Civilizations; Round 2

As we leave the Ancient civilizations of the Indus valley and Mesopotamia, we transition into a new realm of new civilizations. Ill start with the Greeks, unlike the disjointed Mesopotamian city states, Strayer noted that the Greeks were a much more proud people. Despite Athens and Sparta always butting heads, the early Greek city states had a great deal of individuality and unity. It was not until the Persians failed to capture Athens that Greece became noted for its mighty military prowess. However, the Greeks were more known for their system of laws and their republic style government. It was the building blocks of democracy, a ideal that would not be realized for several thousand years. The Greeks were the first to try this system of government, after their Macedonian takeover, the Greek ideals assimilated their way into most European societies inducing the Romans. The Romans adopted a lot of the Greek ideals however, after their massive campaign the Romans switched to a dictatorship abandoning their original republic ideals. This change ultimately led to their downfall because they had no effective way to control their empire full of unhappy citizens. This same dictatorial issue occurred in China as well; the Chinese tried to create a empire based on a dictatorship but it ultimately failed because the people were unhappy with the way things were. India however did not really ever have a marked rise and fall in this second round. India became united under one banner several times but did not ever stay that way until much later. Their pride in their civilization was the fact that they did not want violence but preferred peaceful means of solving problems. This second round of civilizations helped form the civilizations of the the third round coming in the next chapter.

Remarkable Notes About Gilgamesh

The epic of Gilgamesh has a few interesting tidbits that should be highlighted. First of all, despite being a remarkably old text it still is alarmingly easy to read. For instance, Shakespeare was known for his complex use of language and making up words. Gilgamesh however is easy to read and the language does not throw you off even in the slightest. Another curious point about the old text is the way it was written, long periods of narration followed by monologues. Instead of short conversational dialogue it has a fairly set structure. Granted, we did not read more than 5 pages of the epic so the rest of the writing in the 500 other pages could be drastically different. Another interesting thing about Gilgamesh is the deep desire to convert all "Wild-lings" into civilized people. Oddly enough however, they say that being civilized requires beer and women. I don't think they necessarily had the best way of looking at it but it does show a interesting look into the social dynamic of the time.

An Essay Realization

I realized while I was writing my essay a few odd things about the first primary source,  I discovered a few things that were good about it and a few things that were not the best while I was writing my paper. Naturally I couldn't go into great detail about what was wrong with the source in my paper but I thought would highlight the pros and cons here. Ill start off by saying I like most of the information that Strayer puts forth, however there are a few problems with this primary source that should be noted. Most notably, it is written in the first person using 21st century sentence structure. It is a piece about this girl's feeling about her life and it is curious how Shostak tried to tell it in first person rather than 3rd person. I think the source would have more footing in the scientific community if it was written as a research report or a 3rd person view on the situation with a recap at the end reciting where she got this information. The problem is I do not know whether this is all theory or she has hard evidence to prove some of her claims. I do agree with several of her points but its very hard to get people to follow what you are saying without some sort of hard evidence cited in your paper. However, I shouldn't be so hard on her because she most likely included all of this information but it was not included in the book. So if she did, I may choose to go find her whole paper sometime and see where she got her information. The reason i'm choosing to highlight this source is because it doesn't make broad claims, it makes very specific and defined claims that need some sort of backing in order for us to accept them. Again, I do agree with several of her points I just want some research reports.

Government during the Paleolithic Transition

Another very curious thing about Paleolithic societies is they seemed, according to Strayer, to lack a real defined form of government. They truly did not need one. Their societies were maybe 25 people large so they had no need for a well defined tribal society with different heads of state. However there was a slow transition from Paleolithic ways when agriculture was first introduced. No longer were tribes constantly roaming the wilds for food. Communities of people decided to grow food at a specific location and harvest those crops every year. This provided a unique change of perspective and thought. Strayer pointed out that different leaders were needed to protect the village and keep everything in a organized fashion. This sudden change in dynamic required that people needed to be in charge of other people for different jobs. I think it is fascinating that once people needed to settle down in one place, a primitive forms of government started to appear in societies that relied on farming for their yearly food supply as opposed to roaming the wilds following migrant animals. I would assume as societies and technology developed, the population would rise thus requiring additional infrastructure to be laid for a more advanced society. Nevertheless, we will most likely be getting to that in the next chapter so ill talk more about that later.

Paleolithic Studies Could Have A Remarkable Impact On Socio-Economic Issues Today.

Early "Pre-History" discussions are always interesting because the paleolithic era is one that always demands a lot of further research and also has the nature of being tricky to study. I have read many different arguments referring to the paleolithic era and the beginnings of humankind or "Homo Sapiens." The most interesting thing about it all is that our beginnings still have a amazing effect on our culture today. For instance, in society today there is a lot of discussion about racial studies. The fascinating thing about human history is that human history suggests that there are no "Races" or racial divisions in Homo Sapiens. To many scientists there is only one race, the human race. I think the thing I enjoy most about this book so far is the fact the entire first chapter backs up the theory that there is no human race. Strayer seems to pinpoint human history to start approximately 150-250000 years ago. He also has a lot of evidence that we all started in Africa. Those two points are huge boots in helping prove that humans are all genetically the same. I had watched a old NBC Dateline special with Eric Lander, a professor at MIT, and he stated that there is only one tenth of one percent difference between any two human beings and that the genes that control how we look may be limited to only 3-4 different genes. The remarkable thing about all of this is if we are able to prove that humans are all the same, it may have a enormously positive social impact on society today. The beauty of all of this is that it all ties back in to the study of the Paleolithic era and human beginnings.

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