Minoans (Cretans) and Mycenaeans

Here are some links to get you started on some context for Minoans and Mycenaeans.

Here are a few more images.

And here's a 25-second video of what the ruins look like on Crete.

Here's a map that shows the Peloponnesus. Mycenae is a city on the Peloponnesus.

What else can folks find about these civilizations?

And for those interested in military conquests, consider these Plastic Hittite Soldiers.

Any questions as you review for the test?

Please post them here as a comment.

Please focus on questions that lead to knowledge, as opposed to questions in the form of "Will X topic be on the test?"

9-11... six years later

In class on Tuesday, I'd like to take a little time to discuss 9-11-01.

What happened? Why? Why was it significant?

To prepare for class, please watch the first three minutes of this Charlie Rose show from the evening of 9-11-01. You should watch up to the point where Charlie Rose asks:

“How many casualties? Who did it? How will the United States respond? And what will this event do to the nature of American life?”

Think about those last two questions for class tomorrow. How did the United States respond to 9-11? And what has that event done to the nature of American life six years later? You don't have to do any research or write anything - just think about it.

You folks were in the 3rd grade when 9-11 happened, so you may not have been fully aware of what was going on.

There's a little-known event that I think does a good job of capturing the mood of the country about a week after 9-11. President Bush was giving a speech to Congress, and the speech happened at 9 p.m. That happened to be intermission between the second and third periods of a hockey game in Philadelphia.

Read this account of what happened in Philly and how the president's speech led to the end of the game. Then, once you have some context, listen to the first two minutes of this radio broadcast.

For more context, see this report from the NewsHour on PBS.

Again, the questions I'd like to focus on for Tuesday are:

1. How did the United States respond to 9-11?

2. What has that event done to the nature of American life six years later?

Where we've been, where we are and where we're going

Greetings world history students.

As we start a new week of school, I'm thinking about where we've been, academically speaking...

Thus far, we have:

• read Jared Diamond's article about whether farming was a huge mistake


• read some pages in our textbook to get some additional context about the pluses and minuses of the agricultural revolution


• worked on developing a thesis and supporting it with evidence


• read a summary of Gilgamesh and thought about what Mesopotamia might have been like around 2000 BCE


• selected a current event to follow for the first trimester


• learned how to use Google Earth
  

Speaking of Google Earth (you will be on a team soon!) let's think about where we've been in a geographic sense.

Most (though not all) of you have now visited the area around the North Carolina/Virginia border near the Blue Ridge Mountains. We are now back in Cary. When you traveled, did you wonder -- or historia -- about how the "Blue Ridge Mountains" got their name? They didn't look Blue to me. But maybe that's because I didn't see them in the morning:

When we look across to other mountains it is easy to see why they were named the "Blue Ridge Mountains." The early morning air in the distance looks like thick smoke. It makes the color of the mountains a deep ocean blue. This color is caused by the amount of water in the air. It is almost like fog. When the sun rises higher, some of the water in the air will be burned away. Then the mountains will slowly turn dark green.

source: http://www.manythings.org/voa/05/2005-08-16-3.html

Now that we are back at Cary Academy, how did Cary get its name?

We got to the Blue Ridge Mountains by traveling west on Route 40. What's up with routes and numbers? Did you ever notice that interstate highway numbers ending in zero -- such as Route 10, 20, 30, 40, etc. -- go East-West, whereas numbers ending in five -- such as Route 95, 85, 75, etc. -- go North-South? Who set up these highways anyway?

Would it be good for China to develop a similar highway system, so its 1.3 billion people could spread out more? Auto makers would certainly be happy with that decision, but would it be good for the environment to have China develop more and better roads? If cars in the future run on more environmentally-friendly fuels, maybe it won't matter so much. Or will all these roads (and by the way -- do all roads lead to Rome? or is that Persia's Royal Road?) be historical relics in the future when we all fly around like The Jetsons?

There actually was a point to all that question asking (aside from re-introducing you to the concept of historia: to learn by inquiry)

As you prepare for class on Monday, please read actively. Look up words you don't know. Think about what the text is telling you.

We will spend the next few weeks looking at the early river civilizations. The title of chapter three is “The Great River Valleys”. There are four great river valleys that we know about: Egypt, Indus River, Mesopotamia and China.

The section of the chapter you are reading for Monday describes the "Ecology of Civilization". As you read about each river valley, think about how the ecology and the environment shaped the people who lived there. And really try to think about what it would be like to live in an ancient river valley.

picture source: http://www.harappa.com/indus2/gif/oldworld.jpg

For instance, on page 76 (electronic page 122), we learn that China grew a lot of millet on the Yangtze River. An active reader might wonder what millet looks like.

The caption next to the colorful picture on p. 76 (you are reading the captions and looking at the maps, aren't you?) tells us that rice -- the crop often associated with China -- tends to grow better in the moist south of China, on the Yangtze River.

Where do we get our food from today? So many questions...

Speaking of questions, if you have any questions (or thoughts or comments) as you do the reading, please post them as comments to this blog entry.