Grade 11 History - CHW3M

Intro to History - Feb 6, 2024

• Determining Age

  • RadioCarbon or Carbon-14 Dating

    • All forms of life contain carbon atoms. When an organism dies, the C-14 begins to decay

    • The fewer the C-14 atoms, the older the organism..

    • The half-life of C-14 is about 5730 atoms

  • Thorium Decay

    • Can date items between 100,000 and 500,000 years old.

• Stuff that's in the ground tells us a lot, Stuff that is alive tells us a lot

  • Many civilizations lose their traditions and their oral stories, but things like the Greek have had a great record of their history. From this we can make a hypothesis about this.

• Confederate Flag

  • What do you do with different parts of unfortunate history like the Confederate Flag

    • You have to acknowledge the ugly parts of history.

  • If a country doesn't acknowledge their wrong doings, how can we build trust and relationships?

• Problems with Archaeology

  • The parts of history that we choose to talk about and believe tells alot about us.

    • In the Napoleon movie, there is a big emphasis on Josephine and the relationship with her rather than the greats of his battles and his youthfulness.

  • Limited sources available due to climate environment or human encroachment

  • Govt in power may limit archeology finds or taint interpretations

    • Taliban broke a bunch of mesopotamia museum art due to the fact that they didn't think they aligned with Allah

  • Personal ambitions. Overambition may taint the interpretation of artifacts/finds

  • Existing interpretations or theories may taint the interpretation of new finds.

• The way you depict your gods depicts about you/ the way your build your churches also gives you historical context

  • Protestant Churches are basic plain and are rid of any fanciness in their churches because of believe that prayer is the most important thing in the church

  • While Roman and the Hagia Sophia have really intricate architecture due the fact that the church is meant to be a heaven and has giant domes. Which were already hard to do in the current day but they went through the process of that because of their goals they wanted to achieve.

Evolutionary Theory - Origins of Life Feb 6, 2024

• Theory or Law (theory of evolution)

  • Genetics explains the variations of in each species and how they are inherited

  • Fossil remains support evolutionary theory

    • A scientific theory is something that answers why and it has been tested repeatedly and has so far always been true.

    • A law is a mathematical statement that tells how something happens.

• Voyage of the HMS Beagle

  • Charles Darwin

    • Whole slew of men and women are making you question your faith. One of his daughters died, and messed his up and sent him into a spiral

    • He was a naturalist, and went around the world studying different things and animals

  • Origin of Species

    • Species changed over time as a response to their environment

      • There are turtles, but there are variants. Turtles that might need to reach higher for food have longer necks, one that need to hide have camo

        • He created this idea of natural selection, he understood that species have a need for survival and evolve

    • Species compete for survival

  • Natural selection

    • Variations in each species help them survive

    • Species that best adapt to their environment and reproduce

      • Features that help you to be successful allow you to live long and procreate

      • The genetic variance in animals that make you successful are the ones that get passed on

      • In todays world men will try to adopt new skills like the guitar, to get girls

    • In the present, we are getting so good at being alive that people can live as long as possible now with medications and etc

  • These are our evolutionary cousins and they existed millions of years ago, we find their remains and carbon date them to figure out how old they are. The one that was able to procreate to survive the longest was Afarensis.

    • Perhaps the reasons they didnt survive was because of their lack of eyesight, their sped and agility and their mental capacity

Evolutionary Theory - Part 2 Feb 7, 2024

• Human Evolution

  • Hominids(Humanlike creatures) began to appear over 4 million years ago

  • The difference between hominids and apes

    • Bipedalism(walking on two feet)

    • Larger brain size

  • Tomatoes and Friends

    • Our environment determines what we are. Tomatoes are grown orange, yellow and red. But we prefer red tomatoes as we found that appealing so we killed off the orange and green.

    • Just friends where the environment dictates what your interests are and certain things you can develop just like mutations in your genes

• Australopithecus Line

  • Primordial

    • Something that existed before the start of time. We cant map out our history millions of years ago, and we cant map out things in the future either.

  • Anamnesis

    • Found in kenya 1995

    • 4.1 millions years ago

  • Afarensis(Lucy)

    • Found in Ethiopia in 1974

    • 3.18 million years ago

  • Africanus

    • Found in South Africa

    • 2.5 millions years ago

  • Genetics

    • For most of human history, the tribes never left the main area so therefore People had a small amount of people to mate with. So people slowly got taller, as they picked to mate with taller people.

• The Human Line

  • Homohabilisi

    • Known for creating or inventing things. Can visualize what they wanted to create, made tools and etc

    • Human like teeth and brain size

  • Homo Erectus

    • Now have the same abilities like homohabilis, but now can walk and now can also run. First to use fire and migrate

  • Neanderthals

    • First appeared about 230k years ago

    • Disappeared 30,000 years ago

    • Found in Europe, Chine and Middle East

  • Homo Sapiens

    • Man Who thinks

    • Developed language and sophisticated tools

• Neil De Grasse Tyson Video

  • Wolves were domesticated to dogs through the lowering of their pheremones in the blood that controlled their anger. Some genetic variance in the wolves allowed them to go to humans and the humans would give the wolves the scraps.

