Cyber Day #1 Assignment

So we have been off for a whole week, and we had a Cyber Day on Friday. Here is my essay from that day.

The government in Ancient Greece is different and similar in several ways from our government here in America today. In Ancient Greece, the philosopher Aristotle divided Greek governments into monarchies, oligarchies, tyrannies, and democracies. There were also aristocracies, which were a form of government that placed power in the hands of a small, privileged, ruling class. However, many city states used governments of their own and many didn't become democracies or tyrannies at all. Most were either a democracy or run by a tyrant. A monarchy is where a king or a queen, someone of a higher power, ruled the government. In Athens this ruler would be called a tyrant. An oligarchy is when the government is run by a small group of people. A democracy is when people, the assembly, the community leads the government, officials and leaders were elected and all citizens have a say. A tyranny is when the leader took their position of power by force. In a democracy, everything was very direct. All citizens voted on all the laws, where the first difference from our government comes in, because we vote for representatives, where in Greece people voted for each individual law. This means Ancient Greece was a democracy, the United States is a republic. Officials in Ancient Greece could be anyone, poor or rich. To vote in Ancient Greece, you had to be a citizen, which meant you had to be a man with completed military training. Government was divided into 3 main parts as well, the Assembly, the Council of 500, and the Courts. Here's another difference between them and our government: our 3 main parts are branches called the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches. The Assembly is all the citizens that showed up to vote, the Legislative branch is the Senate and House of Representatives. The Council of 500 looked over the day-to-day running of the government, the Executive branch is the President and all his workers, which do similar work to the Council. The Courts handled lawsuits and trials and included juries, kind of like our Judicial branch which includes the Supreme Court and lower courts. These are the differences and similarities of Ancient Greece government and our government here in the United States today.

Half Day

I didn't post yesterday's blog post yesterday so I am today. Okay, so yesterday in class we didn't do much actually. We had a half day because Harford County was real nice and said oh no! snow is coming two hour early dismissal and we were all very happy. Mr. Schick had all of us send him our blog links and we looked at each other's blogs , and then he opened up youtube and showed us his "It's Thursday" video. (I liked and subscribed by the way.) I'm kind of sad that there's no more song on Thursdays. Anyways, the whole class got Oreos and we all sat and talked and we had a shadow too. Oh, and Mr. Schick read us a little bit of the Odyssey, which seems like a real cool book that I'd like to read sometime after I finish reading all the other ones I have to read. Anyways, we have over 2 feet of snow, my whole porch is covered, and my patio's table is completely gone. I also hope we have no school Monday. Or Tuesday. Or Wednesday. But I hope you're having a great weekend whoever is reading this and I hope that it keeps snowing :)))

Starting Ancient Greece

In Western Civ today we started our first unit, which was Ancient Greece. We had to take notes on the powerpoint we saw, but we didn't have to write down everything because we already read and took notes on this last class. Here is what I wrote down:

Ancient Greece
the world's great civilizations, all located on water (usually rivers)

Mesopotamia/Tigris and Euphrates Rivers
Egypt/Nile River
India/Indus River
China/Huang He River

Greece's Geography

• surrounded by water 
• mostly mountains (describing this is topography) 
• separated by cultures, geography, and more 

Mediterranean Sea 

• Adriatic Sea- west 
• Agien Sea- east 
• ionic sea- south 

Geography

• mountainous peninsula, mountains cover 3/4 of the area 
• sailors, ships builders, farmers live there 
• difficult to unite because of terrain 
• formed city states 
• fertile alleys cover 1/4 of the land 
• diet of the people consist of grains, grapes, and olives 
• lack of resources led to Greek colonizations 
• temperatures usually ranged from mid 40s in winter to low 80s in summer , usually nice year round 

Early Peoples 

• influence began around 2000 BCE 
• Mycenae located on rocky ridge and protected by 20 foot thick wall 
• they Mycenaean kings dominated greece 
• then the sea people, or dorians move int 
• invaded greece and dominated the land, this period was called the "dark ages" they were far less advance, economy collapsed, and writing disappeared for 1400 years 

Homer 

• greek oral tradition, homer lived at the end of greek dark ages, composed stories of Trojan war 
• the Iliad- thousands of lines long, written in verse
• gods were involved in his stories 
• the odyssey about odysseus and Poseidon, was 12,110 lines of dactylic hexameter 
• Homeric question- was he real? was he just a mythical creation himself? 
• he was blond, a wandering minstrel, a heroic figure 
• Iliad and Odyssey may be just a culminations of generations of storytelling, or he did really exist and was just plain awesome 

Then for our homework, we have to read and take notes on pages 127-131: 

Warring City-States 

Rule and Order in Greek City-States 

• polis- city-state, fundamental political unit in ancient Greece, made up of a city and surrounding countryside 
• most city states were home to fewer than 10,000 residents 
• they had many different forms of government
• monarchy- single person such as a king ruled 
• aristocracy- ruled by small group of noble landowning families 
• oligarchy- ruled by a few powerful people 
• there were many fights and clashes between nations, so tyrants ( rulers who seized control by force) took control of city states sometimes 

