2014年10月30日星期四

Digital Scrapbook Entry #3 – Mesopotamia

Agnes Yu
World History 1  Period 7
10/30/14

  Compare Mesopotamian's writing system to modern times technology.

Link 1: Advantages of Mesopotamia's writing system.

http://www.dl.ket.org/humanities/connections/class/ancient/mesopwriting.htm

Link 2: Modern times writing technology.(Advantages of Email)

1)http://www.ask.com/technology/benefits-email-8a28f0b6f5b44d99

2)http://www.ehow.com/info_10034614_email-better-letters.html

  
  Mesopotamia is one of the greatest civilizations in this world,  it has invented and created so many 

things that we are still use them as part of our life in the modern times.  For example, the hammurabi 

code is kinda like our laws today, we use them to judge something and make justice decisions and the 

Mesopotamians use them for those reasons, too, but it was in some cruel ways. Also, in 

Mesopotamia, people drank beer and use beer as payment and other things as well, beer was so 

important for Mesopotamians and nowadays it's also an important way that brings people together for 

socialized. But what I want to talk about is one of the best inventions in the world --- Writing.



   Over five thousand years ago, people who lived in Mesopotamia developed a form of writing and 

used it to record different types of information and also used them for communicating. The earliest 

writing was also base on pictograms, pictograms was a way to record basic information such as taxes, 

people used reeds to write things down. And then cuneiform appeared and took place of pictograms, 

it's one of the oldest writing in the world. In Mesopotamia, it has a great literature which called the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Writing has been used for centuries and centuries, it's so important in our life and we could do nothing without the skill of writing. It provides large amount of information for us, it helps us to 

write and record lots of information about history, if we have no writing system, we wouldn't know so 

much things about ancient time period. You can see how essential is the form of writing. And with 

the development of writing, we have different languages, cultures and different types of writing 

systems. We put all of them together and create this diverse world. And with the great development 

of technology, we soon have email and text functions in our daily life,  and these things actually are 

part of the expand of writing and it soon starts replace writing and became really useful in some ways.

  In 21 centuries, technology has controlled our life and we rely on it.  Email is a great example that

shows why technology is important. It's so much different from writing, when we want to send mails

to someone, it takes a long time to write a letter and send it to that person, but with Email, it's so

much faster, and you can contact with anyone you wants as long as they have Email, too. It's easy for

you to lose a letter but it's hard for you to lose an Email. In addition, Email is very secure .Also, it's

even FREE and you don't even go to the mailbox to get them.

 Last but not least. Why I said that Email is come from writing is because if people don't understand

how to spell and know the meaning they couldn't create the system of computer system of writing and

we wouldn't have Email. So in my point of view, if we don't have Sumerians developed the writing,

we won't have so many easy technology today. In an easy way to say, I think both writing skill and

technology's conveniences are important and necessary'

2014年10月22日星期三

Ancient History - Ancient Egyptian - Sarcophagus Drawing Project

Period 7                                                                                  WorldHistory
Agnes Yu
2014.10.23

Sarcophagus


                                                        My Egypt name

My thumbnail sketches


                         Short paragraph about this project
  
  This time we did an ancient Egypt project which is a sarcophagus and this would help us to know

further about Egypt. This sarcophagus will help my afterlife, as you can see, in my sarcophagus, it

has a lot of Chinese elements, they are the symbols of me and they protect me in some ways and I

show respects to them. For example, the ''Tai Ji'' symbol means everything is equal in this world, in

addition, the red Chinese knotting means peaceful and happiness. With joy and egality, life will be

really happy and successful.

  I think Egyptians really care about life and death and they believe that death after life is eternal.

Egyptians think that death is the thing that everyone meant to go through and they believed in life

after death, so if one person died, their families will burry them in something with everything that the

person once used when they were alive. They believed that people will start a new life after death

and you may go to heaven but it depends on how many good things that you've done. So I think

Egyptians treated death really serious.


2014年10月13日星期一

Thoughts and Reflections on A Light That Did Not Fail

Agnes Yu      Period 7     10/12/14

Thoughts and Reflections on: A Light That Did Not Fail.

Source of the article: The NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE

    1) Why was Mesopotamia so ethnically diverse?

   As we all know, Mesopotamia was one of the earliest civilizations, it gives huge

perspective to our modern civilization. because it's the land between the Tigris and

Euphrates, people had the idea that use the water from the two rivers, so you can

see how clever they were in the early ancient time, and they were the first to settle

 down in cities, thus mesopotamians would have the best site that had good supply

of water and the location would help them better for agriculture and other things.

Mesopotamia was made up of several groups of people such as Sumerians,

Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians and so on, so you can see how diverse they

were that they separated into different groups. Also, the reasons that show how

great was the civilization is the agriculture and writing, they invented these systems

to help them to do something such as to keep record and Mesopotamians had

different types of record, this is why we have so many information about them now.

And what's cool about it is they even had their own language! Mesopotamia

diverse is not just about those systems, they had their laws and they had to work by

the rules. As a result, Mesopotamia became one of the great civilizations that is

ethnically diverse.

       2) What were the basic features and enduring culture values of an ancient  

       Mesopotamia civilizations?

  Mesopotamians had their own language and they invented systems like agriculture

and writing. They even had their laws and they separated into different groups and

each group had their own functions such as Sumerians invented writing. The

civilization was  a large way to fix man's place in Nature and society, it tried to avoid

upsetting the precarious balance between Nature and society, you can see how

everything just kinda relates to the Nature and society. All the region's

accomplishments are grouped into a harmonious pattern which develops into the

Mesopotamian way of life.

     3) Why did the ancient Mesopotamians build their cities over and over in the

          same place?

   Because when people started settling down they also started to set the rules and

laws and began to invent systems like writing and agriculture, and as a result, this

place would have its own culture and everything would be more convenient and

 the next time when people build cities here again everything would come

much easier and those culture would keep developing.