  • Allowing us to use wolves to hunt and artificially breed and hunt and make new breeds that we now know and love today.

Stone Age Feb 8, 2024

3 Ages

• Paleolithic/Old Stone Age

  • Social Structure

    • Small tribes of 5-10 families

    • Interacted with other tribes for trade procreation

    • Hierarchy based on gender and age

  • Gender Roles

    • Men hunted large animals with new tools and strategy

    • Women - Gathered food which accounted for the majority of their diet particularly vegetables

  • All we have of this age is their remains and the cave drawings, We are inferring a lot about their civilization. For example if we know they hunt the buffalo, and the effort it takes to hunt it means that the people used every single piece of the animal.

  • Art

    • Cave paintings depicted aspects of daily life

    • Reverence for dominant animals like lions is depicted in painting

    • Jewelry - Practical and useful

    • Sculpture depicted the human form

    • Fire - used for warmth and cooking

    • Having Art means that you have a steady food source and have safety but also you can use art in timers of war or despair

      • You create art with whatever is available to you

    • Mesotamians use writing and art to keep a track of their food, their art was using sticks to

    • These people are communicating and creating art but why, the notion of documenting your existence. Why do we art?

  • Agriculture

    • Humans began farming and domesticated animals - goats cattle, sheep, pigs

    • Pottage - thick soup of weeds and grain

    • Beer - made from barley

    • Meader - a liquor made from honey and yeast

• Mesolithic/ Middle Stone Age

• Neolithic/New Stone Age

  • Improved tools

    • Metallurgy - metal working

    • Copper used to make new stronger tools

    • Farming tools used to make hoe, axe, sickle

  • Settlement

    • Successful with agriculture allowed humans to form permanent settlements

    • Specialization of Labour begins

• Notes from Inclass Speech

  • "Poverty is so bad because Poverty destroys the future"

    • If you dont know where your food comes from and dont know where your survival comes. You dont have the time and needs to learn the math necessary to make giant structures

    • There is a certain amount of comfort you need to get a art studio in your basement. When you have a society that has good security and doesnt have to think about their food for tomorrow, they can start inventing and create new things and learn academic skills.

    • A special job arre now created for things like breeding, humans instead of hunting started breeding animals and eating their children to save their energy

,

Internet Parallel

• Web 1.0

  • Internet was only made for the government and universities and national defense only for military operations

• Web 2.0

  • Things like youtube and many other applications were made to democratize it and and it was a participatory centralized based

• Web 3.0

  • Is a decentralized internet with things like bitcoin and vpn's and etc

Ancient Mesopotamia - Feb 12, 2024

• Ancient Civilizations of the Old World

  • Mesopotamia. Egypt Greece Rome, etc

• Mesopotamia

  • You know you're looking at mesopotamia, when you see beard hair thats encased. Which is something distinct with their culture and civilization

  • Mesopotamia refers to server civilizations

  • Over thousands of years many civilizations developed, collapsed and were replaced in this region.

• Iconoclasm

  • Iconoclasm is the social belief in the importance of the destruction of icons and other images or monuments, most frequently for religious or political reasons.

  • Need to rename Ryerson University, due to Ryerson was involved in residential school. But to what extent do you have to destroy because at that time everyone was involved with residential schools.

• Sumerians

  • Established around 3200 BC in the Southern Area of Mesopotamia

  • Controlled the Tigris and Euphrates River using levees and Irrigation Canals making stable food sources

    • Instead of going to the water, they make water come to them.

  • Walled Independent cities

  • Sumerians Start off in the persian golf, and then each new civilization move north slowly

• Sumerian Social Structure

  • Lord + King Governor

    • Lord was worshiped

    • King was Administered

  • NObility

    • Kings royalty, priests, palace officials

  • Middle Class

    • Worked for nobles, for the use of land

      • When you look at nobility in a civilization, you have to asses if its

  • Slaves

    • Sold by their families and prisoners

• Sumerian Cities

  • At the center of each city state was a temple surrounded by public buildings

    • This says a lot of what you value, in the sumerian situation they value temples. In our case, Square One is in the city center,its our capitalism temple.

  • Farm land outside the city wall

  • All Structures made from brick

• Sumerian Homes

  • Upper Class homes

    • Two storyLower houses of the priest and merchants

  • Middle Class Homes

    • One Story homes of government officials, shopkeper and craftspeople

  • Lower Class Homes

    • Farmers, Unskilled workers and fishermen

• Ziggurat

  • Temples in city centers

    • One stop shop, everything that needs to be done in the city is there, its a multi-use space kind of like Square One.

    • 15 minute city is a ancient idea, the reason why is because once you keep things close you are safer

  • Housed each city-states patron god or goddess

  • Multipurpose - city business, education, worship, accounting, education

• Religion

  • Beliefs

    • Polytheistic

  • Varied by city states

  • Oldest written creation story comprised of myths, hymns and proverbs

    • Do animals believe in God

      • Believing in god is a human trait, animals have ritualistic behaviors but humans are the ones that developed religion and have things like mourning the dead and the rituals, so and so. Uniquely human characteristic is that there is a creator, we don't just breathe and die, we think about the nature of our existence.

