Oh My Goshes

We did so badly on the test compared to the other sections.  The one was 80, the other was 75 or something like that, and ours was a 52 I believe!  Holy cow, I mean I got an 80, but still.  Kelley though, was the only one to get a 100%! You go Kelley.  Anyways, we got through some of this Prezi.  It was about Egypt.  Egyptian life is centered all around the Nile River, and the satellite picture we looked at showed greens stuff, and that was where people had settled along the Nile.  It was crazy looking.  Water was used for bathing, drinking, irrigation, and transportation.  Also, Every June the Nile floods, and so in October everything is super fertile, the soil in that stage is called silt.  They got smarter so when it flooded they would create pathways for the water to flow so it wouldn't destroy all their crops.  That was a technological breakthrough, and is one of the ways to manage a river.  Mentioned was the Great Sphinx of Giza/Pyramids, I had no clue that they were all shiny and pretty when they were first completed.  This Pharaoh wanted to get in and no one, still to this day has found the secret rock on the outside of the Pyramid that opens a hidden pathway.  (That sounds SO cool).  So the Pharaoh guy ordered to have a hole bashed into the side so he could look for his stupid treasure.  Anyways this idiot never found his treasure.  In fact there are many, many pathways and tunnels inside that lead to chambers of dead important people.  Plus, everything is dark.  Although, people have found little notes on the sides, hidden in the corners how the people built it wrote about how amazing it is.  Speaking of which, I was always told that the Pyramids were built by slaves, but instead it was built by people who wanted to build it.  It was basically community service.  It took a long time to build, roughly 27 years, from the years 2555-2532 BC.  The oldest monumental statue in the world, and it has a lion with a human head, sadly though, some dummies shot the nose off.  We managed to get down at the end of class the order of people back then.  It was: Pharaoh; Government Officials-Nobles, Priest; Soldiers; Scribes; Merchants; Artisans; Farmers; (and last but not least) Slaves and Servants.

LO-3

So we went into the wrong classroom today.  But Martha told us to switch.  Anyway we started reading the section and taking notes.  We read about the Steppes-cast semiarid grasslands or plains.  All present day languages derived from the Indo-European people.  The only thing that separated the Indo-Europeans from South West Asia was the horse.  The Indo-European people revolved around the horse.  In 3800 BC, the horse was for meet and its hide.  3500 BC, it was used to harness with the wheel, and was worked, and then in 1200 BC it was bred to be better and stronger.  This is when the Steppe people would learn to ride it.  The longest lasting Indo-Europeans were living in the Hitties.  This place was prosperous because its abundance of copper, silver and gold.  Sadly though, it was lacking in tin.  Around 1600 BC the kings dominated most of Anatolia.  The area was split into two lands.  Also, the Nile is about 4,000 miles long.  Thankfully, finally some place gives us recognition, women were highly looked upon! WHOO! The Pharoah had many wives, and they were all wealthy.  Also, the Egyptians were highly concerned about the after-life because they would be eaten by a monster if they didn't pass the test.

Maps and Stuff

So we were looking at Tigris and the Euphrates from way-back-when and where they were on the maps today.  It's mainly Iraq, Syria and Turkey.  Apparently the bloodiest war in the world currently, is going on the Syria.  They leader is trying to keep his place as leader.  Sumer is in between the Tigris and Euphrates river.  Another thing that increased the population is irrigation techniques.  When we were talking about lots of people and how they were becoming more civilized, I picture around 10,000, at MOST.  Instead though, there was about 40,000 people.  We briefly talked about Cuneiform which was the earliest writing ever, it took us many many years to figure out what it meant in today's world.  The places were divided into city-states.  Also, with better food storage, comes better professions.  City-states is when rules and guidelines started coming into play.   The gods that they worshiped were not people, but forces, like the sun or rivers.  Also the Sumerians were the first one to create the time: 1 hour = 60 minutes, 1 minute = 60 seconds.  Also they figured out the patterns with the moon cycles and basically created months.  There is a temple on top of a "mountain" of Earth called the Ziggurat.  Lastly we talked about the "Epic of Gilgamesh" it was the great flood that occurred and covered the whole Earth.   This is basically the flood with Noah in the bible.  They sort of copied them (something like that).  Mr. Schick said that scientist believe that there was never a time when the whole Earth was covered in water.  Oh well.  Somewhere in between all of that an announcement was made saying that we would be leaving school 2 hours early.  Best news I got.

