Test Day

Today in class we had a Western Civilization test on Ancient Greece. I was prepared and I studied. I used quizlets, the slideshow, and my notes. I studied for about two hours last night. I thought I knew the material and was as ready for the test as I would ever be. I was taking the test and I thought I knew all the answers. I thought I got all of them right and I was positive on every answer. I even went back and checked each question, which is something I don't normally do. Some of the ones I wasn't totally sure about I thought I'd figured them out. After everyone was done I asked my friend some of the answers she put for the questions and we got different answers and she is smarter so she is probably right. Then we checked our notes for sure and turns out she was right for some of them. I think I already have three questions wrong and I don't know how the short answer will be graded. I could end up getting some of those wrong, I just don't know because those can be graded in many different ways, especially depending on the teacher. Well hopefully did ok in the end so I can keep my grade where it's at or move it up to an A.
                                                                                                                 

Test review for tomorrow

Today in class we reviewed for the test tomorrow on Ancient Greece. The test is on two sections from the textbook and slides one through 32 on the slideshow. There is short answer, map labeling, matching, and multiple choice. We took some more notes. Cleisthenes and democracy: a member of the elite, very rich, insulated from "hoi pollo", crafty (smart) politician. Saw value of tapping into people's talents, intelligence and energies of middle-class citizens, didn't see the value of women. New for of government: citizens could participate (only 1/5 of Athenians were citizens) (free adult, male, property-owning, born in Athens. Direct democracy: where the state ( city-state) is ruled by citizens. Rule-based on citizenship, majority rule decides to vote. Then after that, we were called down to go to an Ash Wednesday prayer service.

More notes on Ancient Greece

Today in class we reviewed over the slideshow and took more notes on Ancient Greece. We will also have a test on Thursday. Here are some notes I took in class. Clash of Tyrants: Hippias- tyrant, ruled 527 to 510 BCE, his brother was murdered, then his ruling became harsh out of anger. He would put people and their whole family to death if they did something against him or even thought they killed his brother. Eventually, he was expelled from Athens (being ostracized).  In revenge, he worked with Persian king Darius I, helping them invade Marathon. Next in LIne: with Hippias gone, Isagoras and Cleisthenes (all these people were aristocrats) engaged in power struggles. Isagoras - support from fellow aristocrats, plus Sparta. Cleisthenes - support from the majority of Athens. Isagoras wins (Not for long): becomes archon eponymous (tyrant). Ostracizes Cleisthenes ( his supporters revolt against his tyranny. They trap him on an acropolis for two days - on the third day he fled and banished 508 BCE.

Pop Quiz and textbook notes

Today in class we had a pop quiz and took notes. The pop quiz was ten questions but worth twenty points, so each question was two points which isn't bad. We took the quiz and reviewed the answers after. I got two or three wrong which is not a good grade. I have an 89 so getting this grade will not help me. I will just need to do well on these next tests to hopefully boost my grade. I did okay for most of the questions I just didn't know the different seas. I didn't know where each sea is located on a map. Then we started to take notes in the textbook. We started a new section but it was still on the topic of  Ancient Greece. This time it was Greece's democracy and Greece's Golden Age. I took notes on two pages so far out of five. It is mostly about a person named Pericles who lead Athens and helped the city prosper. He encouraged different types of government, a better Navy, and he wanted to make Athens a great beautiful city. That is all I have so far.

More notes on Ancient Greece

We took more notes on the PowerPointint slideshow.

• polis: fundamental political unit, made up of a city and the surrounding countryside
• politics (affairs of the cities), policy, political, etc.
• monarchy: rule by a single person (a king, in Greece)
• aristocracy: rule by a small group of noble, very rich, landowning families
• oligarchy: wealthy groups, dissatisfied with the aristocratic rule, who seized power (often with military help)
• tyrant: a powerful individual who seized control by appealing to the common people for support 
• 7th and 6th centuries BCE, aristocrats ran the show in most of Greece
• rich people wielded much more influence in society, and held much more governmental power, than the middle class or the poor?  
• Aristocrats: members of the ruling class
they attended symposiums, meetings where the elite men would enjoy wine and poetry, performances by dancers and acrobats, and the company of hetaeras (courtesans) while discussing politics
• no women (except the “entertainment”)
• no middle class
• certainly, no slaves
• sometimes, even certain aristocrats (who didn’t have the right connections or who fell out of favor) were excluded
• sometimes aristocrats would form alliances with hoplites (well-armed soldiers) and set up an alternative form of gov’t called a tyranny
• tyrant: someone who rules outside the framework of the polis
• the modern meaning of tyrant: an abusive or oppressive ruler
• the Greek meaning of tyrant: someone who simply seized power (usually with hoplite help)
  

More Notes on Greece

Today in class we took more notes on ancient Greece.

