After you've read Part III: From Food to Guns, Germs, & Steel, identify one point or issue with which you agree, disagree, or about which you would like to learn more. Use the SVHS databases or the Internet to find out more.
Your comment to this post should include the author, title, source, link or database title, and a summary of the source. In your summary, please explain why you choice this particular topic for further exploration.
Author: Erik Stokstad
ReplyDeleteTitle: Oldest New World Writing Suggests Olmec Innovation
Source: Ebsco Host: Student Resource Center
Link: http://web.b.ebscohost.com/src/detail?vid=14&sid=142ca14a-e36f-4739-a970-9f1e7b5ac760%40sessionmgr110&hid=107&bdata=JnNpdGU9c3JjLWxpdmU%3d#AN=8862174&db=ulh
Summary:
The article discusses how the famous Mayan calendar and writing system could have stemmed from a nearby Mesoamerican civilization called the Olmec. The article begins by explaining that two newly discovered Olmec artifacts, fragments of stone plaques and a cylindrical seal containing glyphs, are dated to be the oldest proof of writing in the Americas. Prior to the unearthing of these artifacts, there were many other discoveries that suggested that the Olmec influenced Mayan and Aztec society. The article quotes archaeologist Richard Diehl stating “‘It’s [The Olmec] the mother and father of all later Mesoamerican writing systems”. The article continues to describe how a site known as San Andres produced engraved Olmec relics dating back to 650 bc. Scientists believe the engravings are symbols that indicate words of a language. Furthermore, the article examines how an Olmec palace and aqueducts were discovered on sites. Archaeologists believe the palace might have been a seat of government. Many archaeologists believe that this evidence proves that the Olmec society was the “mother culture” in Mesoamerica and invented writing and government later used by the Mayans and Aztecs. The article also explores the other side of the argument and presents opinions on why the Olmecs may not have been the “mother culture”. In essence, the article expands upon Jared Diamond’s brief explanation of how independent language arose in Mesoamerica.
Diamond explains how the Sumerian language emerged in great depth, but he skims over the rise of language in Mesoamerica. Therefore, I selected this article to enrich my understanding of how language surfaced in Mesoamerica.
DeleteAuthors: Katy Regan and Sabine Kuegler
ReplyDeleteTitle: I Grew Up With Cannibals
Source: Ebsco Host: Student Resource Center
Link: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=21604455&site=ehost-live
Summary:
This article was about a girl in 1980 who moved to the jungle with her family when she was 7 years old. They lived in West Papua, Indonesia so her parents could study the Fayu people who were untouched by the outside world. The family took in a disabled boy named Ohri who they helped and began to get very close to. The family lived in a house with no running water or electricity and they always knew that Fayu were cannibals and could come after them at any time. The young girl began to dream of leaving the forest to live in the outside world which she did when she was 17 when she left to go to school where she was very overwhelmed. Since she grew up for many years in an area nothing like the outside world, she had to change her lifestyle almost completely. As she grew older she still visited her parents who were still living with the Fayu. I chose this article for further exploration because it gave the point of view of a young girl who grew up with the Fayu people. The Fayu people and the people in the outside world live very different lifestyles and the Fayu are far less evolved and still use stone tools. It also told me about the fear they had of the Fayu trying to eat them because they are a violent people. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond tells the story of one of his friends who visited the Fayu people and was horrified by the violence. The Fayu people are living like everyone used to in the past and this article shows the enormous advances we have made as humans throughout history.
