Vikings

From this period the most interesting culture for me was the Vikings. Because of television and movies, I used to have the idea that Vikings were drunken men with long beards and funny hats always sailing in the sea in big boats. But the truth is that they were much more than that. The first thing that surprised me was the fact that their culture lasted over 300 hundred years. By terrorizing places that were not well defended, they were able to subdue an area and settle down with their own people. They would remain in that area sometimes for several years and sometimes forever. They always targeted places that were full of riches and at the same time were weak and easy to conquer. They ended up conquering and settling down in places from Kievan Russia, Iceland, Greenland, Ireland, Scotland, England and France.
The Vikings were polytheist in the beginning, but once their royalty began to convert into Christianity, most of them became Christian. Once again, Christianity was so powerful that could take over a strong culture like the Vikings. My question is, did the Vikings change their ways of conquering and terrorizing people once they became Christian? Or was Christianity just a new shield to protect their culture?

WIKIPEDIA 2

This article talks about Pepin the Short, also called Pepin III and Pepin the Young. It describes how his father Charles Mantel divided the rule of the Frankish kingdom, between Pepin and his elder brother Carloman, when he died. The brothers pass the power to Childeric who then was taken off the power when Pepin was named king. It also talks about the expansion of the Frankish realm and this article shows a chart of Pepin’s family.

1. Article is 1,600 words.
2. Search term: Pepin Article name: Pepin the short.
3. No disambiguation link.
4. In the discussion I found a couple people trying to get the name Pepin changed to Pippin, which is the actual name in German. And they also mentioned that the title “the short” is a mistranslation.
5. There are 500 changes, the earliest on 2/3/2006 and the latest on 5/4/2008.
6. No external links provided.
7. No references.
8. No further reading.

I would recommend this article to people that just want basic information about Pepin the Short. But I wouldn’t recommend it for a serious research because there weren’t any references and that makes the article’s information a little hard to trust.

Religion

Once again in this part of history we can see how much the religion and church influenced changes and conquest of empires. Charles was trying to impose Christianity all over west Europe. The rejection of Christianity by the Saxons was his reason to begin a war and destroy their culture. He forced them to convert to Christianity. Charles founded monasteries and villages and filled them with Franks. He destroyed their pagan temples, just like he did before in other cultures, and removed the Saxon peasants.
Then he wanted to conquer Spain because it was mostly Muslim at the time, and wanted to impose his Christianity as well.
All the different forms of government he structured had a representative from the church as well. All the important decisions taken in the empire were highly influenced by the church.
Religion at that time seemed to be the weapon used to conquer. It didn’t have a lot of the meaning it has nowadays. It wasn’t focused that much on spirituality or on the recognition of good and evil. Church was a political institution that ruled with fear and violence.

Religion shouldn't creat borders....

My favorite reading from this week was the one about Islam and Muslims. It was great to understand a little bit more about this religion and culture. It is always very important to acquire knowledge about cultures that surround us, and the Muslim culture, especially in the USA, is growing rapidly.
The media always gives us an idea about Muslims that it is not completely true. We usually rely our understanding on information we get from movies, TV and newspapers. It was until I came to the USA to college that I had an opportunity to be close to Muslims and I learned more about the Islam.
It was only after de attack from 9/11 that me (and probably lots of other people) paid more attention to the Muslims. Before that all I’ve heard was that: Arabs = Muslims, Arabs ride camels and have magic carpets, and Islam is a crazy wronged religion.
When I met Muslim people I learned that the Islam and the Catholicism have a lot in common. Both religions talk about the angel Gabriel bringing knowledge about God to a very important icon within the religion. In Islam it was to Muhammad and in Catholicism it was to Virgin Mary. Both religions also believe in Jesus Christ, for Catholics they believe he was God’s son, and in Islam they believe he was a prophet. Overall both religions are about following God’s rules, preaching God’s word, daily praying and help people in need.
If people cared more about learning about other religions, they would find out that all of them in the end have the same purpose, to be a good human being. Each person lives their religion in their own particular way, some are more passionate and some like to keep it private, but as long as outcome is to be a good person and help and respect others, then who cares which God you believe in or what religion you like?

Feminists would love this!

