Merry Wiesner-Hanks

Society, Culture, and History
Throughout the history of history books most of what was portrayed was about military conquerors, important individuals in history, and politics. In Merry Wiesner-Hanks book “A Concise History of the World”, she does something fairly unconventional in respect to other books about history. Wiesner-Hanks focuses on the producers and reproducers throughout history. She does this by providing a social and cultural take on it. She employs this method throughout the entire book by illustrating the various groups of society and how those societies found meaning. Instead of focusing entirely on how individuals shaped the world, Wiesner-Hanks looks at the broader picture. She looks at the producers and reproducers of history, …show more content…
Early on in the book, Weisner-Hanks writes about early humans. For thousands of years humans were hunter gatherers, and spent most of their time doing just that. They, like other animals, eat what food they could find or kill. They would even eat raw meat. Eventually, though, humans developed an extremely important technology that would spur historical development forward. This technology was cooking. Cooking led to many things like meals together and more variety of roles a person could perform. The mere act of cooking evolved humans. Physical aspects such as larger brains, smaller and less pointed teeth, and shorter guts were things that could only happen as a result of cooking. Weisner-Hanks explains this is because cooking aided in digestion and “encouraged symbolic thought” (20). Not only did cooking lead to physical changes, it also lead to humans eating together a developing socially, which was key step to human evolution. The social aspect of humans is shown later on in the book when Weisner-Hanks discusses the importance of marriage and reproducers in classical societies. A main reason reproduction and marriage became so important is it was imperative to states and functionality of those states. Marriage became somewhat like a business agreement. Parents did not want their children marrying someone that would lower the family’s socioeconomic …show more content…
Cultural history is essentially what the human populace found meaning in. One thing they found meaning in and greatly shaped the world was education. Education began when writning gegan. Writing became necessary for life in a state to keep track of taxes and supplies. Therefore, schools began for men to go learn to read and write. However, this impeded the lower classes greatly. Even though noble women might learn to read and write, lower class women most certainly would not, and men of lower classes would be unlikely to know either. This cultural aspect of society led to even greater disadvantages for women. This also gave more power to the rich in ancient societies, which led to the rich over taxing and molding society to how they wanted it to be. Another aspect of cultural history that influenced society as a result of producers and reproducers was religion. Producers and reproducers found meaning to live in religion. Therefore, they are who gave religion power. Religion, in turn, shaped society. It told society how to behave morally, and it eventually even controlled the states with the help of the king. An example Weisner-Hanks uses is Constantine. He ordered toleration or all religions, but he did support Christianity. In turn for his support, the church supported him. In a way this united the state. However, this would not have been

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