Author: Joshua J. Mark
ReplyDeleteTitle: Cuneiform
Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia
Link: http://www.ancient.eu/cuneiform/
Summary: Sumerian Cuneiform greatly interests me because it is one of the origins of writing. It fascinates me that different cultures around the world had created completely different ways to communicate and write words and phrases. Cuneiform is a type a writing that was first created by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia. “Cuneus” in Latin means “wedge”, relating to the way the Sumerians wrote in a wedge sort of way on clay. They used styluses to created pictographs in the clay that were carefully handcrafted by the Sumerian people, then years later it was used to create phonograms, or word like presses. Every Mesopotamian civilization used Cuneiform to write, including Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Elamites, Hatti, Hittites, Assyrians, Hurrians, and many more civilizations in that time period. The first Cuneiform tablets were pictographs that were very simple pictures such as rain, battle, Queens, etc. Then overtime they got more complicated and filled these tablets completely up. By 2285-2250 BCE, the Cuneiforms were detailed enough to convey emotions and the reason for the writer to be writing the tablet. Cuneiform was replaced with the alphabet around 100 BC, and was no longer used anywhere around the world. Cuneiform was a very influential writing style that Scientists and Historians now study today, and it provides us with crucial information about discovering the beginnings of writing. To conclude, this article furthered my learning of an original type of writing that the Sumerians had introduced into the world.
Evidence from the text
ReplyDeleteDiamond states in GGS “For historians of technology, the Phaistos Disk is even more baffling; its estimated date of 1700 B.C. makes it by far the earliest printed document in the world”. This disk puzzled me in numerous ways as its symbols were stamped in rather than etched in. Is this disk a possible competitor for the top technological advancement in human history?
Brief historical background of the Phaistos Disk
The Phaistos Disk was said to have been made over 3500 years ago in Crete, its creator unknown. The disk contains many different symbols which are in a spiral formation on both sides of the disk. It was first discovered on July 3, 1908 and is considered “…one of the most remarkable objects in the history of technology.
Finding and deciphering the Phaistos Disk
Author: Benjamin Schwartz
Title: The Phaistos Disk
Source: Google Scholar: Chicago Journals
Link: http://www.jstor.org/stable/543271?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Summary:
Since the 50 years of the Disk’s discovery (current day was 1959) there was no further leeway to the deciphering of the Disk’s symbols. The only slight contribution to the deciphering process was by Ernest Schertels’ “Wege zu seiner Entzifferung”. The Phaistos Disk was found by Pernier in 1908 in the Phaistos Palace. Several factors make it a unique technological wonder. “(1) it was found in Crete in association with a Minoan milieu and tablets in a linear script; (2) it cannot be linked with any other known spot in the world; and (3) unless we are to make the highly unlikely assumption that the disk is a hoax, the presumption of Cretan provenience must first be disproved”.
Further investigation of the Phaistos Disk
Author: Steven R. Fischer
Title: Evidence for Hellenic Dialect in the Phaistos Disk
Source: Google Scholar: Peter Lang: International Academic Publishers
Link: http://www.peterlang.com/download/datasheet/6749/datasheet_03703.pdf
Summary:
A “comprehensive analysis” shows that the 241 symbols on the disk are in fact a structural for of literature. It shows further signs of linguistic structure as it has neat spaces in between each symbol. These signs show human innovation through linguistic technological advancements on this Minoan disk.
Conclusion:
The disk contains many “hieroglyphs” that show a great advancement in human technologies. This disk, being the first document in the world, is a real “leap” forward for all mankind. The disk implies the characteristics of civilized or near-civilized peoples. This disk is a top innovation because of its linguistic structure and its creation date which make it an ancient artifact.
Very impressive comments! Keep up the good work!
DeleteTitle: Second Amendment
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Not Given
Source: Cornell University Law School- Legal Information Institute
Link: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/second_amendment
Summary:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed (2nd Amendment, U.S BoR)”. The 2nd amendment has recently become very controversial in the respect that some citizens believe it has been misinterpreted. They believe that the amendment refers to the local and state authority to possess weapons in order to defend themselves from the federal government and to deter corruption. However, supporters believe the purpose of the amendment was to allow citizens to possess weapons in order to deter any form of corrupt government be it local or federal.
