Powerpoint of Egypt

Today in class we went over a power point. The power point talked about Egypt their geography,daily life,pharaohs, goddesses and gods, and their pyramids. The Egyptian life is centered around the Nile River and the river flows from the south to the north.  The river was used for drinking water, for irrigation, for bathing, and for transportation. The river was very dependable because every July it floods and every October it leaves behind rich soil. The delta is a broad marshy triangular area of fertile silt. Managing the river required technological breakthroughs with irrigation. The daily life of Egyptians depended on what class they were.  The divisions of their life was pharaohs, government officials like nobles and priests, soldiers  scribes,merchants,artisans,farmers, slaves and servants. Slaves and servants helped the wealthy with household and child raising duties. Farmers raised wheat, barley,lentils, onion, and they benefited from the irrigation of the Nile. Artisans would carve statues and reliefs showing military battles and scenes in the afterlife. They had a money/ barter system that was used. Merchants might except bags of grain for payment. Later their became a coinage that was used. Scribes kept records, told stories, wrote poetry,described anatomy and medical treatments. They wrote in hieroglyphs and hieratic. Soildera used wooden weapons like bows and arrows and spears with bronze tips. They also rode chariots. The pyramids were very common in Egypt. The great sphinx of Giza is the oldest monumental statue in the world. It was a statue of a recumbent lion with a humans head. It was built 2555-2532 B.C and it took 23 years to build.

LO3

Today in class we read pages 20-29, which is LO3 called Land of the Pharaohs: Egypt.The reading was on the Egyptians. The Egyptian civilization was more stable that that of Mesopotamia because political and sectional conflicts did not break the countries unity.The traditions of Egyptian civilizations became so strong that they flourished even in its last thousand years. Egypt is along the lower part of the Nile. The Nile is a river that is four thousand miles long and stretches from Central Africa to the Mediterranean. The country was divided into two sections called the "Two Lands". The Nile was very important to the Egypt's life. It was the cycle of labor and of life itself depended on its annual flooding and receding, and the " gift of the Nile" provided the wealth for the earliest Egyptian civilization. Then around 3100 BC the Two Lands were unified under a single king. The countries rulers from then on are usually know as pharaohs.  The pharaohs alot of responsibility and power. The Egyptians saw the pharaoh as a god. The woman who were closest to the pharaoh, the King's Mother and the King's Principal Wife, also had a touch of divinity , for it was a god who made them pregnant and a god yo whom they gave birth. The King's Principle Wife was usually his sister or half-sister. The pharaoh had many wives though and they were usually daughter of high officials. The wives lived apart from the pharaoh but if one caught his eye he could give her power like the Mother of the Pharaoh had. The ordinary women and men benefited from the pharaohs rule. Daughters inherited property equally with sons, and wives could divorce their husbands. Many Egyptian  deities were conceived in the form of animals or animal heads or bodies. The Egyptian priests and rulers often speculated that behind all the different deities they worshiped  there lay a single divine power. One god who had created all the others, perhaps or who ruled, protected, and nourished all the nations of the world. In 1800 Egyptians had come yo believe that the soul of every deceased person has to stand before Osiris, the ruler of the underworld for judgment. Osiris looked at there good and bad deeds in life and weighed there heart. Then he decided if the person would go to everlasting life in a garden paradise or into the crocodile jaws of a monster. Writing in Egypt started just like it did in Sumer but for different reasons. The Egyptians started writing for the religious needs of the rulers.The earliest Egyptian writings were the hieroglyphs which came from the Greek word for " sacred carvings". It started in 1300 B.C as part of carvings and paintings intended to honor the pharaohs. The hieroglyphs were actual pictures of real-life or mythical creatures and objects, but most of these pictures also stood for whole words or separate sounds of words. They were mostly found written in temples and other monuments. The Egyptian name of the hieroglyphs was" the writing of the words of god." Soon after there became shorter versions of writing like the hieratic script, and then in 700B.C the demotic script. In Egypt astronomers created a calender with twelve equal months of thirty days and five "free" days at the end to make up the 365 days of the solar year. The most spectacular thing about Egypt was their buildings.The Egyptian built pyramids. Pyramids are a massive structure with sloping sides that met at an apex, used as a royal tomb in ancient Egypt. The largest pyramid was built by order of King Khufu who ruled about 2650 B.C. The pyramid is located at Giza, the Great Pyramid measures 476 feet in height and 760 feet on each side of its base. The Egyptians also built temples. The temple of Amon at Karnak was begun about 1530 B.C and completed about 1300 B.C. It is the largest religious building ever constructed.. Egypt had its up and down and sometimes the two sides argued but it remained in power for a long time.

The Agricultural Revolution: Crash Course World History #1

Today in class we watched a video that helped us understand our lesson in our text book better. The video was called The Agricultural Revolution: Crash Course World History #1. John Green is the man that  narrated the video. The video discussed the Paleolithic Age and the Agricultural  Revolution. 15,000 years ago humans went from hunting and gathering to agricultural living. In the video John Green talks about the test. The test is the test of life and everything is on it. He also talked about how now people can just go to McDonald and get a 99 cent cheeseburger. You can earn enough money to buy a cheeseburger in eleven minutes on minimum wage in the United States. He also talked  about foraging. Foraging meant gathering food .  Foragers had a pretty good life. They had good teeth,bones, and joints.Fishing was a very popular way to get most of your food back in the Paleolithic Age. That's why alot of civilizations tended to be near the coast, so they could get to the ocean life easier. As a result of the agricultural revolution the population rose rapidly. They advantages of the Agricultural Revolution is that there was a larger food supply,and  agricultural can be done anywhere.The disadvantages are it changes the environment, and it is hard work which means people started to use slavery to do the work.  Then John Green talked about animals and domestication. Most animals are not good for domestication.

