Today's class 1/31/11

Its the last day of January. Time sure flies. Today in Western Civ class we were given assigned seats. Mine is pretty good, not my favorite though. We also watched more of the movie Guns Germs and Steel.  I have to say i reallly like this movie. Its pretty interesting to learn how we go to where we are today and why some people still live in the "past" so to speak. The New Guineans are a very interesting culture. They still survive on Hunting and Gathering and they make most of what they need, including clothing and tools. Its weird to think that we used to do that too, but only we are more evolved now. Sometimes I wonder what people in America would do if one day we were forced to live like that. Its a very good question to discuss. I mean ask yourself, could you survive like that today?

Notes on Guns Germs and Steel

Notes...

• All great civilizations have one thing in common,
• To discover inequality you must go to a time where there was no inequality
• Ancient Middle East, humans survived after ice age
• Hunter Gatherers, making shelters wherever they could hunt animals and gather food
• New Guinea is one of the only places where there are still hunters and gatherers
• Wild Sago, main source of plant gathered
• Women did gathering
• Barley and Wheat were found in the Middle East
• Grains had a lot of protein
• Ice age conditions returned
• Dra, a digsite in the Middle East
• Archeologists discovered a small village, created around the time when the end of the drought
• They stored grains, small hut that is closed off and protects the grain from water, bugs, etc.
• Mostly Wheat and Barley
• Because this was the first community people probably had jobs
• First farmers in the world
• They interupted the cycle of plant growing, favoring the better characteristics of plants
• Domestication - most useful to humans
• Hunter Gatherers could not produce as much food as farmers did
• Ancient China
• Rice
• Ancient U.S
• squash, corn, and beans
• New Guinea
• Highlands were most densly populated with the most extensive farmers
• Have been farming for a long time
• No one believed any one lived there
• Now farm localized bananas
• Sometimes eat giant spiders to supplement protein in their diet since they had very little
• Inequalities were born from the crops we eat
• Wheat
• Wealth of Modern America could never survive from plants like Taro
• People survived by producing better crops
• New source of food : domesticated animals

My Snowman with a gotee

My 100-200 word Paragraph

Separating the “Haves” from the “Have not’s.”  This statement presents the main point of this documentary of Guns, Germs, and Steel. Why do some people have more than others? Why are some groups of people thriving while others are struggling to stay together? All of these questions represent pressing and interesting issues that need answers. In the country of Papua New Guinea, people still live in the wilderness, still hunt for food, and still make their own clothing and tools. Author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond, travels to this country to hopefully find answers to these pressing questions. There is no reason as to why someone should have more than someone else because of their race, background, or position in the world. Jared shares that the Papua New Guineans’ are very quick to learn and are far from being genetically inferior. He states: “They could go into any of the most difficult environments on earth, knock up a shelter in a few hours, and survive.” And yet, we in the United States with all of our conveniences could not survive like the New Guineans can.

Notes on Guns Germa and Steel

• Separating the Have from the Have Nots
• Have - modern tech
• Have nots - people who have less (Africa, the Lost Boys of Sudan)
• Papua New Guinea (Jared Diamond, lover birds)
• many birds
• living there for 40 thousand years
• most culturally adaptive people in the world
• Cargo- stuff, material goods
• Why do the Americans have so much but the New Guineans have so little?
• they have quickness to learn