Explanation:
On pages 277-278, Diamond spells out a number of methods that Kleptocrats use to control and sway their followers. One of which is the general disarmament of citizens for the purpose of creating a more powerful government and a weaker populace. In the 2nd Amendment in the U.S Bill of Rights, the governments ability to do so is revoked as it provides citizens the express right to posses arms be they firearms or slingshots. This powerful right of US citizens is what sets us apart from many other world powers in the respect that we are the only nation that is built on the grounds that citizens have the right to defend themselves from oppressive government.
I choose this topic because of my support for Individual rights.
Very thoughtful reflections!
DeleteTitle: “Spelling and Standardization in English: Historical Overview”
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Professor Suzanne Kemmer
Link http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Histengl/spelling.html
Source: Rice University: The History of English MasterFILE Premier
Summary:
In chapter twelve: Blueprints and Borrowed Letters, Diamond discusses the spread, origin, philosophy, and evolution of writing. He covers a large variety of deverse topics, and subtopics, but one idea that was exceptionally interesting was the inception and evolution of alphabets and spellings. I decided that I wanted to learn more about how these principles applies to the English language and its growth and development throughout history. This is important because it is our own language, and one of the most spoken ones, and I became curious about its roots. The essay I found states that the English language originated from the Anglo-Saxon alphabet, which was derived from the Roman alphabet. The Anglo-Saxons created many new letters in order to account for the missing sounds and phonetics in the Roman alphabet, although, there was a considerably large amount of inconsistencies in “Old English,” which was due to many different factors such as dialect and foreign influence. Foreign influence both references and coincides with Diamond’s description of “blueprint copying,” otherwise known as the spread of writing from one direction to another by direct imitation. Moreover, the essay reveals that the early English people had a considerably amount of difficulty when trying to decode messages. Finally, Kemmer goes into detail how schooling, printing, and dictionaries greatly affected the English writing in Part 3, namely its development to Diamond’s discussion about writing in Part 3, namely its development. Although, Kemmer provided a much more in-depth look into the history of modern English than Diamond.
Title: Cholera
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Sajeev Handa
Source: Medscape
Link: http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/962643-overview
Summary: After finishing chapter eleven, I took notice to the list of major epidemics throughout world history and decided to learn more about cholera, a disease I had never heard of until reading Guns, Germs, and Steel. Cholera is an infection caused by the vibrio cholerae bacteria, a saltwater organism that lives amongst plankton. The disease is spread by the consumption of water that has been contaminated with feces. Cholera has a single symptom, diarrhea, and depending on the severity, the dehydration caused by the diarrhea can kill in a matter of hours. Since the Nineteenth Century, there have been seven recorded major outbreaks of cholera, and the disease continues to affect the people of today, most of the time in developing countries without water treatment centers. The two main carriers of the disease are either water, or humans, and it is uncommon for animals to be carrying the disease.
Title: Who created the first alphabet?
ReplyDeleteLink: http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/who-created-the-first-alphabet
Source: History (from Infotopia)
Author: Laura Schumm
Summary/Explanation:
The article is essentially an answer to the question asked in the title; “Who created the first alphabet?”. Before the alphabet, writing systems derived from hieroglyphics, which were pictographic symbols. The fault in this system however, was that each word had it own symbol, limiting writers to only highly-trained scribes. After this, some Semitic-speaking people created a subset system to this where the symbols would represent sounds. This was known as a Proto-Sinaitic script and is considered to be the first alphabet. They wrote left to right, there were no vowels and it consisted of 22 symbols which was much easier for common people to learn. The system then moved to Greece where it was adapted for Greek language and vowels were now added. This addition allowed it to now be a “true” alphabet. Writing was also then changed to be read going back and forth with every line being read left to right and vice versa. However, by the 5th century B.C., the direction stayed as left to right. Also, over time, this alphabet lead to many others such as Latin.
This article relates to the book as Chapter 12: Blueprints and Borrowed Letters primarily focuses on the origin of writing and how other languages adapted from it. Diamond discusses the three basic writing strategies which includes a sign for a sound, a sign for a word, and a sign for a syllable. As seen from the article, writing began with a sign for a word, but later transitioned into a sign for a sound. Diamond also talks about the first scribes formulating new writing systems and how much more difficult this was as opposed to borrowing and adapting one. From the article, we see that many other alphabets originated from the Greek one.