Athens Builds a Limited Democracy

• a representative government was an idea in some city states 
• Athenian reformers liked the idea of a democracy ( rule by the people )
• first step of this was when nobleman Draco took power, he developed a new legal code based on idea that everyone rich and poor was equal under the law 
• upheld practices such as debt slavery 
• more reforms were reached by Solon, stating that no citizen should own another citizen 
• he outlawed debt slavery 
• organized social classes
• then  athenian leader Cleisthenes introduced further reforms 
• broke power of nobility 
• allowed all citizens to submit laws 
• created Council of Five Hundred 
• he allowed citizens to participate in a limited democracy even though citizen ship was only give to a limited amount of people 
• for education, only sons of the rich were allowed to attend school 
• they studied reading, grammar, poetry, history, music, and math , logic and public speaking 
• greeks believed an athletic body was important, everyone did athletics everyday 
• girls did not attend school , instead learned about the household and how to run it 

Sparta Builds A Military State 

• located in the southern part of Greece known as the Peloponnesus 
• Sparta was nearly cut off from the rest of Greece by the Gulf of Corinth 
• built a military state instead of democracy 
• he conquered the neighboring region of Messenia and took the land 
• the people became helots (peasants forced to stay on the land they worked) and had to give their crops to the spartans
• they tried to revolt, Spartans surprisingly barely put down the revolt, so the helots worked hard to make Sparta a city state 
• Spartan gov had several branches 
• an assembly elected officials and voted on major issues 
• The Council of Elders proposed laws 
• five elected officials carried out the laws, controlled education and the courts 
• two kings ruled over Sparta 
• also many social groups ranging from original inhabitants of the region to the helots, who were just barely better than slaves 
• had the most powerful army in Greece from around 600-371 BCE 
• mens whole lives were mainly focused on military training and military life
• girls received some military training as well, both were taught to put Sparta above everything else 
• women had a lot of freedom which surprised surrounding states 

The Persian Wars 

• danger of a helot revolt made Sparta to be a military state 
• struggles between rich and poor made Athens a democracy 
• Persian armies began to invade 
• in the Dorian Age, only the rich could afford army materials, so only they served in the armies 
• iron replaced bronze in materials because of money 
• phalanx became the most powerful fighting force in the ancient world 
• Persian wars- between Greece and the Persian Empire , began in Ionia on the coast of Anatolia 

First Day of Class

Today was our first day of Western Civ. I keep wanting to type Human Geo. But, it's pretty much the same class, plus and minus a few people. We actually have TEXTBOOKS now and I am not a fan of them but hey. Today was really pretty much like the first day of Human Geo- we made our blogs, talked about the course, and did the assigned homework. Also me and Lauren ate carrots today too. I guess this is a continuing thing?

Anyways,  for homework we had to read some pages in the textbook and write notes about them. Here are the notes I got:

Cultures of the Mountains and the Sea 

Geography Shapes Greek Life 

•  Ancient Greece consisted mainly of a mountainous peninsula jutting out into the Mediterranean Sea 
• also included around 2,000 islands 
• The sea shaped greek civilization
• they “did not live on a land but around a sea” 
• sea travel connected them with other societies, which was good because they lacked many natural resources 
• rugged mountains covered ancient Greece 
• the greeks had little, independent communities within the valleys and mountains 
• uneven land made road transportation difficult 
• land wasn’t good for water or farmland, causing a smaller population 
• Greece has a varied climate , temperatures averaging 48 degrees fahrenheit in winter and 80 in summer 
• men spent much of their time outside or in public gatherings 

Mycenaean Civilization

• some of the people that settled on the Greek mainland in 2000 BC were known as Mycenaeans , which came from their leading city Mycenae 
• the city was located in southern Greece, surrounded by a protective wall more than 20 feet thick , the kings of this city dominated Greece for a while 
• Mycenaeans came into contact with Minoan civilization 
• caused them to see the value of seaborne trade , to adapt the Minoan writing system, religious practice, art, politics, and literature 
• during the 1200s BC they fought with Troy (Trojan War) 
• this lead to many legends and stories such as the Trojan Horse 

Greek Culture Declines Under the Dorians 

• not long after the Trojan War, Mycenaean civilization collapsed 
• a new group called the Dorians moved in 
• spoke Greek dialect , far less advanced then the previous group, economy collapsed and trade stopped 
• greeks appeared to have lost the art of writing during this age , little is known about this time period though 
• Greeks learned of history through spoken word 
• according to tradition the greatest story teller was a man named Homer 
• some believed he made epics (narrative poems celebrating heroic deeds) , one was called the Iliad, influenced by the Trojan War 
• this epic showed the concept of arete- means virtue and excellence
• greeks developed a set of myths , or traditional stories, about their gods 
• Theogony by Hesiod and more of Homer’s work are the source of much of greek mythology 
• greeks tried to understand mysteries of nature and humanity, and things like the seasons through these myths 
• greeks attributed human qualities to their gods 
• one of the gods, Athena, was thought of the guardian of all cities