Western Civilization

Today in western Civilization we talked about settlements some more. We watched a video that had an author named John talking about ancient civilizations that had ways to become successful such as farming and domesticating animals such as pigs, cows, llamas, cattle, sheep, goats,and camels. The elephant was t hard to train and took 22 months to have a baby making the elephant useless. They are also so big so they couldn't be tamed and then trained to use there mass to carry and push big items. The animals also need grass to gaze on so they had to be moved quite a bit. That must have to be a pain but they had a lot of benefits for there society.

Western Civilization

Today in Western Civilization, we talked about how Jared Diamond was right on with his guess that people in the BC times that had successful civilizations all had the best crops, best animals to farm out of such cows, pigs and sheep. These people quickly figured out different ways of working and had different skills. Also, women were not gathering anymore, they could have more children to make the numbers in there group larger so more work could be done in the future. Papua New Guinea was not so lucky and had no good crops or animals. Still back then inventions were being slowly made and it was a long time before technology that was very productive and was made very fast was beginning to kick in. 

Jared Was Right

Jared Diamond was right on or pretty darn close with his theory of geographic luck. He says that the people in the Middle East or Northeast Africa (like where Egypt is located at.). These people got the top crops such as wheat which has lots of protein, fast to grow and can be stored for a long period of time. When the people stopped hunting and gathering which was much harder then growing plants because there is lots of travel, you have to stay in caves and if there is no food, you have to move on. Now that there are these crops that the settlers found and all of it's benefits, you now can start to build your group of people, learn new skills and become something different then the rest.These people lived on there little farms and start the modern style of living. That is why the middle east grew so fast and when it was time to leave to go to Europe and Asia, they were ready to start right away and go into the future. When you look at all of the successful civilizations of the ancient times such as Egypt, Rome, Greece, they were all around the Middle East.

West Civ

Today, west civ has started. I'm am excited a little bit and kind of bummed.  I really like our human geo class and this class is probably is not a exciting. I hope that this class will prove me wrong. I'm more a current events guy not a history one. At least it's not American history that I get pounded with every single year for social studies and I bet that I will be trampled by it again. I understand now why we were talking about Jared  Diamond  (who to me is just another smart man, nothing special about him.) and his "great" book Guns, Germs and Steel. He was very boring in the video. Anyway I hope that this class goes well and that I will enjoy it.