Author: N/A
ReplyDeleteTitle: Population growth drives infectious disease rate upward
Source: http://www.healio.com/infectious-disease/emerging-diseases/news/print/infectious-disease-news/%7B90650258-654e-481e-ab79-176ff7de0676%7D/population-growth-drives-infectious-disease-rate-upward
Summary: This article talks about how as the world's population increases so does the demand for food and so does the rate of disease. It states how because humans started to grow their own food, started to domesticate animals, and started to advance the world, allowed for diseases to spread more easily. It also states how much of the world's increasing population occurs in developing countries where there is no advanced medical supplies which allows disease to spread. The article discusses how the demand for animal protein is high, which will also spread illnesses more easily. It also goes into detail that humans should keep their animals healthy because if their animals are healthy disease is less limey to originate from the animals. This article correlates to Guns, Germs, and Steel because in Part 3 of the book, Diamond goes into detail about how overcrowded areas of humans and their animals allow for disease to be spread rapidly. This means since they are all in close corders to each other airborne illnesses are very easy to contract among each other.
Author: Steven Roger Fischer
ReplyDeleteTitle: Phaistos Disk
Source: Glyphbreaker
Link: http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_9.htm
Summary/ Explanation
The Phaistos Disk is the most significant example of hieroglyphic inscription from Crete. The Phaistos was found in a small room of the east apartment of the palace in 1903. The Phaistos Disk dates back to 1700-1600 B.C. The inscriptions on the disk have not yet been coded, therefore it is unclear what the Phaistos Disk states. The disk is made of a slab of clay where hieroglyphics had been imprinted in a spiral motion. The Phaistos Disk is the earliest printing dictum end in the world, and the next efforts of printing without ink. I chose this article because it provides a deeper historical knowledge on the Phaistos Disk. The article does not agree nor disagree with Jared Diamond, but it provides more information. Also, the information in the article is more recent than the information presented in Guns, Germs and Steel.
Title: O'nyong-nyong Virus Infection Imported to Europe from Kenya by a Traveler
ReplyDeleteAuthors: Dennis Tappe, Annette Kapaun, Petra Emmerich, Renata de Mendonca Campos, Daniel Cadar, Stephan Günther, and Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit
Source: Emerging Infectious Diseases
Link: http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?sid=08615477-497b-4d4b-adaa-53045b1ce0e0%40sessionmgr115&vid=8&hid=125&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=98512816&db=f5h
Summary: This article discusses the O'nyong-nyong virus. It was discovered in June 1959 and is transferred by mosquitoes. The disease cause two epidemics in East Africa, and one in Kenya in 2013 from a woman carrying it with her. O'nyong-nyong can cause fever, rashes, pruritis, myalgia, and arthralgia of large joints. The mosquito that carries the virus is often found in Africa and parts of Europe.
O'nyong-nyong was mentioned by Diamond as an infectious disease. I found the name interesting, so I decided to research it because I had never heard of it before.
Author: Natalie Phillips
ReplyDeleteTitle: “Kuru”
Source: Healthline
Link: http://www.healthline.com/health/kuru#Overview1
In Chapter 11 of Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond brings up the laughing sickness from New Guinea. I did not know about this so I decided to research it. The official name of New Guinea’s laughing sickness is Kuru. The disease reached its peak during the 1950s and 1960s among the Fore people in the highlands of New Guinea. The Fore people contracted the disease by performing cannibalism during funeral rituals. They would eat the infected brains of there dead and was the most contracted by women and children because of their participants in the ritual. Kuru has many life altering symptoms such as trouble walking, slurred speech, and increasing poor coordination. There is still no known cure for the disease and people usually die from it within one year of being infected.
