Chapter 5 Society and inequality

Chinese society was shaped by the actions of the state. Their emperor created an academy where officials were trained into scholars this academy then had 30,000 students who were tested with writing tests and then assigned as officials in different grades. this system wanted those who were richer than the rest so they could continue on with their education and not eventually drop out. When the word rich or wealth comes up it usually means people who own land. These land owners were a big part of the Chinese society. Even though land owners were important a big part of china's population were peasants. There were different levels of peasants. Those who were able to survive with what they had  and things they could sell and the others who could barely survive. Merchants weren't seen as productive people, they were not appreciated. The high class people saw them as unproductive because they believed the money that they made was shameful because they sold the work of others. Merchants ended up becoming somewhat wealthy and tried to become part of the elite society by buying land. India had a caste system and it had to do with the color of one's skin. The light skins were the Aryan invaders and the dark skins were the native peoples. In India there were people called Jatis who were groups that were occupationally based. The high class people were the Brahmins and the low class were the untouchables. The jatis were given rules and were assigned duties. The Greco-Roman were based on slavery. Slavery was more of the larger society and made up a lot of the population percentage.

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