Test day and last day :(

So today, we took a test, and it is also my last day :(  I have Mr. Teter next semester, but i may join Speech and Debate next year you never now!  I will miss this class! It was my favorite class.

Review of movie

Today, we went over some important points of the movie and reviewed for the test.  We talked about domesticated animals.  Only 14 animals out of the millions of species can be domesticated.  There are guild lines for domesticating animals to do labor.  They have to be over one hundred pound, have to be friendly with human, should be herbivores, and can be together in a group.  The animals that were domesticated was the goat, sheep, pigs, cows, horses, donkeys, Bactrian camels, aribian camels, Water buffalo, llamas, reindeer, yak, buffalo, balicattle, and mithams.  Most of these animals are from north Africa, Asia, and Europe; but the llama came from South America.
We also talked about three things great, thriving civilizations have in common.  They are advanced technology, a large population, and and surplus of workers

Today, we basically went over the video we watched yesterday.  I wrote most of the info about the movie in last nights blog but here's some things we discussed today:
Jared Diamond is a cultural anthropologist, biologist, and a bird watcher.  He went to Papua New Guinea to watch birds and he discovered the people there were living deep in the forests.  His theory on why they were so far behind was because of geographic luck.  They were very intelligent, but they didnt have crops or animals to develop their civilization. 

Guns, Germs, and Steel

The movie Guns, Germs, and Steels began with a person from Papua New guinea asking why the westerners had so much cargo and the new Guineans didn't have much.  Throughout the movie, Jared Diamond, an archaeologist, developed his answer to this questions.  He had two theories. The first one was people who have the most productive crops have the most productive farmers and civilizations.  For example, in North America, we have many crops that can be planted fast, grow fast, and will last a long time.  In Papua New Guinea,  They had crops such as bananas and another one that i can't remember the name of, but the important thing was that they had to be picked individually and had to eat it quick or else it would go bad.  The second reason was the people of Papua New Guinea didn't have animals work animals.  They had pigs, but pigs could only be used for meat, and not for work.  Work animals had a large impact on America and how farms developed.  For example, horses were a huge part in planting and harvesting in America, but unfortunately The Papua New Guineans did not have horses.  I agree with Jared diamond's theory.  It seems very logical.  I also agree with another statement he made saying the New Guineans are so focused on hunting and gathering that they don't have time to develop.

The Second Urban Revolution

On friday, we talked about the second urban revolution; which was a large scale movement of people to cities to work in manufacturing. The 2nd urban revolution was made possible by two things

1. It improved food production and created a larger surplus
2. People moved around the places where they worked, creating cities.

There were many steel factories and many people moved around the steel factory.  There was a need for grocery stories, banks, clothing stores and many more; and this is how many cities were created. 

Steels is now not needed because now we have something to replace it, which is called plastic.  Steel factories that were once thriving are called "rust bells."   

Diffusion of Urbanization

Today, we talked about the urbanization of the Greeks and Romans.  The Greeks were highly urbanized by 500 BCE.  They had over 500 cities and towns.  The sities were separated by mountains and were very clumped together.  They had many cities on the islands too.  Each city would have an agora and an acropolis, which is the higheat point of the city.  The Romans liked the way the Greeks did things, so they kind of copied their way of setting up towns(not to mention their gods too.)  The Romans had hundreds of miles of roads and sea routs.  The difference between Greek cities and Roman cities was that in Greece most of the population was comfortable, not overly rich and not dirt poor.  In the Romans case you were either extremely wealthy or dirt poor and you were a slave to the extremely wealthy people.
We also discussed in class western civilization.  Thankyou, Mr. Schick, for that intro to western civ.

Urban Geography

Today, we just started a new unit called Urban Geography.  We talked about what people did and how people lived before urban cities.  People used to live in villages and build their village around their source of food.  Before villages people would just go with their food, they were called hunters and gatherers.
It is believed that the start of urbanization started with Mesopotamia then moved to the Nile River Vally, then to the Indus River Valley, then to Huang He and Wei River Valleys, then finally to Mesoamerica.  This chapter seems very interesting and i can't wait to learn more!  We also talked about exams today and why we took them before break.  I think it was a great idea to put exams before break so we don't have to worry about them during break!