Video

Today in Western Civ, we watched a video on a modern day version of the paleolithic era. They are used to the stuff they have to do to survive. This was a successful week in Western Civ.

First Quiz of Western Civ

Today in Western Civ, we took our first quiz of the semester. The quiz was on the prehistoric era, and the quiz was an open blog quiz. For the most part it was fairly easy, there were only the first few parts I didn't have in my blog. I probably should've known those parts anyway, but I don't think I did too bad on it anyway. I think I got the short answer questions at the end right. I think I got about a B on it, because I'm almost positive that I didn't get an A. Hopefully I didn't get anything less than that, not even a C. Im looking forward to getting a higher grade than I did last semester in Human Geo. I honestly wasn't satisfied with how I did in that class, because I know I could've gotten at least a B in that course. It was probably because of my blogs, they weighed me down.

Quiz Review

Today in Western Civ, we reviewed for the test that were taking tomorrow. It all seemed pretty easy, hopefully it will be as easy as it seems. the district known as Sumer occupied the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Their population increased dramatically due to new irrigation techniques. Also, cities and towns were founded, some with as many as 40,000 inhabitants. They found that better food storage allowed for diversity in professions. Kings emerged as did family dynasties and the concept of a "city-state." Sumerians invented the earliest form of writing, known as "cuneiform." A pantheon of Sumerian Gods and Goddesses emerged, with many of the deities representing the natural elements of the world. The worlds first surviving epic was the Sumerian "Epic of Gilgamesh" which told of a great flood. Sumerians first divided the hour into sixty minutes and the minute into sixty seconds. They also organized a calendar based on the moon cycles. The Ziggurat was a Sumerian Temple built on top of a "mountain" of Earth. The civilization in Mesopotamia was starting to come along. Wandering nomads drove herds of domesticated animals in many areas, especially south of Sumer in Arabia. Sumer was conquered by Akkadians, their Gods took the place of previous Gods and all were forced to worship them. King Hammurabi created a series of laws known as Hammurabi's Code - laws included eye for an eye, and regulations for marriage, divorce, and punishments for all sorts of crimes.

Mesopotamia

Today in Western Civ, we took notes on Mesopotamia. I learned that the district known as Sumer occupied the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Their population increased dramatically due to new irrigation techniques. Also, cities and towns were founded, some with as many as 40,000 inhabitants. They found that better food storage allowed for diversity in professions. Kings emerged as did family dynasties and the concept of a "city-state." Sumerians invented the earliest form of writing, known as "cuneiform." A pantheon of Sumerian Gods and Goddesses emerged, with many of the deities representing the natural elements of the world. The worlds first surviving epic was the Sumerian "Epic of Gilgamesh" which told of a great flood. Sumerians first divided the hour into sixty minutes and the minute into sixty seconds. They also organized a calendar based on the moon cycles. The Ziggurat was a Sumerian Temple built on top of a "mountain" of Earth. The civilization in Mesopotamia was starting to come along. Wandering nomads drove herds of domesticated animals in many areas, especially south of Sumer in Arabia. Sumer was conquered by Akkadians, their Gods took the place of previous Gods and all were forced to worship them. King Hammurabi created a series of laws known as Hammurabi's Code - laws included eye for an eye, and regulations for marriage, divorce, and punishments for all sorts of crimes.

Notes

Today in Western Civ, we took our first set of notes for the course. The notes were on Pre-Historic times to civilization. I learned that they were just like wild animals for 186,000 years. They had to hunt their food, and wondered when their next meal was going to be. About 14,000 years ago, they were finally able to to create a civilized environment, and they were also for the first time in history organized in many ways. For one they had finally been able to build a few villages. Within the villages there were a lot of people, each with very important roles for the survival of the villagers. There were some people in charge of hunting the food. The hunters were mainly skillful men because they were bigger and more able to hunt the food. Others were in charge of getting the meat out of the animals. And they also had a role for the people to make weapons for the hunters. Out of all the roles of the villagers, the hunters were valued the most because they were the ones getting the food for the village.

First Day of Western Civilization

Today in Western Civ, we were introduced to the course. I already despise my class, I absolutely loved my Human Geo class, it was one of the best classes I'd ever been in. I can already tell this class is worse than the last. Other than that we set up our new blogs. This is mine, and I do have to admit I wasn't too very thrilled about creating a new blog. This was for the main reason that I didn't want to have to use another gmail, also because I didn't want to create another username.