Guns, Germs and Steel pt.3

In today’s class we continued the video on Guns, Germs and Steel. We left off on domesticating animals and plants. Also, how the people thousands of years ago used to farm and domesticate animals/plants. Goats and sheep were the first domesticated animal in the world. Bigger animals were not native to the New Guinea island, so everything was done by hand. Most of the farm work done today is still done by hand. There has only been 14 animals domesticated over 100 pounds. To this day there has not been any more animals to be domesticated. The 14 animals are goats, sheep, pigs, cows, horses, donkeys, bactrian camels, Arabian camels, water buffalo, lamas, reindeer, yaks, mithans bali cattle. None of these animals given are native to New Guinea. Asia, Europe, and North Africa is where the 13 animals came from. The big 4 animals are pigs, goats, sheep, and cows all came from the middle east.

Guns. Germs, and Steel pt.2

In today’s class, we continued Guns, Germs and Steel video. To start off, the gathering of the crops is done by the women. There is a tree called “Sago” and it can be used to eat when cooked. This is not the most nutritious food but it does have very little nutritional value. One tree can be around 70 pounds of sago and this food cannot be stored for a long time. Around 13,000 years ago, the people had discovered wheat and barley and this plant occurs naturally in the middle east. Although wheat and barley do not grow on the new guinea island. Later on the world became more colder and dryer. There was a drought that lasted over 1,000 years. Somehow these people figured out how to live in those conditions. One man that is very famous is named Ian Kuijt, he is a famous Canadian archaeologist, he had discovered a old town named Draa. This was the first discovery that shows a village that people actually lived in many thousands of years ago.

Guns, Germs and Steel

In today's class we learned watched a movie/documentary about Guns, Germs and Steel. We first started the video with talking about the Europeans dominating the world in that time era. Jared Diamond is a professor at UCLA, he is a biologist , specialist in human physiology, and a bird watcher. He had visited somewhere in the middle east to look at a group of people or a culture that lives in the middle of the of the forest. While he was there he learned their language and even did some bird watching. People have been living in this area for over 40,000 years. Yali is a man that lives in this group of people and he wonders why white men have so much “cargo” and they don’t. To this day, this question is still unanswered. They also think that power is determined by race. Also, to this day these people still live in a hunter/gatherer lifestyle.

First class

Today in class we went over the basic rules and expectations that need to be followed. We didn't learn anything about Western Civ related. We got seating arrangements and we started to do the blog for the day. A lot of my classes are different but the main ones stayed the same. I learned about not having my computer out during class, each blog counts as two points, detentions can vary about playing games on your computer.   Overall, I am kind of nervous about turning in blogs each day and I might miss a few days. I sit near the back but I have a good view of the board. I like the horses around the room that are doing different poses. Before I had Mr. Fendryk but this class and Mr. Fendryk class is probably very similar. Today was pretty laid back as the first day but I am assuming it will be much harder later in the semester.