Alex's Western Civilization Blog

I was out sick today, so I don't know what we did in class today.

Today we took our quiz on Mesopotamia. I think that it was a pretty easy quiz, but there were a few questions that I wasn't sure of. The first side of the quiz was matching terms and definitions and that was pretty easy, I feel like I probably got all of them correct. While Mr. Schick was grading the quizzes he said that no one got more than a question wrong on that side, so I'm glad that I did well on that side. The back of the quiz was definitely harder than the first. The backside was multiple choice and fill in the blank. There were some questions that I knew right away, and there were some questions where I was torn between two multiple choice answers. One of the questions that I was unsure of was one that was about struggles that had to be overcome in Sumer, and I was torn between two of the questions. I was also a little unsure about a question that was describing The Epic of Gilgamesh  and it asked what adventurous king had a role in this story, and my initial thought w

Today was the class before our quiz on Mesopotamia. We started the class by watching a soulja boy parody that has to do with Mesopotamia. After that, we thought there was supposed to be an evacuation, but there wasn't so we talked about Mr. Schick's sports broadcasting class and watched some of John Carroll's youtube videos. Mr. Schick told us about a previous student that recently went on American Idol, and we watched her audition video. Next, we went through the Mesopotamia PowerPoint and Mr. Schick pointed out what we should study for the quiz. After that, Dan told us about his quizlet that he made for the quiz, and Mr. Schick put it up on the board and we went through the flashcards. The quiz is worth 75 points, and Mr. Schick says that it'll be an easy A. I think that I will do pretty good on it as long as a take my time to study.

Today in class we reviewed some of our terms for the quiz on Wednesday. Some of the terms we went over were... polytheism : the belief in many gods dynasty : series of rulers all from the same family modern-day countries in the fertile crescent are:  Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey the most important element in the epic of Gilgamesh is the great flood which is also in Noah's Ark silt : the soil left behind when flood water is received ziggurat : a Sumerian temple built on top of a "mountain" of earth cuneiform : the earliest form of writing (made by Sumerians) Another word for the New Stone Age is Neolithic Another word for the Old Stone Age is Paleolithic The wheel and plow  made it possible to produce enough food for storage. After doing that for half of the class, we had the rest of our time to work on our blogs.

Today in class we continued to go through the prehistory and civilization powerpoint. Some of the notes I took in the class were that wandering nomads drove herds of domesticated animals in many areas, especially in Southern Sumer in Arabia. The Akkadians conquered Sumer in c. 2350; their gods took the place of the previous gods and the people were forced to worship these new gods. King Hammurabi of Babylon created Hammurabi's code: laws that include an "eye for an eye" and regulations of marriage, divorce, and punishments for all sorts of crimes. After we took notes on the PowerPoint, Mr. Schick had us research Hammurabi's Code and read some of the laws. There are 282 laws, three of the laws that I found were " If any one break a hole into a house (break in to steal), he shall be put to death before that hole and be buried," " If a man strike a free-born woman so that she loses her unborn child, he shall pay ten shekels for her loss," and " I

Today in class we finished reading chapter one in our Western Civilizations textbook and went through the prehistory and civilizations powerpoint. In the4 beginning of class, Mr. Schick let us pick our new seats for Western Civilizations, and those will be our seats for the rest of the year. After that, he had us read and take notes on chapter one in our textbooks. Some notes I took were that the rivers framing Mesopotamia were the Tigris and Euphrates. There was one advantage to the Sumerians in Mesopotamia and that was good soil. There were three disadvantages: unpredictable flooding combined with a period of little to no rain, there were no barriers for protection, and the natural resources of Sumer were limited. The Sumerians created solutions to these disadvantages and they were to dig irrigation ditches to provide water, the built city walls with mud bricks for defense and Sumerians traded their goods with the people of the mountains and deserts in exchange for raw materials. The

I came late to school today, so I missed class this morning.

Today was our last Human Geography class. There were two people that had to make up their tests during class today, so we had the whole class to write our last blog about this semester. I thought that this was a pretty good semester for me. I feel like at the beginning of this semester, I had some struggles with understanding the material. I feel like my strongest time was towards the end of the semester. I was doing better on the tests and was able to understand the material a lot better. I am very happy with my final exam grade which was a 92, that was one of my highest (if not the highest) exam grade I got. I feel like this class helped me a lot with the ability to learn from conversations and video, rather than learning from a piece of paper. I also thought that the topic that we learned was pretty interesting. My favorite topic was probably Guns, Germs, and Steel, and my least favorite was population and settlement. Overall, I think this was a very good semester of human geography

