Last Blog Ever

    It's the last blog that I will ever have to do for you. For Semester 2, I am moving up to Honors Western Civilization with Mr. Fendryk. Surprisingly, I enjoyed this class. When I first started the year, I wasn't looking forward to it because any type of Social Studies doesn't interest me at all. I figured that this semester would be boring, but it ended up being a class that I really enjoyed. The reason that I enjoyed this class was because you're a good teacher and I like the way that you teach. Even though you use Power Points, like other teachers, you explains everything pretty well. Plus, there is most likely a side story to go along with it. I also enjoyed the other kids in the class too. Besides all the times where they're talking nonstop, they're not too bad. I really wouldn't change anything about this class to be honest. The only thing I would change would be the lesson where we had to play the game to understand the concept. I mean yes it was a game, but I think that it didn't teach the materials well enough. If a game wanted to be used, then it should have been a better one that teaches the lesson more. I think that I did pretty well this semester. The first quarter I ended with a 91, and hopefully for the second quarter I will end with at least an A. Thank you for a good semester Mr.Schic :)

Review Day-- Guns, Germs, and Steel

    Today in class we talked about the movie and the things that we needed to know for the quiz on Friday. For the quiz, we have to know the hobbies and jobs of Jared Diamond. Diamond was a bird watcher, a cultural anthropologist, professor at UCLA, and a best selling author. In New Guinea, they use the term 'cargo' to describe material possessions that the white men owned. When the white people came over from Britain, they saw the natives and thought that they were superior to them because they had more possessions then them and were a different color. They thought that they were dumb and made them carry them across the river so they wouldn't get wet. The three things that made a great civilization progress was advanced technology, large populations, and specialized workers. The best place for civilizations to start was the Mesopotamia. Papa New Guinea is the only place that is culturally behind the rest of the world. Draah is the first developed city that survived because it had a separate place to store the grains so they would not parish. The most important factor of a good civilization is location. If you didn't have 'geographic luck', then it was rare for that civilization to continue to thrive. The following animals were the 14 animals that helped early civilizations develop: goats, sheep, pigs, calves, horses, donkeys, Bactrian camels, Arabian camels, water buffalo, llamas, reindeer, yaks, mithans, and Bali cattle.

Guns, Germs, and Steel

    Today we talked about the important things in the movie that we watched last class, Guns, Germs, and Steel. The movie was about a man named Jared Diamond and his research done in New Guinea. Jared Diamond was a professor at UCLA and was a cultural anthropologist. He originally traveled to New Guinea to enjoy his hobby of bird watching, but when he got there he observed the culture of the residents there. Diamond realized that these people were living as if the last 2000 years haven't happened. They were living with barely any clothes on, they had to gather their own food, and they had to make their own homes. In order to get food, they used the sago tree. This tree had a substance inside that, when mixed with water, it became a sugar for the people to eat it. Even though this tree filled the people up, the labor to make the food was intensified. It also lacked proteins and could not be stored. Diamond's theory of why some civilizations were able to thrive, survive, and develop cities revolved around geographic luck.

Guns, Germs, and Steel

    Today in class, we watched a movie called "Guns, Germs, and Steel". It was about a man named Jared Diamond who studied the New Guinean life style and how it developed to what it is today. As he was researching, he discovered that New Guinea was not as developed as the rest of the world was. This was because they had to focus of the process of them hunting for their own food then them trying to get the newest technology available. If they did not find the food on their own, then they would starve and die from malnutrition. His theory was that there are people out there who couldn't thrive, prosper, and form cities like other parts of the world because they had to put more effort into feeding themselves first. I agree with his theory because there are people who have to find their own food daily because the do not have the right things in order to create their own. They cannot make some of the food that other developed countries can. Every day they spend most of their energy on finding their food. When they find their food, it doesn't give them enough energy to replenish what they used to get their food. If the civilizations that are not fully developed had a larger food supply, then maybe they would become just as developed as the other countries.

Urbanization- Day 3

     Today in class, we talked about the different types of urbanizations.  The Greek cities became highly urbanized by 500 BCE. They were made up of a network of more than 500 cities and towns and were usually located on the mainland and on islands. Theses cities each had an acropolis and an agora, also known as their gathering place. The Roman cities were a system made up of cities and small towns that were linked together with hundreds of miles of road and seas routes. This created the saying "All roads link to Rome". The sites of Roman cities were typical for trade. Each city had a Forum which was combined of the acropolis and agora into one space. Also, Roman cities had extreme wealth and extreme poverty. The amount of poverty was between one third and two thirds of the empire's population was enslaved. We also talked about The Second Urban Revolution. The Second Urban Revolution was a large scale movement of people from cities to work in manufacturing. It was made possible by the second agricultural revolution which improved food production and created a larger surplus of food. Also, the industrialization encouraged the growth of cities near industrial resources. In present day, many factories have been abandoned creating "rust belts" out of once-thriving industrial districts.

Urban Geography- Day 2

       Today we continued to talk about urban geography. We learned about the five Hearths of Urbanization, which include Mesopotamia, Nile River Valley, Indus River Valley, Huang He and Wei River Valley, and Mesoamerica. All of these were formed because they had an agricultural surplus and social stratification that created conditions necessary for them to form and be maintained. Mesopotamia was created in 3500 BCE, Nile River Valley was created in 3200 BCE, Indus River Valley was created in 2200 BCE, Huang He and Wei River Valley was created in 1500 BCE, and Mesoamerica was created in 200 BCE. The two main cities in Indus River Valley were Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. They thrived so well because they were intricately planned, had houses that were in equal size, no palaces, no monuments, and they had their own sewage systems. In Mesoamerica, the Mayans and Aztecs were theocratic centers where rulers were deemed to have divine authority and were god-kings. They built structures like pyramids except theirs were uneven and you could walk up them. Between the years 300 and 900 BCE, Altun Ha, Belize served as a thriving center and distribution center.

Urban Geography

    When class first started, we got to see our exam grades so far. I have an 81%, but the essay part still needs to be graded. After we saw our grades, we started talking about urban geography. Urban geography is the part of geography that deals with cities. A city is a gathering or collection of people and buildings that are clustered together. They serve as a center of politics, culture, and economics. The term urban is used to describe the buildup of the central city and suburban realm, which includes the city and the surrounding environs connected to the city. For the first time in human history, in the last few years there are more people living in cities then in rural area. The Modern Process of Urbanization is when a rural area can become urbanized quite quickly in the modern world. An example of a place that has been affected is Shenzhen, China. Shenzhen used to be filled with ponds and rice paddies, but over the course of 25 years it is now filled with large buildings. Before urbanization occurred,which was over 10,000 years ago, people lived in agricultural villages. Agricultural villages were relatively small villages where most of the population was involved in agriculture. This means that they had to grow and find their own food. There are two components that are necessary in order to form cities: an agricultural surplus and social stratification. Agricultural surplus means that you have to have a lot of food, berries, grains, etc. in order to feed a large amount of people. Social stratification is a leadership class.