Prehistoric Times: Paleolithic Age, Neolithic Age, and Agricultural Revolution

Today in class we started off by talking a little bit about our essays on Jared Diamond's theory. Then we talked about the PowerPoint that Mr. Schick had. The PowerPoint was on the  the section of our book LO1. This section talks about the Prehistoric Era. About 200,000 years ago a human species emerged in southwestern Africa. Then around 14,000 years ago a worldwide human race existed. The earliest prehistoric age is the Paleolithic age, also known as the Old Stone Age. Then came the Neolithic Age, which was also called the New Stone Age. This was marked by advanced tool making and the beginnings of agriculture. In the Prehistoric times humans were parts of migratory groups, which hunted, fished, and gathered plants for food. Then we talked about the Agricultural Revolution, also know as the Neolithic Revolution. This was a shift from living as hunters and gathers to living in more permanent settlements centered on agriculture. This revolution begone southwestern Asia. During this revolution the populations rose because the woman could care for their young children. Hierarchies appeared in village life, and the status of woman was lowered as woman were confined more to domestic duties. The inventions of some tools, such as the wheel and plow, made it possible to produce enough food for storage. The villagers also were polytheists, which means they worshiped multiple gods. They worshiped nature, human, and animal gods.

Geographical Luck

Jared Diamond was on track with his theory of geographical luck.  His theory was that  for a civilization to be prosperous it had to be in a good geographical location. Jared Diamond  told everyone in his theory that places near the fertile crescent  and places along that latitude line would prosper as civilizations because of the climate.  In our text book we learned that the first civilizations were Mesopotamia and Egypt. Both of  these places are located near the fertile crescent where Jared Diamond said that civilizations would prosper. In the Paleolithic age humans started to make stronger tools that were used for specialized jobs. For humans to make these tool they had to have the resources around them. This goes with Jared Diamond's theory because  if the humans did not have the resources were they lived they could not advance their tool making. In the Bronze Age and the Iron Age  people that lived around bronze and iron  made new discoveries and made new materials out of bronze and iron. The humans that had the geographical luck to live around bronze and iron had an advantage over other places that didn't.   The civilizations that had bronze and iron made new weapons and materials out of them, so they mostly became more successful and more powerful then civilizations that did not have this resource. Geographical luck also affected the population of the society. In the  Paleolithic Age men were in charge of hunting and fighting. The woman were responsible for cooking and caring for the children.  The woman  back then had fewer children because they had to breast feed, so it affected how quickly they could get pregnant. The woman that were lucky enough to live near cows were could stop breast feeding and give there children cow's milk, which mean that they could have more children. If woman could have more children then the population would rise allowing the civilization to grow and develop. This is another example of geographical luck and how it can make a population grow in size. During the Agricultural Revolution humans started to cultivate plants, tame animals, and learn new skills.  The places with best geographical luck had the most useful animals, which helped  their civilization grow.Some animals that places had helped them with their work by pulling heavy items in a shorter amount of time then people could, and some animals were used as a food supply for the people. When people started to cultivate plants for food and to be used for other items they realized that some plants needed to be tended to all year round. This is why villages started to appear.  The places that had the geographical luck to have plants that could be cultivated grew in population because of the villages. The places with villages had more people which meant that they could stop a lifestyle of hunting and gathering and do other things. The people in the villages also became specialized in doing other type of work because their was enough food now. Geographical luck was one of the main reasons that civilizations grew and became powerful. Civilizations with good geographical luck prospered, and places with bad geographical luck did not prosper.

Prehistory of Civilization

Today we started of class by talking about our  assignment that we have to complete before our next class. After that we started to read Chapter 1, From Prehistory to Civilization, in our text book. We learned that language, religion, art, technology, farming, family life, and village communities originated in prehistoric times. Prehistory is the millions of years in which humans beings appeared on this earth, spread across the planet, and advanced in organization and skills.  This earliest development of civilizations was around 3000B.C. The first civilizations were Mesopotamia and Egypt. In these civilizations there appeared complex social and economical structures, effective and lasting government, writing systems capable of expressing any thought, compelling religious beliefs, impressive scientific and technical achievements, and sophisticated literacy and artistic styles. The achievements of these societies started to spread to other societies. For a society to learn the achievements of a civilization they had to be wealthy enough to be worth trading with or conquering. When a society learned the ways of a civilization they combined it with there own ways, so as a civilization spread it was liable to change. In 1200 B.C there came into existence an international region of civilization, with many local versions of Mesopotamian and Egyptian traditions. This region was across the lands where south western Asia met northeastern Africa. Civilization is very recent and the first human like species appeared about 2.5 million years ago.

First Day of Second Semester

Today was the first day of our new semester. I am very excited to be starting a new semester and a new class. I still have Mr. Schick as my teacher, and I am very happy about that. Even though I still have the same teacher I have new classmates. I am very happy with my class and think it is going to be a great semester. We started of class by setting up a new blog. Last semester I had a blog for human geo, so I already know how they work. Some people did not have Mr. Schick last semester so this is the first time they have used a blog. After we set up our blogs we emailed Mr. Schick our web address for our blog. Then we talked about how often we should blog. Today in class we got to pick our seats, but I think you are going to change them soon. I would really like if we got to stay in our seats. I am really looking forward to having fun in your class.