To prove this point, Charles Darwin examined the island of Galapagos, specifically the finches of said island. According to a documentary that I saw for an anthropology class, over the course of many years, Darwin returned to the island and noted the changes in the plumes and beaks of the finches as generations of them went by; from this, he proved his theory of evolution. This section of the chapter mentions 3 names in particular of prominent people who disproved, in one way or another, the ideology behind Christianity on a biological level. Aside from these 3, who all influenced this challenge to Christian ideology? Were there others who may have influenced any of these 3, such as someone whose work individually would not propose much of an opposition, but who drove forth this level of thinking nonetheless?

From my prior knowledge, the majority of Issac Newton’s work was publicly stated to be based on his desire to understand heaven better; he allegedly referred to himself as a theologian, not a scientist. This was referenced in the previous paragraph, although not in much depth. For his work to have been part of the foundation in sciences that caused the separation of science and religion is fascinating, considering how he was religious, although not to the extent he portrayed himself openly.

Many other religions discussed throughout this chapter have notably been unfavorable for or have just not particularly pertained to women; it is ironic that this movement, which was noted to have been similar in practices to both Hinduism and Islam, had been one of the most influential religion movements to Hindu women at the time, at least among those discussed in this chapter.

This is something that was seemingly unfathomable to many empires at this time, especially the Spanish empire and other empires that set out to promote Christianity. When people live a certain way, among a certain culture and operating within a set of beliefs, they are typically able to find what they need for themselves in their own way of life. This includes anything from selfish ideology and personal justification to how someone interacts with others; if someone cannot find what they need within their own religion or culture, then they will look elsewhere or expand upon what already exists, such as Martin Luther with Christianity. In this case, the polytheism of Chinese religions gave people more than enough to satisfy their aforementioned needs, among other things as well. Expecting someone to willingly give up what they know and live by is quite unrealistic, although not impossible, as seen in how hundreds of thousands of Chinese people were converted to Christianity because of the efforts of these Jesuits.

No matter how “pure” and free of selfish ideologies a religion is, it has been proven time and time again that someone will attempt to use it to justify actions for their own gain. As later stated in this paragraph, many of the middle and lower classes saw Martin Luther’s Protestantism as a means of escaping their social constraints and a form of salvation away from some of the troubles they had had in their life previously, not unlike Martin Luther himself. This in itself can be seen as almost selfish, however the main point of mentioning this is to show how much the Protestant ideology impacted the lives of these particular groups of people positively, whereas the higher, ruling classes simply used it for their own political and financial gain, not as an improvement on their lives or actual connection to religion.

The two paragraphs prior to this almost seem to juxtapose this statement; after all, the overarching rule of the Qing Dynasty officials in the region, specifically in areas of different cultures, seemed to be very considerate of the ways of other cultures and how their rule over the region might negatively impact these cultures. This is the same for the Russian empire, as specifically the conquest of Siberia was noted to not be as violent as other countries would have been, albeit not as respectful as the Qing Dynasty. However, the chosen statement unfortunately does make sense; these were both still conquests, after all, and combating such different and distinct ways of rule and culture against one another in such close proximity could only ever serve to harm those who were conquered.

The phrasing of this paragraph alludes to this conquest, or the absorption of Siberia into the Russian Empire, as not necessarily being violent; nonetheless, the consequences of this on the native culture and land appears to be no different than that of a violent conquest. As this section later states, the treatment of the native people was not anywhere near as harsh as conquests done by the Americas, and yet the religion and way of life of these natives was lost all the same.

While this is common to hear in cases of women from colonized countries and / or societies, it is still difficult to read about. Something that stands out about this case, however, is the hypocrisy of the Spaniards in this case; as noted in the previous paragraph, they were obsessed with their women being “pure of blood,” which by that definition, the indigenous women were not. Similarly, indigenous women being put in this position, i.e. the position of being forced to bear the children of the male Spaniards, ironically put them in a relatively similar social position to that of the Spanish women, aside from the racial privileges that the Spanish women had.

Both of these regions experienced weather conditions almost like mass extinction events, occurring at the same time, both technically within the same continent. However, both events in themselves were antithetical to each other, despite both having the same outcome of excessive death counts. As the following section states, this Great Dying paved the way for European and African people to settle into these regions and “replace the varied cultures” that had survived there for so long; perhaps, considering this, the Great Dying of the central Mexico and Caribbean regions was a small-scale mass extinction event for the indigenous people of those regions after all.

Prior to this class, I do not recall ever hearing much about any specific conquests or expansions of the Chinese empire; this juxtaposes how common it is to hear about European colonization throughout history and its impact on cultures throughout the world. Having the various differences between the ideologies of Chinese and European people of this time and mentioning the other driving factors behind the conquests puts into perspective the brutality of European conquests on the culture of those that were colonized versus the alternative.

In the modern day, it unfortunately is not difficult to find people who look down on others for cultural differences; putting into perspective just how intertwined the world is historically makes this quite ironic, as we would not be where we are today without our ancestors having connected with people from different cultures and regions. It is from the relationships of our ancestors that we have so many diverse societies and cultures worldwide.

Is this taking into account the aforementioned “chosen women?” If not, is the idea of gender parallelism in Incan society based specifically on how both men and women could do the same types of labor and be in high ranking positions? Was there an equivalent for the “chosen women” for boys in Incan society? Furthermore, did the Aztec society have their own version of chosen women?

What was expected of women during Mongol rule? How vastly did those expectations differ from traditional expectations? Was femininity looked down upon during Mongol rule? How did the expectations of women during the Han, Tang, and Song dynasties align?