      • We look for patterns to try to find origins, and use our curiosity

    • It is human nature to find a purpose (where do we go when we die?)

      • A Lot of different religions, have stories that similar ending stories etc

  • Belief that gods rewarded and punished human behavior

    • All traditions around the world have a flood story, at some point at antiquity stories have been passed down about the flood.

    • The human idea that the creator is involved in your day to day life.

    • We want and look for meaning, try to understand its existence. Eg, something else that I don't understand but my

• Epic of Gilgamesh

  • Ancient poem written over 4000 years ago

    • One of the oldest stories humans have ever told.

    • Buddy Cop Film: 2 Characters in law enforcement with very different personalities, super nervous guy and idgaf bad boy. 2 of them deal with each other to solve a problem.

    • Rocky and Apollo Creed don't like each other but have to work together to solve the problem. Inspired from Gilgamesh

  • Tells of a great flood that covers the earth many years earlier

  • Coincides with the increase in sea levels about 6,000 years as the last ice age ended

    • Bunch of jews in new york created superman through Jesus/Moses

Sumerians and Bablyon - Feb 14, 2024

Writing and Science in the Sumerians

• Cuneiforms

  • Means "wedge-shaped"

  • Used for record keeping in the city states and evolved from simple pictographic writing

  • Made up of hundred of word signs that were "wedge-shaped" due to the shape of the stylus

    • Likely not the first written language, this was a mature civilization and as a mature civilization they create languages as time goes on, ties back into specialization of labor. Evolution of time creates jobs like cupholder(someone who holds a cup) and someone who writes what others say

    • Written words start off as symbols and emojis and have metaphorical meaning. They start off and symbolic and abstract and they become character based.

  • Boys were educated from ages 8-20 to become Scribes

  • Scribe- A writer who records events

• End of Sumerians

  • City states were weakened by regular fighting over land and water, then being conquered by Sargon of Akkadians

  • Sargon of Akkadians

    • When individual parts of summer are in conflict with each other over resources, it weakens them and makes it easier to enemies to conquer.

    • 

• Akkadians

  • Sargon's Akkadian successors unified the city states and spread the culture though the fertile crescent via warfare

    • Akkadians didn't leave a goodbye note, centralized their empire with the Persian Gulf after conquering Sumerian.

    • Roads and infrastructure were improved under a single government

  • Mysterious End - Unknown

    • Possible reasons climate change, Akkadian Curse and Frequent Warfare

    • Babylon came after them.

• Babylon

  • We get codified Law from the babylonians

  • Around 1800 BCE, King Hammurabu conquered the city states in Mesopotamia into kingdom known as called Babylonia with the city of Babylon as its capital

    • Babylon and Old Mesopotamia is current day Iraq.

• 

• Shamesh - mesopotamian sun god, King hammurabi was believed to be in contact with shamesh.

• Hammurabi’s Code

  • First recorded legal code

    • Sumerian/ Akkadain influence

  • 282 laws engraved in stone and place in a public place

• Economy

  • Ideal location for trade

  • Caravans traveled from Sumerian cities in the south to Akkad in the north and stopped in the middle to trade

    • When you go on the long journeys with the camels, you take goons along with you to take goons with you just like one might drive a 18 wheeler to ohio, even with police, manifests and a clean trade way. But people still might take the payload, due to it having raw materials, etc.

  • Special markets called Bazaars

Babylon - Feb 15, 2024

Writing and Science

• Medicine

  • Physical, symptoms, prescriptions

    • How do you give prescriptions for things you don't understand,

• Math and Astronomy

  • Pythagorean Theorem, and Zodiac

    • Even though its Zodiacs, at that time they assumed it was astronomy and not astronomy because that was all they knew

    • They are living in the world of correlation and causation,until the 20th century. Repeatable, Observable and Acceptable

• Hammurabi

  • Hamurabis successors could not keep the empire together

    • Large empires are attacked frequently, due to the bigger border size(more enemies to worry about)

  • Kept getting smaller and smaller until it dissolved in 1550 BCE and was conquered by the Assyrians

• Genesis 11 1:9

  • Old testament god is strict and severe due to the fact that they were nomadic for so long, its a reflection of the life they were living.

  • Don't build too high, be content with enough -> Netflix etc growth

Assyrian’s

• 1320 - 612 BCE

  • Small kingdom of walled cities north of Babylon

  • Located in the open and easily attacked, become skilled warriors

    • Parallel to Israel, how they protect themselves against Palestine etc.

  • Around 1365 BC, began conquering surrounding areas

  • By 650 BC, Assyria had conquered a large empire under King Sargon II

Hanging Gardens of Babylon

• Art

  • Built by Nebuchnezzar II around 600 BCE

    • According to accounts, the gardens were used to cheer Nebuchnezzar’s wife up

  • Ancient Wonder