One more time, I find Aristotle’s thinking very interesting. In the reading “Aristotle: On a good wife”, he finds a way to describe, something that nowadays would sound completely misogynic, in a beautiful way. In the present time, if that reading went public, it would cause a huge controversy. Feminists and women in general, would freak out and complain because the reading seems to portray women as if they were worth less than men. But I am pretty sure that in the ancient times, this was written to persuade women to be good wives and to empower them.
Throughout the whole reading he expresses the obligations, qualities and characteristics that a good wife must have. He refers to women as the ones that control the house and everything that go on inside their homes. Women are also in charge of raising the children well. If you think about it, the most important things in their lives and their families were completely ruled by women. In those ancient times men thought that women weren’t as smart as them and for this reason women weren’t expected to make decisions. But inside their homes they had control over everything; men weren’t even expected to have knowledge all the passes within the house.
“Her husband’s wishes are as laws appointed for her by divine will”, this was like a law back then, but is it really that different nowadays?
I found it interesting that women would take care of the house, manage home finances and serve their husbands, all of this in exchange for loyalty, love and guidance from their husbands. A good wife deserved to be loved and be treated with respect, and men had that clear in their minds.
Nowadays, women keep trying to prove men their independence by not dedicating their whole time to their homes and children. Women feel empowered when they have the option to face the world just as men do. My question is: which family structure works better? Should independent working women not have a family and just dedicate their time to their professional life? Is there an actual balance?

My hero!

While reading about the Punic wars I kept following the story as if it was a movie. I could picture how Rome was getting stronger by acquiring knowledge from the war. How they learned to make war at sea, how they made their war tools more effective by improving their technology and how these things helped them to conduct war in a massive scale. Rome seemed to be unstoppable until a “hero” showed up. Hannibal was truly amazing for me, just like a legendary hero in a movie would be. He began by taking the after Hamilcar’s (his father) death, and took the Carthaginian war to another level. His brilliant plan was to get Rome’s allies on his side because he knew they were unhappy. He wanted to show them that he could protect and take care of them as long as they stood by his side. Hannibal’s army was very small; invading Italy seemed to be an impossible task. The Romans thought that they could contain Hannibal in Spain, and because of their enormous power they didn’t feel a threat. But Hannibal proved them wrong. When he escaped from Spain he surprised the Roman armies by slipping northward, crossing the river by pontoons and swimming. They crossed using elephants as their transportation. He defeated the Roman army on Gaul. Now his biggest challenge came across, he needed to cross The Alps, and of course he did. But it wasn’t easy, the crossing cost him the death of most of the elephants and many men. When he arrived to Italy the task of convincing the allies to join him began. When the Roman senate realized this, they targeted the same objective. The following battles were with the purpose of proving to the allies who could take better care of them, whoever would achieve having the allies on their side would become the most powerful. Another amazing victory, totally movie hero like, was the Battle of Cannae. The Roman’s army outnumbered Hannibal’s army by a large amount, but Hannibal had the perfect plan to defeat them. “Out of the 70,000 Romans that took the field, only 10,000 survived” (The Punic Wars, Battle of Cannae). Hannibal was unbeatable, he was becoming a legend and everyone fear and respected him. But like every hero, his victories had to come to an end. He faced an enemy that was as clever and tricky as him, Scipio, who defeated him and his army in the battle of Zama. Hannibal surrender and advised Carthage to surrender as well. Hannibal died before his time, it was very possible that he was poisoned. But like a hero he remained in history, his memory brought fear to the Romans even after his death.
Learning about these legendary heroes brought up the following question for me: Why don’t we have this type of heroes nowadays? How big of a change in our society and government a hero like Hannibal would make?

WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE #1

In the article they explain how Ancient Greek Philosophy was a great influence for modern philosophy. The article begins by explaining the thought of the pre-socratic philosophers, who were concerned with what exists, how and where it comes from.
The article focuses mainly in Socrates, Aristotle and Plato. Socrates thought that a person should always try to do well by knowing ourselves. He taught Plato, who was one of the most influential philosophers in Western thought. He expressed his view on ethics, metaphysics, reason, knowledge and human life. Plato taught Aristotle who better earned the label of empiricist. He developed the Scientific method.
The article also takes us to see the influence of the Greek Philosophy into other cultures.



1. The article is 1358 words long.
2. I used Greek Philosophy as the search term and the article’s name is “Greek Philosophy”
3. There was no disambiguation link for this Wikipedia article.
4. In the discussion page I found many interesting comments about disagreements with the article. The one that stood out the most was a guy that made a correction to whoever wrote the Article. The author stated that Socrates taught both Aristotle and Plato. The reader made the correction that Socrates only taught Plato and Plato, with Socrates’ influence, taught Aristotle. The author corrected the article.
5. There have been 500 changes made to the article. The first change was on 1/19/2003 and the last change on 9/8/2008.
6. There are 2 external links provided.
7. There are 7 references listed.

I would recommend this article to someone that it is interested in just knowing the basics about Greek Philosophy. This article has very superficial information, especially when it comes to describe the biography and input of Socrates, Aristotle and Plato on philosophy.