Chapter 15 Culture Transformation

I enjoyed this reading because it gave me a better understanding of why not a lot of Aztec ruins are in Mexico. The Europeans came over and destroyed all the native traditions, the other interesting fact is that they use to whip the Native Americans to church. I feel that the book does a god job on the Virgin of Guadalupe, but does not explaining that the virgin was actually a combination of the Aztec goddess Tonantzin, which is the goddess of our mother, revered mother, and so on. I really liked the part on Martin Luther who started the Scientific Revolutions. I have to say that in my list of people that I would like to meet he has to be in the top five because he revolutionized the system. I wish I could feel what Luther must of felt when he had to go against the church. He must of been a very brave person at the time the Catholic church was very powerful and could of killed him. I was also surprised that they could not convert the Chinese Dynasty into Christians because they thought that trinity believes were primitive thinking. The Chinese thought that Europeans were not advanced for them this is very interesting because we always like to think that we are more advance, and when I say the we I mean the west. I also enjoyed this chapter because it showed that Christianity was also spread by sword and people were forced to convert. For example, the Native American Mexicans and other Spanish base colonies were forced to go to church and forced to abandoned their believes. What the book does not say is that they were beaten in order to go to church. The section on Islam is also very interesting because at some point both religions were spread by sword then the Islamic religion just taxed the non believers instead of converting them. I have to say that I am disappointed that I cannot go to Mexico and see Tenochtitlan now we just have a cathedral.