Author: N/A
ReplyDeleteTitle: "Widespread Cannibalism may have caused Prehistoric Prion
Disease Epidemics, Science Study Suggests"
Source: Science Daily
Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/04/030411071024.htm
Summary: This article highlights the disease prion cased by eating contaminated human flesh. In prehistoric times cannibalism was common which may have coded DNA to protect against the disease through the process of natural selection. Prion falls under the category of balancing selection which occurs more frequently in homozygous than heterozygous people. Prion causes brain damage and eventual death. The most recent outbreak of this disease was from1920-1950 in Papua New Guinea where cannibalism was tradition. This relates to Guns, Germs, and Steel when Diamond discusses that crowd diseases cannot thrive in small communities. The prehistoric hunter gatherers were able to form a genetic prevention to the disease because the disease was not able to reproduce and infect enough people to keep up with the natural evolution of the people that it needed to infect. I chose this subject because I was interested in how hunter gather diseases would affect the population of that tribe.
Author: Sonal Panse
ReplyDeleteTitle: Development of the Greek Alphabet
Source: Bright Hub Education
Link: http://www.brighthubeducation.com/history-homework-help/21831-where-did-the-greek-alphabet-come-from/
Summary/explanation: Diamond dedicated an entire chapter in Guns, Germs, and Steel to describe the evolution of writing and how writing spread throughout the world. The chapter goes on to talk about logograms, India’s Brahmi script, the Sumerians, and much more writing systems and how they built off each other to create new writing systems. It is obvious that writing has evolved over time and changed depending on geography and who wanted to make another language. The article I found describes the Greek Alphabet and where it originated. The article also explains how the Greek Alphabet adopted some of its concepts from other writing systems and changed the style every so slightly, “to suit the Greek phonology”. Not only did the Greek Alphabet use other language to create one, but the Greek Alphabet was also used as a template for other writing systems such as Thracian. Narbonese Gaulish, Bibical Hebrew, and Arabic. There is also a section in the article where accents are mentioned and the reason why they were made was to make the pronunciation of the Greek Alphabet easier for people who were not native to the language. All in all, the article supports Diamond’s claim that writing systems were based off of previous writing systems just altered a little to match their phonology and their customs.
Title: Dismantling the World's Top Kleptocracy is a Key Challenge
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Christopher Kolenda
Source: Foreign Policy
Link: http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/10/20/dismantling-the-worlds-top-kleptocracy-is-a-key-challenge-for-afghanistan/
Summary:
After reading Jared Diamond’s section regarding government and the utilization of force and power to rule a group of people, I became interested to further learn about this topic. Diamond mentioned the word, “Kleptocracy.” The definition of Kleptocracy is: “a government or state in which those in power exploit national resources and steal.” I was surprised at this definition because at first, I interpreted the word “kleptocracy” to mean “dictatorship”, which is far from what the term actually means. The article went on to describe Afghanistan’s government as a sophisticated kleptocracy. Although the country may run an efficient kleptocracy, it is clear that this country still suffers from a variety of problems. The author goes on to describe the many ways in which Afghanistan can resolve its many internal issues. Specifically, electoral reform, power transfers, and financial diversification were three of the solutions that the author provided.
Author: Joshua J. Mark
ReplyDeleteTitle: Writing
Link: http://www.ancient.eu/writing/
Summary: Language began being developed 35,000 B.C. by paintings on cave walls concerning daily life. But written language did not come until around 3500 B.C. in Mesopotamia. It worked by making marks in wet clay, and is said to have influenced the Egyptian writing system. It then speaks of other writing systems that began to come in place in the years that followed. Writing is necessary in being considered a civilization. The writing system began in Mesopotamia so that long distance communication could take place for trade. Pictographs started to get replaced by phonograms which are symbols that represent sounds. With the new writing system scribes were able to record the events that occurred. Now history could be recorded. This article agrees with Diamond's statement that the first writing system began in Mesopotamia. I would like to learn more about this topic because without writing systems, the world's past would not be known.
