get it. This is a fabulous book about the Mongols and the period during which they ruled China. This man reminds me a lot of our Bulgarian great tsar Simeon. The two invested in the sciences, the arts and war, but exhausted all of their resources very easily which eventually led to the demise of their power. This begs the question-just because the empire was at its best during your ruling, if you through your ruling we putting the seeds for disaster, should you really be labelled as a great ruler? I don't think you should be given the praises. Either way, the book is great and I highly recommend it. If you want to revisit this part of history at any time, do include it - teenagers, adults, kids, all will enjoy it and learn sufficiently from it. When we review this book in a few days when we read about Marco Polo's visit I will highlight a few things: 1) uniting the tribes make them stronger, 2) stick with what you know best-land combat if this is your strong side, don't go into sea warfare, 3) excessive festivities, 4) interest in the arts and the sciences, 5) long life span of the mongols because of their discipline, diet and overall rigorous lifestyle, 6) too much land, very difficult to maintain control and current even with the great solution of the pony express.

Update 9/22/2014: We have not read this book yet, but it is a good idea to connect history to the world today. People can use things for good and for bad; people can be good and bad to each other (the mongol tribes were warring one another until finally Ghangiz Khan united them into one powerful army; Khan Kubrat's will to his sons)-in this book people are abusing a boy and camels. It's good to have a sense of how cruel the real world can be. This book we will read tomorrow and discuss the issues. When reading this book I will remind the kids about a few things we learned about camels: 1) people use them for milk, transport, meat and wool, 2) they are well adapted to the desert life (nostrils, fur, calluses, eyelashes, humps, roaming from oasis to oasis), 3) they were domesticated in Asia and hunted out in North America and there disappeared like the Mammoths.


Update 9/22/2014: My intention was to cover The History of Money this month but we will wait to do this in October.

 

The History of Money we will read this month during our discussion of trading, merchants, travelling. Toilets, Telephones and other useful inventions we already read. I am including all three because they are of a very particular genre that appeals to me. A genre of books that creates an overall big-picture understanding of concepts in history-things that textbooks and historians completely overlook when they delve into specific facts and dates. I have the feeling that nothing, absolutely nothing, can be values truly out of its context. This applies to history and to literature equally. The big picture is essential, the details are too. Neither alone is enough. I think that an understanding of money from a historical point of view- how it occurred, why it occurred, how it had evolved-is very important in order to raise responsible youth. Understanding how non-scientific method view of the world led to some of the biggest human catastrophes that almost wiped out humanity from the face of the planet is essential in order to raise generations who appreciate science and align their thinking away from 'oh it makes sense' to 'oh i can convince myself of this'. Textbooks try to bring the big picture but concentrate on 1)wars and 2)rulers and 3)roots and causes rooted into human psychology only. The objections I have are that the roots and causes of historical events are driven by human psychology, geology and state of humanity. Textbooks miss on the geology, the natural world that affects the outcomes and the choices people make. Textbooks miss on the discussion of the state of the world-what people's lives were like, what produced one change or another, what produced agreement/disagreement. For instance, all my life I was taught that King Simeon the Great is the greatest Bulgarian king. He is still looked on with this label but now the reasonableness of his military campaigns in view of the state of the average countryman is being examined and the conclusion that will be reached one day is that the man was a reckless warrior/blood-shedder, who wanted a place in history and sought one sure way to get it.