Today we had our test on Guns, Germs, and Steel. It was a twenty-six question multiple-choice test that was worth 100 points. The test was pretty easy, and I feel like probably got an A or a B on it. The trickiest part for me was the last page because there were a few questions that I wasn't sure of. I feel like I was prepared for this test, I had studied for it on quizlet and I feel like I took pretty good notes from the past few classes. I also feel like I was able to pick up a lot of information from the film that we watched on Guns, Germs, and Steel. One of the questions I couldn't remember was how many cows are in the US. I remember that we talked about this in class, but I couldn't remember the number, so I just took my best guess using my knowledge of how many people are in the US. The other question I didn't know was about a village in Jordan 9000 years, so I just took my best guess. Overall, I think this was a pretty good test, and I feel like I should do prett

Today in class we watched an episode of the teen Jeopardy competition. At the beginning of class, we reviewed some of the main concepts of Guns, Germs, and Steel because we have a test tomorrow. The test is worth 100 points and will be multiple choice. Some of the concepts we need to know are the answer to Yali's question, sago, the fertile crescent, and the 14 domesticated animals. Jared Diamond's answer to Yali's question is geographic luck meaning that the people with domesticated animals and fertile land would be considered geographically blessed. Sago is one of the main sources of food in Papua New Guinea. You can get 70lbs from one tree, but it is very poor in nutrition. It can fill you up, but you have to eat it within a few days or it will go bad. The fertile crescent was an area of land in the middle east that was geographically blessed. The 14 domesticated animals are  sheep, goats, cows, pigs, horses, Arabian camels, Bactrian camels, llamas, donkeys, reindeer, wa

Today in class, we finished watching part one of the Guns, Germs, and Steel video. There are three parts in total of the video series, but Mr. Schick told us that we are only going to be watching part one. We rewatched the part of the video about the 14 domesticated animals because that will be a key part of this unit. We continued to learn about Diamond's theory of geographic luck. We learned about the fertile crescent, it's located in the middle east and all of the lands are on the same line of latitude. Civilizations in the fertile crescent would be geographically blessed. None of the domesticated animals came from Papua New Guinea, they came from North Africa, Europe, and Asia; the llama came from South America. Papua New Guineans eventually got pigs, but none of the other domesticated animals meaning that they still have to do manual labor. We also got to take a quick look at the more developed parts of Papua New Guinea, so we could see that not everyone lives like the hig

Today in class we continued watching the Guns, Germs, and Steel video. Today we learned that there are 14 domesticated animals. Those 14 animals are horses, donkeys, yaks, Arabian camels, sheep, goat, pig, Bactrian camel, Bali cattle, buffalo, llama, cow, reindeer, and mithan. Before we found this information out, we tried to guess how many there are and the numbers were much higher. We learned that one of the main answers to Yali's question is geographic luck. This means that the people in Papua New Guinea aren't inferior, they were just given animals that don't give labor and poor food resources. The only domesticated animal that they have is the pig, and pigs aren't able to do manual labor give milk so everything that they do there is used with manpower. One of the main crops that they eat is sago, and this is not good either because it doesn't last long and is low on nutrition. Sometimes there is so little protein in Papua New Guinea that they have to eat spider

Today in class we had a two-hour delay, so the class was only 40 minutes today. We started the class off by looking at pictures of Mr. Schick's dogs in the snow. Then, he showed us pictures from his trip to Maine over Christmas break and showed us the pictures of his daughter getting engaged. After that, we continued watching the Guns, Germs, and Steel video. Today we learned that all great civilizations have three things in common, advanced technology, large populations, and well-organized workforces. Pre-history is the time before anything was written down, and this took place over 13,000 years ago with the hunters and gathers. Papua New Guinea is one of the only places where people still live like hunters and gathers. An important source of food for the Papua New Guineans is sago. Sago has no protein and is low in nutrition, but one tree can give off 70 pounds of it. Sago will you up, but it goes bad soon, so you have to eat it within a few days. Barley and wheat is a far more n

Today in class we got to look at our exam grades and start learning about Guns, Germs, and Steel. Guns, Germs, and Steel is a novel written by Jared Diamond in 1997. In the book he explains why some societies are more materially successful than others. Diamond attributes societal success to geography, immunity to germs, food production, the domestication of animals, and use of steel. After we did some brief research and shared our knowledge, we started to watch part 1 of the National Geographic video on Guns, Germs, and Steel. In the video I learned that the beginning of Diamond’s quest took place in Papua New Guinea. Diamond was a professor at UCLA, a biologist, and a specialist in human physiology, but his main interest was birds. There have been people living in Papua New Guinea for over 40,000 years. During his time in Papua New Guinea, Diamond meets a man named Yali who asks him the question, “why do you white people have so much cargo, and we New Guineans have s