• influence began around 2000 BCE
• Mycenae - located on a rocky ridge on Peloponnesus, 20-foot thick wall
• dominated Greece from 1600-1100, controlled trade in regio
• 1400 BCE invaded Crete and absorbed Minoan culture (writing system, language, art, politics, literature, religion)
• Trojan War - 1200 BCE
• part of Greek mythology, til 19th century (most thought it was fiction be god/esses were in war)
• 1200 BCE mysterious "sea people" began to invade Mycenae and burnt palace after palace
• Dorians moved into the war-torn region, dominating from 150-750 BCE
• Dorians far less advanced
• trade based economy collapsed
• writing disappeared for 400 years
• Greek oral tradition - stories passed on by word of mouth
• Homer lived at the end of these "Greek Dark Ages"
• composed stories (epics) of Trojan War 750-700
• The Illiad - possibly 1 of the last conquest of Mycenaeans (Trojan War)
• The Odyssey - Odysseus attempts to return home after the Trojan War, thwarted by the angry god of the sea, Poseidon
• Odyssey was 12, 110 lines of dactylic hexameter
• "Homeric question" - Homer may have been a mythical creation himself
• blind wandering minstrel; a heroic figure
• Illiad and Odyssey may be the culmination of many generations of storytelling
• or homer actually existed and did all that 

Video on Plato story: Allegory in the Cave

We watched a video in class that goes into more depth on Plato's story: Allegory of the Cave.
Here are my notes for this video.

• Plato believed, "The effect of education and the lack of it on our own nature."
• people are imprisoned, being forced to listen to people talk to them by shadows on the wall. (school)
• would be rewarded if you could guess what shapes were or what would come next.
• the shadows on the wall are like a movie, its different from when you see it in real life compared to T.V. (when the guy first came out of the cave)
• the sun is the light of reason
• the people in the cave are humans before philosophers.
• the person who left the cave and came back is like a philosopher trying to teach the people to think and learn.

I don't think this would be a good method to use in a classroom, it would take to much time, be hard to grade papers, and no one could agree on one idea. We would probably get very off topic.

Greece Notes

Today in class we started taking notes on Ancient Greece. Here are my notes for today.

Ancient Greece is the Word

• located on the water
• world's greatest civilization... all located on water (usually rivers)
• Huang He River / China
• Indus River / India
• Nile River / Egypt
• Tigris and Euphrates River / Mesopotamia

Culture of the Mountains and the Sea

• Greece is a mountainous peninsula, mountains cover 3/4 of Greece
• approx. 2000 islands in the Ionian Sea, Aegean Sea
• many skilled sailors/ shipbuilders
• farmers, metalworkers, weavers, potters
•  poor limited natural resources, so they needed to trade, difficult to unite Ancient Greeks due to terrain
• developed small, independent communities (city-states) that's who they were loyal to
• fertile valleys cover 1/4 of the peninsula, 20% is arable (suitable for farming)
• diet - grains, grapes, olives, fish
• lack of resources likely led to Greek colonization
• temp range from the mid-40s (winter) to low 80s (summer), could get hot in the summer, pretty nice weather year-round

Platos: Allegory of the Cave

Today in class we listened and took notes on a story. It is from Plato's time. So here is the idea of the story. There are prisoners in a cave and they can only see shadows on the opposite wall. They are shackled to the wall across from this tall wall. The wall that they are shackled to is low so that light behind it can come across the top of it. People behind them put puppets and statues so there are shadows on the opposite wall. They can maybe some voices and noises and they have been here their whole lives, this is all they have ever known. They decide to free one prisoner and drag him outside, up a rocky, mountain, and into the sunlight. It was so bright he couldn't see the unhidden. First, he would only be able to see shadows and reflections of people in the water. Then he would be able to see people and things first hand. Then he could look at the moonlight, and then the moon and stars. After that, he could look at the sunlight and sun itself. Then he would learn all these things and how the sun has to do with the seasons and years. His eyes would be opened up to what the real world is like, how it really is, and what goes on in it. The person came back to the cave and was shackled. The person couldn't see for a while for it was just darkness until his eyes adjusted. He told the others what it was really like and they didn't like what he said. They thought he was strange for saying this stuff and they didn't like him for coming back. Then he was killed later for this. I think this story is about how he was in the dark and didn't share his ideas and thoughts. Then he finally let out what he thought to the world and shared his ideas. He was in the sunlight for a while when he was spreading what he thought. Then he was put into darkness because his ideas were different and people didn't want to change what they thought. So they eventually killed him for his ideas. That is when in the story he went back to the cave into darkness and was killed. People don't like change so if you try to change something most people will not accept it.

