Guns, Germs, and Steel

Yesterday in class, we watched a documentary type video about how guns, germs, and steel have created modern civilization. It's a history video about this guy named Jared Diamond and he goes to this place somewhere near Australia called Paupa New Guinea. It is a place where many people live and survive. I say this because they live a hunter-gather lifestyle even in this century. They have just been used to living this since the beginning of time and never had a civilization more advanced than what they have. They seem pretty happy with what they have because they don't know what the rest of the world is like. That is nice because you should be happy. They are very smart people because I don't know about you but if I was put into the forest with nothing and had to survive for a few days, there is no way I could do it to be honest. The video is pretty interesting when you listen to it and what they are talking about. We aren't finished watching it yet but we will be on Monday or when we get back I think.

After the test

Today in class, we took the first test of our west civ class. I thought it was really fair because we were able to use our blog and the notes we took on there. I was happy because I've had a goal of making this new blog good and copying my notes. You never know when you will be able to use your blog on the test and it helps a lot. Even if i didn't have my blog I think that I would've done really well because it was easy and short even though the short essays were kind of a lot to write in them. I thought it was okay and I hope I got a really good grade.

Test on the first unit

Today in class, we reviewed for our test we have tomorrow. The test is on our first unit and all about Mesopotamia. We have to know kind of a lot, but I think and hope it will be easy. It isn't that easy to learn these types of things because it can be pretty boring at times. I feel like sometimes it's hard to try and sit there and pay attention because it isn't always what I want to learn. I am kind of nervous about how the test will be and I hope it's easy for me so I get a good grade.

Mesopotamia

Yesterday in class, we continued with the powerpoint and taking more notes. I feel like for this unit, there are so many notes to take and a lot to know for the test. Maybe it's just me but I think so I don't know really, I'm just kind of worried about studying for the test but I think it will be fine as long as we have a day of class where we specifically go over everything we need to know for the test and leave out any extra information. But of course we still keep that in our minds for when we will talk about it again. Anyway, here are the notes I took for Friday's class:

- The earliest cities, Mesopotamia, the population increased dramatically due to new irrigation techniques
- The district, Sumer occupied the land between Tigris and Euphrates rivers
- Cities and towns were founded 40,000 inhabitants
- Better food storage allowed for diversity in professions
- Kings emerged also family dynasties and the "city-state"
- Sumerians invented the earliest form of writing, known as "cuniform"
- A pantheon of Sumerian gods and goddesses emerged, with many of the dieties 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 made calendar based on moon cycles
- They also divided the hours into 60 min and the minutes into 60 sec
- The Ziggurat was a Sumerian temple built on top of a "mountain" of earth
- Wandering nomads drove herds of domesticated animals in many areas, especially to the south of Sumer in Arabia
- 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
- Indo-European were people from the grasslands of the Russian steppe who introduced the horse to the Near East
- The war-like 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

Prehistoric Era

Today in class we learned about the prehistoric era and the time of 3000-1200 B.C. This is our very first unit of West Civ class and it pretty much sums up the first humans to walk the earth and how civilization was born. Here are the notes I took today:

- The origins and "Ages" of human beings
- 200,000 years ago a human species emerged in southwestern Africa
- 14,000 years ago, a worldwide human race existed
- The earliest prehistoric age was also called the Paleolithic age or the old stone age
- The Neolithic age or the new stone age was marked by advanced tool making and the beginnings of agriculture
- The Prehistoric Era was also called the Agricultural Revolution and the Neolithic Revolution
- The population goes up in high numbers
- Hierarchies appeared in village life
- The time of the invention of wheel and plow
- Villagers were polytheists, worshipped multiple nature, also human and animal gods
- The fertile crescent was were civilization began

First Westciv Class

Today we had our first western civilization class of the new semester. Some people switched classes and had a different teacher or just changed and have different people in their new class. I stayed in the same class and had the same teacher which was good because I liked that class, even though there are different people in my class now, I think that's good because you always need a new change. We all had to create new blogs today for western civ. Some people never had a blog so they had to make one and get a gmail. I think it was way easier this time to make a new blog than it was last time setting it up because I remember in August when I made my first one, I was having trouble. I think almost everyone was to be honest but it was just much quicker and that was better. I'm excited for this class and what we will learn.