Database: EBSCOhost MasterFILE Premier
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Laura Sayre
Title: The Hidden Link Between Factory Farms and Human Illness
Summary:
This article describes the dangers of factory farming due to infectious microbes. With thousands of animals in a small area, infectious diseases spread like wildfire, and can contaminate human populations through direct contact with farmers, through meat, through water contaminated with waste, and even through the air. According to the article, about two-thirds of the 1,400 known human pathogens are believed to have come from animals. Cattle are believed to have given humans tuberculosis and the common cold; pigs or sheep probably gave humans pertussis; leprosy originated in water buffalo; ducks infected humans with influenza. The article also details ways to prevent the spread of disease, and how we can move forward. This connects to Diamond's argument that germs are a cause of why the world is set up unequally today. In chapter 11, he names germs as the "lethal gift of livestock", which is very accurate. Microbes have plagued human civilizations for thousands of years, especially since animals were domesticated. Microbes are even today spread by house pets. This article agrees with Diamond's argument because it gives many pieces of evidence that prove that livestock gives humans a lethal gift.
Title: The Black Death: Bubonic Plague
ReplyDeleteAuthor: None Given
Link: http://www.themiddleages.net/plague.html
Summary: The bubonic plague first occur in China and mainly affected rodents. People can get infected from the rodents or fleas. Once people are infected, they can spread the plague from one person to another very quickly. China was a very busiest trade nations, the plague quickly spread to western Asia and Europe. Once the plague got into Europe through an Italian trade ship, it quickly spread throughout the city and countryside within days. The plague caused fever, and painful swelling of the lymph glands called buboes. It also caused areas of the skin to turn red and then black. I decided to research the bubonic plague further because Diamond mentions that the Black Death (bubonic plague) killed a quarter of Europe’s population between 1346 and 1352. Diamond also mentioned that some cities had a death toll of 70 percent. This interested me so I researched further about the plague itself and how it spread.
Link: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/071201_adenovirus
ReplyDeleteTitle: Evolution from a Virus's View
Author: Not Provided
Summary: While humans often view germs as malevolent and dangerous organisms, they are only trying to survive and reproduce, just as any other organism does. Natural selection plays a powerful role in which germs spread, and ultimately contributes immensely to the evolution of bacteria. Most germs spread by two different strategies: virulence and transmission. Virulent germs often kill the host in an attempt to spread as quickly and widely as possible. Others are far less threatening and only produce minor symptoms. Through natural selection, germs have adapted to utilize five different modes of transmission; droplet, airborne, vector, waterborne, and sit-and-wait. There are benefits to both virulence and transmission, depending on the ultimate needs of the organism. Virulent germs run the risk of killing or isolating the host before they have a chance to spread to new hosts, whereas less virulent bacteria are easier for the host to eliminate. Viruses and humans experience similar evolution processes as each adapts to beat the other.
This article presents very similar information and poses the same question as Jared Diamond in chapter eleven of "Guns, Germs, and Steel." Both texts assess the issue from the point of view of the virus and question why some germs are so virulent that they kill the host. In addition, both the book and article attribute the wide variety of germs to natural selection and describe several specific adaptations that have caused germs to evolve.
Author: PBR
ReplyDeleteTitle: Human Population
Source: PBR
Link: http://www.prb.org/Publications/LessonPlans/HumanPopulation/PopulationGrowth.aspx
Summary: The growth of human population interested me because I wondered how a few hundred nomads come to populate an Earth of nine billion. Diamond tries to explain all of this, but what I really needed to look at where the numbers. The Population Reference Bureau provides a clear and informational graph that details this rise. Given, the earliest it dates are the 1800s, but even then, it is immensely intriguing to see both the spikes and declines. Notable were the contributions of world history, in that there was a population spike in the aftermath of the Second World War. Also, Asia was, and predicted to still be, the majority of the world’s population, while more developed countries remain stable and even stagnant. Even more interesting was the idea that population grows exponentially, and not arithmetically. Perhaps that is why we are seeing such explosive growth today.
