Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights:#1 The discipline of global history still suffers from a Eurocentrism and a nation-state centered lens, which diminishes the role of non-European civilizations and global processes such as capitalism.#2 The birth of human civilization as we know it today began in West Asia. In Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, the introduction of basic farming tools during the Neolithic Revolution allowed humans to evolve from hunter-gatherer tribes into more settled agricultural communities.#3 The overland routes of commerce and culture reached as far as China, which by the first millennium BC had consolidated its administrative power in the Yangtze River valley. The Zhou Dynasty first articulated the notion of a Middle Kingdom to differentiate their imperial state from those of their vassals and the powerful fiefdoms of the northern plains.#4 The Zhou Dynasty in China, which had transition from bronze to iron farming tools, hydrological technologies such as dams, dikes, and canals, and the decimal system in mathematics, all existed during this time. The Qin Dynasty, which had restored stability, was supplanted by the Han Dynasty, which promoted Confucianism.