Textbook Questions

Today in class we worked on textbook questions while some kids took a quiz that they missed. I answered the questions in my notebook. Then I put them into my blog and worked on some other homework. Here are the questions we had to answer.

1. define these terms: Mycenaean, Trojan war, Dorian, Homer, epic, myth
I am not going to define all these terms again since they are in my notebook. 

3. what impact did nearness to the sea have on the development of Greece?
The sea provided important transportation routes, connected Greece with other societies, and helped with trade.

4. what aspects of culture did the Mycenaeans adopt from the Minoans?
They adapted the Minoan writing system to the Greek language, decorated vases with Minoan designs, they influenced Greek religious practice, art, politics, and literature.

5. why were the epics of importance to the Greeks of the Dorian period?
They could tell of there history through spoken word, and learn about it, the poems also celebrated heroic deeds. 

Quiz Day and New Topic

Today we took a quiz in class on Ancient Egypt. I thought the quiz was hard and there were things on there that we didn't go over. I didn't do very well, even though I thought I knew the material pretty well. When we were done we started taking notes on the new topic ancient Greece. I took a page of notes before I ran out of time. Here are some of the notes I took in class today.

• Sea, land, and climate were an important environmental influence on Greek civilization.
• 3000 B.C. Minoans lived on large Greek island Crete.
• The Aegean Sea, Ionian Sea, the Black Sea, were important transportation routes for Greek people.
• Greece lacked natural resources: timer, precious metals, and usable farmland. 
• rugged mountains covered 3/4 of ancient Greek
• small parts was suitable for farmland; tiny fertile valleys covered 1/4 of Greece. 
• Couldn't support large populations with little farmland and water
• varied climate 48-80

Review for quiz day

Today in class we reviewed what would be in the quiz. He asked questions and we answered them. We went over some of the slides that would be on the test. Then we watched a mummification process video. It was a little gross but pretty amazing how they mummified a body for this long. It's even cooler that they did this so long ago and then they figured out how to do it. The process seems pretty simple but it probably takes a long time. We also watched a music video called King Tut on SNL. Here are some things on the quiz:

• delta
• Nile- how long 4,100 miles
• Upper and Lower- how it's separated- snow makes Upper Egypt higher than lower even though upper Egypt is below Lower Egypt
• Natural barriers - desert
• Narmer- the first king to rule over unified Egypt
• Pharoah
• theocracy
• pyramid - tombs
• mummification - to be preserved for the afterlife
• Ka - afterlife
• translated the Rosetta Stone - Jean Francois
• 3 languages - simple hieroglyphs, Greek language
• figured out in 1892 in greek
• papyrus
• matt- harmony, and balance

Another Catch up day

Today in class we let Nick take his quiz on Mesopotamia. He is the last honors kid  to make it up. So while he was taking it I will type some notes into this blog for today.

•  the pyramid for class ranking in Egypt had different levels. The point was king, queen, royal family. The second level from the top is Upper class which is wealthy landowners, gov. officials, priests, army commanders. The third level down is middle class which is merchants and artisans. The last level is the lower class which is peasants, farmers, and laborers. That is the largest class of the pyramid. 
• Egyptians could gain higher status by marriage or success in a job.
• you had to be able to read and write to be in the upper classes.
• women held same rights as men, they could own and trade property, propose marriage, or seek divorce. If a divorce happens she gets a 1/3 of the couples property for her own. 

Catch up day

Today in class we didn't do much. It was a class so that all the kids who were absent could catch up on the stuff they missed. They could finish notes in the textbook, take a quiz, or catch up on notes from the PowerPoint. I finished taking notes on the PowerPoint so here they are.

• the earliest writing formed 3100 B.C, small pictures known as hieroglyphics

• script was written in ink on papyrus, made from mashed Nile reeds.
  
• papyrus, precursor to paper, stored in scrolls, books of ancient Egypt
• created calendar with 12 months and 365 days to make sense of seasonal cycles.
• due to knowledge of human anatomy, Egyptian doctor wrote extensively on health issues and created potions and cures for a number of common ailments
• wooden sailboats made to increase transportation ability on Nile.
• pyramids were massive stone tombs, originally covered in marble, later stripped off during Muslim conquest
• Temple of Amon at Karnak is the largest religious building in the world, made out of huge stone blocks
• stone sculpture and interior painting depited humans/gods in series of regulated poses, in high profile with perspetcive, higjly effective.