So Cold

It was really cold so I got my sweatshirt.  Because of that I missed a little bit of the PowerPoint.  From the little we went over, we talked a bunch about what is the largest city not by any water.  The city turned out to be Indianapolis.  No one guessed it, I believe someone even shouted Salt Lake City.  Also, the population not only went up because of the time people had but because there was less infant mortality.  For a community to feed everybody, the environment would have to be completely changed.  Surplus' help everybody in so many ways.  We did go through the movie some more.  Farming is super hard, and the video said that is why people enslaved others.  The life of herders apparently getting the "short end of the stick".  Apparently, people now are digging oil and making it into fertilizer.  Someone also said that agriculture was an accident.

Origins and Ages of Humans

We took notes on a PowerPoint that was shown today, and from the notes I took and seeing how many slides we looked at, there wasn't a whole lot of information that was taken down.  (Or information I gathered because I went to the bathroom).  200,000 years ago was when the first people evolved (estimation).  14,000 years ago was the human race.  I don't really understand the difference between the two.  Neolithic is new and the "Pae" is older.  When the Neolithic Revolution started, there became hierarchies, and sadly, the status of women lowered.  People had more time to do things in a community, so they started to thing about Gods, and the populations rose.  We did watch a video today that have John Green in it.  Never heard of him until today, but he's a smart guy, wrote several books.  He figured out that to buy a 99 cent double cheeseburger, all you have to do is work 11 minutes on minimum wage to make that kind of money.  Also when the nomads were around, fishing was popular because they didn't eat you and there was also a lot of them.  Mr. Schick feels Jared Diamond left out the part how people tended to be near water.  Also the bones and teeth of people way back when, were healthier and stronger than those nowadays.  We had to stop because of the bell after that.

Was Jared Diamond Correct?

The theory Jared Diamond has is that a country's progress was shaped from the beginning by geographical luck.  Was he on track with this?  I would say yes, and so does our Western Civilizations book.  The books says that every country, city, village, etc. all started out in the Paleolithic Age, basically hunters and gatherers.  The people had to go from place to place searching for food and a safe enough place to stay for the time being.  They then developed more into the Neolithic Age where they instead started to settle in one place and not move around as much.  It's not like the people settled in a desert with no resources around, they would probably find places that were resourceful and plentiful.  This is an example of Jared Diamond's theory, geographical luck.  The textbook said how when they settled down the families and individuals were given social statuses and value within the home.  Also, discoveries are made in which large building were once standing.  Too big to be a house, with the layout of a temple.  Polytheism was able to be practiced to protect the community and watch over the people.  This shows how certain civilizations were more advanced than others.  Basically, when people stopped running around and being unsure of what or where their next meal was coming from or where they would sleep, a social ladder came into play.  Because they women were the ones to have children they had to stay in and around the house for the majority of all their time.  This left the men to have more of a say in what the community as a whole would like.  This has also carried over into today's world in certain ways.  The Fertile Crescent was what Jared Diamond spoke lots about, and it was also on about the same latitude, because they shared similar climate, and the same crops were able to grow there.  In the book, Mesopotamia and Egypt were very prosperous, this is led to believing that Jared Diamond was correct and because these cities were all in the same latitude, they were given a head start from the rest of the world.

No Doori :(

We went into a different classroom today. (No Doori :((, wah).  It was Mr. Paaby's and all we did was have people set up blogs and send him the accounts we made.  He gave us an assignment and them we talked about the Guns, Germs and Steel for a little bit.  After that we were told a number and went to get the books.  I don't know if I'm going to like books, but who knows.  Mr. Schick told us that there is an online website for the book, so then we don't have to take it home.  That also means we won't have an excuse for our homework if we forget the book.  I don't think there will necessarily be assigned seats, but I like that, we just sat down yesterday.