What role did Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity play in the expansion and development of the New World? How did empires and states facilitate this transmission of culture through new regions?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary but correct responses should include: The huge states we call empires acted as arenas for transmitting culture. Some empires had functioned in this way for a long time. The Roman Empire transmitted Greek learning and the Christian religion from the eastern Mediterranean to as far away as the Atlantic edge of Europe. In Mesoamerica, as well, Teotihuacán had influenced fashion and politics in the Maya world. Over many centuries, China had forged a common identity in a vast domain, and the influence of its arts, learning, and political thinking had spilled over into Korea, Japan, and other parts of Asia. China had also been the conduit by which Buddhism spread from India to Korea and Japan. The most spectacular cases were relatively recent. Muslim empire builders spread Islam across a great swathe of the Old World from Spain to the borders of India and deep into Africa. With Islam came scholars and texts that put the learning of India and of the former Roman world back in touch with one another. Muslim rulers and the gardeners and agriculturalists they patronized exchanged unfamiliar crops back and forth across Eurasia and North Africa. In about the year 1000, when Norse from Europe and Thule from the Pacific met in Greenland, it became possible, in theory, to circle the world by intercommunicating routes.