Guns, Germs, and Steel

Today we started watching a movie called Guns, Germs, and Steel.  I wrote a few notes on what we watched so far:

• Jared Diamond (every kiss begins with JARED)
• Papua New Guinea
• Jared Diamond first came to Papua New Guinea when he was 27
• What separates the haves from the have nots?
• Why do white men have so much cargo and we, New Guineans, have so little?
• cargo - material goods
• White men think they are genetically superior to the New Guineans
• New Guineans have a different kind of learning; can do things they need
• Why do civilizations progress
• advanced technology
• large populations
• well-organized work force
• wild sego - major part of New Guinean diet; doesn't store very long

Blog Test

Today we had a test.  Mr. Schick let us use our blog.  Thankfully for me, I write down mostly everything I hear, so almost every answer was on my blog.  I'm pretty sure I did well.  I may have gotten one or two things wrong, but other than that I'm confident.

The test was really easy with the blog.  Without the blog, I probably would've known nothing.  The test had fill in the blank, three short answer (which I was nervous about, but they ended up being really easy), and a map where we had to identify one sea and two rivers.

Overall, the test took me about ten minutes, give or take a few, and I'm very confident about the test. Hopefully I don't fail like I did on a lot of tests last semester.

Quiz tomorrow

Today we reviewed for the quiz for tomorrow.  Mr. Schick just showed us the PowerPoint that he showed us at first.  I'm sure I'll do great.  The test is fill in the blank, and apparently there's going to be a map.  I have to review all of my notes tonight.  Hopefully my class does good like Mr. Schick said we were.  I'm sure we are.  After all, we are the smart class.

Persuasion

Today was a good day.  I woke up early this morning and made cookies for my Western Civ class. After I handed out all of the cookies, Mr. Schick told us that we were going to have a test on Wednesday.  If you know me, you would know that I need at least two days to review for a test. With my amazing powers of persuasion, I convinced Mr. Schick to move the test to Thursday.  The only thing we had to do was have an engaged conversation about Hammurabi's Code.  (At first he wanted me to teach the class, but that's not happening.)  I started out the conversation.  Mr. Schick told me to say the one that makes me complain the most, because, you know, I am the complainer.  I already said the one that makes me complain the most on Friday, so I said the one that made me complain the second most.  Then, the conversation started rolling.  It was great.

More on Mesopotamia

In class on Friday we took more notes on Mesopotamia:

More on Mesopotamia

• a pantheon of Sumerian gods and goddesses emerged, with many of the deities representing the natural elements of the world 
• the world’s first (surviving) epic was the Sumerian “Epic of Gilgamesh,” which told of a great flood 
• Sumerians first divided the hour into sixty minutes and the minute into sixty seconds; they also organized a calendar based on moon cycles 
• the Ziggurat was a Sumerian temple built on top of a “mountain” of earth

Civilization in Mesopotamia

• Wandering nomads drove herds of domesticated animals in many areas, especially to the south of Sumer in Arabia
• Sumer was conquered by the Akkadians c. 2350 B.C. - their gods took the place of previous gods and all were forced to worship them
• King Hammurabi of Babylon created a series of laws known as “Hammurabi’s Code” - laws that included “an eye for an eye” and regulations of marriage, divorce, and punishments for all sorts of crimes

Mesopotamia - the expansion

• Indo-Europeans were people from the grasslands of the Russian steppe who introduced the horse to the Near East
• the warlike Indo-European tribe known as the Hittites settled in Asia Minor
• the Hittites had a lucrative trade in metals and conquered nearly all of their neighbors, even threatening Egypt

After we copied the rest of our notes, we looked at some of Hammurabi's Code. There was some pretty gross stuff on there. I found one that says "If a man give his child to a nurse and the child die in her hands, but the nurse unbeknown to the father and mother nurse another child, then they shall convict her of having nursed another child without the knowledge of the father and mother and her breasts shall be cut off."  It sounds pretty confusing, but it's basically saying that if a man gives his baby to a nurse, and the baby dies because she was taking care of another baby, the nurse's breasts will be cut off.  Thankfully we don't have laws like those anymore.

From Prehistory to Civilization

Today we looked at a PowerPoint about prehistory and civilization.  Mr. Schick gave us questions, but I'm not going to answer them until I have all my notes with everything.  Here are the notes I have:

• From 3000-12000 BC
• Before Civilization: the Prehistoric Era

• 200,000 years ago a human species emerged in southwestern Africa
• 14,000 years ago, a worldwide human race existed
• prehistory: before things were written down
• Earliest prehistoric age is the Paleolithic age (Old Stone Age)
• Neolithic Age (New Stone Age) was marked by advanced tool making and the beginnings of agriculture
• Initially, humans were parts of migratory groups which hunted, fished and gathered plants for food
• The Agricultural Revolution
• Also known as the Neolithic Revolution, this was a shift from itinerant hunting/gathering to more permanent settlements centered on agriculture (beginning in southwestern Asia)
• Populations rose due to increased ability to care for young children
• Hierarchies appeared in village life; the status of women was lowered as women were confined more to domestic duties
• Invention of wheel and plow made it possible to produce enough food for storage
• Villagers were polytheists, worshipped multiple nature, human and animal gods
• The Earliest Cities: Mesopotamia
• The district known as Sumer occupied the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers
• Population increased dramatically due to new irrigation techniques
• Cities and towns were founded, some with as many as 40,000 inhabitants
• better food storage allowed for diversity in professions: priests, tradesmen, artisans, politicians, farmers
• Kings emerged, as did family dynasties and the concept of the “city-state”
• Sumerians invented the earliest form of writing, known as “cuneiform”

First Day of Western Civ

Today was the first day of Western Civilization.  Mr. Schick is still as crazy as he was last semester.  We had some new people in our class, and some people left (Cody, Zach, Ryan, and John).  We have more than we did in our old class, so it might still be as good as Human Geo was. I like my seats right now, because I'm around most of my friends.  Mr. Schick is probably going to take me out of my old seat, which I love, and put me in a new one.

We mad a new blog for Western Civ, and I was one of around 10 people to have actually done it, but I was the first to finish.  I was trying to help people make the blog, but the website wasn't working.  It was really weird.

We didn't do a lot in class today.  The only thing we really did was try to work on the blogs.  I'm sure we'll do some more tomorrow.