Denise Salazar
History 1301
Professor Lanita Akins
September 16, 2013
The Old World
Our way of government, democracy, goes all the way back to its creators; the Greeks. However if we want to be more specific it falls in the hands of Aristotle, Plato, and the Socrates whose philosophies are the base of how democracy was created. A democracy basically means everybody votes, no matter what class you are considered to be under, you could vote. The Greeks highly believed in education, they did not accept the idea of a democracy working without a good type of education. Basically the Greeks wanted everybody to have the ability to understand; understand the issues, and problems present. Therefore, they would be able to vote according to what they understood from all the information given. Education was believed to be needed, for the Greeks wanted a way to civilize their people. City states, the first governmental entity, were given to us from the Greeks as well.
The Romans government was a lot like ours; a representative democracy. They too, had a Senate who advised their Emperor. The Emperor however, was often overruled by the Senate for imposing against the Senates belief. The basis of our language, Latin, was the Romans language. Taxes and tax collectors, the idea of bureaucracy was disliked by the people but it was the only way the government could keep running. The reason why roads exist was also created by the Romans, the greatest system invented for travel. The Romans had a real deep belief; in the end we are our own worst enemies, we are destined to destroy ourselves.
As the name says, the Dark Ages, this was the darkest time in European history, for there was no progress in Europe for 200 to 300 years. However, the progress continued elsewhere. China for example, created gun powder and the compass. The Mayans and the Aztecs were highly developed civilizations in Mexico and South America. In Western Europe, the Lord had domination over the peasants. Everything seemed to revolve around the serfs/slaves. A lot of what the serfs had would be given to the Lord. The serfs would even fight the Lord’s battles if the Lord was stuck in a difficult situation. The Church of Rome however, dominated their society.
During the Crusades, the Roman Catholic Church decided that they were the ones that were supposed to have the Holy Land, not the Muslims. However, the people they sent to do the recapture ended up being the serfs. For being on this journey and going through this battle together, the serfs started to create bonds between one another, they started understanding each other. These bonds eventually became the base or influence for the Renaissance. On their way to this mission, the serfs had to learn quite a few skills for example: bake bread,