Monday, September 29, 2008

Unit 2 Civilizations.

Hey Gang;
With Unit One behind us, we are moving on to the years 600- 1450. Of all the great civilizations; the Maya, Islam, the Mongols, Byzantium, the Gupta, the Songhai, to name a few, which had the greatest impact on history (and modern society) or which did you find most interesting? I'll give you five points (EC) for each cogent argument about a specific civilization.

By the way, there are several more lectures available and several on the way. Let me know what you think about them!
Peace Out.
Mr. Parker

12 comments:

Alyssa said...

Hey Mr. Parker,
Personally, I believe that the Mayans had a great impact on today's society, their Hieroglyphs were an early form of writing styles that are still around today, although today they may be more abstract in some cases. Without that original writing style it would not be possible for them to easily track things or to pass accurate historical information on to future generations. Just as our alphabet and the alphabet invented by the Phoenicians seems so important to us, Hieroglyphics were important in developing character texts.

That's all for now
~Alyssa Pierce

jasmine said...

Hey parker,
I think that the Mayans had a great impact on history and are interesting, because the created the zero, and with out the zero life and math would be way more complicated.We use math in our everyday life!!!!!
jasmine flanagan

Ernesto Bermudez said...

I believe that the Greeks had the most interesting and innovative technology that proved to be of great importance to future discoveries since its spread during the hellinistic era. For example, Greek Literature has passed down and many languages now have Greek roots. Also, many epic Greek written works have been translated in many different languages to keep them form being lost. They also improved in the fields of math, astronomy, and science that paved the way for others to follow their example and get us to where we are today.

rickyricardo said...

So...ok dangit ernesto! He beat me by 3 min hahah

-Personally, I really enjoyed the Maya Empire :D Doing a persia on them really helped me understand how they were as a civilization. Although their whole human sacrifices was not cool.
I shall visit their ruins one of these days? Their temples look so amazing, i wonder if we're allowed to walk into them? Or would i get liked killed...hahaha
Anyways, other then temples they also were so intelligent when it came to astronamy and mathmatics! Like their number systems and the Mayan Calender!Too bad the Spanish took them out -.-

-Do the Inca count on this? Cause their civilizations were just as impressive. Not only that but they were also different then us, they lived in the Andes and their bodies adapted themselves to the thicker atmosphere and to help them walk through the terrain and stuff. Then there were their weird land marks which people thought aliens had made.
It sucks how most of the time we can only guess what these things meant. We need a time machine! ASAP

-Islamic Empire? :o
The Crusades, i wanted to watch that movie but i didn't cause i didn't know which version you wanted us to watch :\
Anyways, definately they made a great impact on history! The Crusades and all, fight for Jerusalem! All of their victories against other empires. Then from what we read today, how they used that astrolabe, their bookmaking, irrigation systems and development and usage in medicine and pharmecies!

-Byzantium, i really have nothing but i thought i should mention that in 8th grade, our teacher made us reanact a kind of Byzantine Bazaar. Where we restablished the trade network from Constantinople.
We would get assigned groups from different empires, China, Islam, etc. Then we'd start out with certain goods(which we made) and a limited amount of money. And for a whole school day we would just exchange and stuff!
We even had a type of lunch buffet thing? With food from a certain empire. It was really fun hehe

Sorry long post :\ I'm kind of bored lol

M@RI@H @RIEL! said...

Hey Mr. Parker it's Mariah! I was finally able to get a google account.Well i like your blog!

Well i think that that the mayans had a great impact on todays society because they created the calender and had their own writing system. Without the mayan calender probably no would have created another calender, then we would not have an organized sytem of the year,the days, and the nights! We would be so un organized that we probably wouldn't be able to schedule things. We had a big impact with the mayan calender that we created our own now.

The mayan hieroglyphs had an impact on todays society too! Because of their writing technique we were able to discover history of the mayans and of other civilizations!This helped us create new things that they created.Their writing system helped them pass on information through letters and so on!This is how we were able to discover more.

So i think this is why they mostlty had a huge impact on todays society!

Gabsters said...

Hi Parker,

Three of the ancient civilizations which I think were of great impact
and importance to the world were the Greeks, The Mayan, and the Phoenicians.

The Greeks because they were filled with mathematics philosophy, astronomy, and of course three of history's most famous philosophers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. In mathematics the had Pythagoras a mathematician and inventor who invented the concept of pie. The Greeks were the influence of Rome. In the modern English language we have many words and roots that derive from this civilization.

I guess I could speak simultaneously about T=the Phoenicians and the Mayans. Were would we be without them?
let see...The Phoenicians invented the alphabet!!!!
enough said...actually yes the Phoenicians invented the first true alphabet in the world and opened up the path of communication to other upcoming civilizations. Without the alphabet, form of communication would never have been the same.
Shout out to the Phoenicians! haha.

Oh yeah now the Mayans invented the calender that included the system of days and years...
It makes me wonder how the whole system of time and calenders and stuff would differ if this system had never been introduced by this smart civilization.


so yeah thats it....
and...and....more shout outs to all these civilizations!...YEAH!

x_melissa. said...

parker! what were the 8 question's for the homework????

i have no clue o.o

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

The Mayans definitely left a HUGE imprint on modern-day society. Having invented the only known written language in Mesoamerica, the Mayans had also developed sophisticated mathematical and astronomical systems...not to mention a calendar that predicts the end of the world in four years!!!! So basically the Mayans were pretty bombie...and they win hands down.
=)

Angeles said...

Well, Mr. Parker in my case the Greeks had one of the most important impacts on today's society because if you really come to think of it, with out all those Greek theorems, math concepts, as well as medicine advancements, today we might not have a white house with partial Greek design now would we? or what about medicine for other illnesses? okay, we probably would have figured it out (sooner or later) but I mean they discovered it for us. As a matter of fact many of their ideas are still held today. so that makes the Greek special people today.

stan said...

ei mr parkr..
considering Asia as the largest among all the continents i assume that the mongols who ruled over most of asia did most of the impact in our world.
Asia held a lot of intellects within it.
there was confucius which may not be important to everyone as it is important to the chinese. with confucius there was cunfucianism and more sub branches that would lead to hundreds of ideas
and that was just only confucianism, what about daoism and buddhism.
and again.. these are just the religion part.. wait til i get to the politcal ideas the chinese implimented.
in one of your discussions you taught us that the SUI dynasty invented the system of beaurocracy. beaurocracy.thats a big help, and it is still helping us.....now in the 21st century..imagine about 15 centuries!.. beaurocracy has been of use since the 5th cent and up to now..
there are a lot more contributions and importances that the mongols have.. and if i were to tell them it'd take me days.. hehe..
so,im concluding that the mongols were impressive even though as evry nation did.. they too, fell.

by th way..i saw an advertisement of a movie ..guess what.. its called mongols.. i dont know if it was already out and on dvd or it was still to come.. but it'd be cool if we watched it in class..thats all fr now
-stan

BeccaG said...

I believe that Islam was a very fascinating culture.
They managed to take over very many areas and maintain them for long periods of time.It was one of the few, or only, civilizations based solely on religion. They dominated trade and politics in the areas they conquered. Also, what was fascinating about the Muslims was the fact that they didn't force the conquered people to convert to their religion. However the people had to pay a tax if they did not convert and were not allowed to involved in politics.

Another fascinating culture to me were the Incas. They were able to dominate the Andes area and they were illiterate. I found this very fascinating about ALL the civilizations in America. The Mayans and Aztecs did have heiroglyphics though.

peace out parker <333
Becca