Author:N/A
ReplyDeleteTitle:Animal Diseases and Your Health
Link:https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/animaldiseasesandyourhealth.html
Summary: I was interested to know more about the diseases of animals after reading about the man from chapter 11, who developed a disease after having intercourse with sheep. Animal diseases that people can catch are called zoonoses. Most diseases human have can actually be traced back to an animal. One can get a disease directly from an animal, or indirectly, through the environment. Farm animals (like the sheep) can especially carry diseases. It would be best to watch and care for them from a view. This means petting zoos are not always a good idea. So it is quite obvious why the patient in Guns, Germs, and Steels developed a disease so quickly, and easily from the sheep. Not only do farm animals cause disease, but pets can as well. This means one should always be careful when it comes to making any contact with any animal.
Author: N/A
ReplyDeleteTitle: Chiefdom - Anthropology
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica
Link: http://www.britannica.com/topic/chiefdom
Summary: The article states how chiefdoms is a group where economic and political power is in the hands of either a single entity or a group, where it would be espoused over many different communities. It was basically humanity's first shot at organizing several different tribes under one ruler. These chiefdoms were the first entities that practiced a form of taxation, rather than a form of egalitarianism, as was practiced in tribal and band societies. These chiefdoms would spring up in areas such as Polynesia or west Africa after many tribes would almost "combine" under a single leader. The leadership position would most commonly be hereditary. Chiefdoms also were much less nomadic, as they would usually setle one specific area rather than constantly moving around.
Explanation: In chapter fourteen, Diamond would argue that there were four different types of societies over the course of human history - bands,tribes,chiefdoms, and states. I had sufficient knowledge of bands, tribes, and states prior to reading this book. I was interested in finding more about chiefdoms than what Diamond has explicitly said in his fourteenth chapter about them.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteArticle title: How the Manx language came back from the dead
ReplyDeleteArticle link: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/apr/02/how-manx-language-came-back-from-dead-isle-of-man
This article describes how the language used on the Isle of Man declined nearly to extinction, and then was integrated back into society. Similar to many languages discussed by Diamond, the Manx language is a variation of the more widely-spoken Gaelic language and was only spoken by the Isle's inhabitants. Over the years, Manx speakers began to learn English in order to communicate and do business with America and Britain, causing it to die out. Very few people sought to preserve the language because it was associated with poverty and ignorance, therefore fewer and fewer spoke it. Since its rediscovery, many people have changed their perspective on it and view the language as a piece of their heritage. Additionally, there is a parallel between the reason that these people switched to English and the reasons that Diamond thinks languages were created. Diamond stated in the book that civilizations which had no written language had no need for it because, as hunter-gatherer societies, did little business and trading compared to farming societies. This is similar to Manx speakers because they adopted English for business and commerce.
Author: None given
ReplyDeleteTitle: Human Diversity
Source: the Co-Intelligence Institute
Link: http://www.co-intelligence.org/I-diversity.html
Summary: This article is about the "hot-buttons" that strike human diversity and the different types of human beings that make up our world. It then discusses what we can do as humans to help and look on the bright side of things. To begin, the article starts by naming some things that are essentially the reason for human diversity, such as race, gender, and religion. These are called "hott button" pains because groups of different races, genders, or religion (as well as many other groups) have hurt or offended someone of a different viewpoint than them. Not only do these triggering differences exist in the world, there are also many more common and individual traits humans carry such as personality, beliefs, and dreams. Many people are seen for their differences, and problems often arise due to the disputes between different groups or individuals. The positive side of selective grouping is that new possibilites are in store. People that do feel the same way or are involved in the same activities can bond and create a better lifestyle for another group or individual. This might be known as co-intelligence. The author ends this article by stating that there will most likely be no breakthroughs, but humans should take this as a challenge to overcome issues that potentially arise with human diversity. I chose this article because in chapter 14, Diamond discusses the Fayu tribe and how their differences often resulted in violence, and how Americans differ greatly from the Fayus because of our advanced culture. I wanted to learn more about what precisely caused this outbreak, and if there were any possible solutions compared to fighting, as the Fayu tribe often did.