Mountain Sickness Article Summary

The dream of achieving the extreme  has always appeal to the human race. But extremes are things such as flying, bungee jumping and most importantly summiting large mountains like Everest.
Like any type of extreme summiting mountains do have their set backs. Dangerous things like losing amounts of oxygen, frost bite and "mountain sickness".

The earliest known written account was taken in the first few decades of the first century A.D. The account was written by a general in the time of Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty. The general wrote about the sever headaches that people experienced. In this time people were not lured to mountain climbing because of the thrill but because of military campaigns and most importantly hunting and trade.

During the years of 602-664 A.D, the worlds "first mountaineer" Xang Zang, wrote of his travels to the high mountains. Dr.Houston uncovered these writing and found and outstanding remarks. Intrestingly enough Xang Zang referred to the cold, harsh weather and mountain sickness as a fierce dragon. Because of this belief people were advised never to wear red garments and if these rules were in the slightest way violated, disaster would happen.

In more recent times, a spanish Jesuit priest(Jose de Costa) in Peru during1590, wrote of the ill effects that he observed to his companions in a high mountain pass in the Andes. He wrote of the harsh coughing and the green and yellow mucus that was spit up along with blood.

Later on 1850 the "full swing of flying was in act". This lead to ballooning. In 1862 a hot air balloon manned by Sir James Glaisher and a companion flew about to the highest mountain in the world, Mt. Everest. The written account by Glaisher describes in detail about his experience, up until the point where he became unconscious. He wrote about how his arms started to feel heavy and unable to move and his world was spinning.

In 1875 humans realized that the higher altitude the harder it is to breath. So people started to test their capabilities. One of these tests included people testing their abilities to withstand higher altitude.

In 1891 what I believe as a breakthrough arose. On september 2, 1891 author Dr. Houston wrote about a tragic day in the Mont Blanc Mts. "a young French physician lay desperately ill high on Mont Blanc. He had hurried up from the village of Chamonix to help build a new observatory. The next day he climbed to the summit(4,800 meters), and within 24 -hours wrote to his brother that, due to mountain sickness, he had never passed so terrible night. He died three days after arrival, a victim of altitude, and was called 'a martyr to science.' His is the first well-documented case of high altitude pulmonary edema" 

"Faceless" Indus Valley Article Summary

 Almost a century ago in 1921 the Indus Valley civilization was found revealing 2 very important cities, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro.

Mohenjo-Daro along with Harappa show obvious signs of a well planned city. The streets are made of street grids also these cities have clay drainage systems. What archaeologist are trying to discover is the puzzling question who lived in these systems. Who had this type of sophisticated life.

Mohenjo-Daro is also known as the faceless city. Nothing in Mohenjo-Daro gives archaeologists clues or any type of information of the religion or how government. No plalaces, temples or monuments have been found neither any evidence or a monarchy without monarchy Mohenjo- Daro was most likely governed as a city state.   Pottery and tools were standardized, signs of trade are apparent, seals and weights have been dug up from the mysterious city.

Mohenjo-Daro is mostly made of mounds, a Great Bathing place is the tallest mound and probably the closest thing to a temple for Mohenjo-Daro. Archaeologist, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer from the University of Wisconsin , Madison,  also a National Geographic grantee, states that "the mounds grew organically over the centuries as people kept building platforms and walls for their houses." One of the great artifacts that made the archaeologists of the excavation jump with joy is a small bronze nude female statue(the dancing girl discovered in 1926. What amazed Kenoyer even more were a few stone male sculptures with men seated. One man seated is named the Priest Kind even though no evidence has been found of a priest or king.

Archaeologist are clueless to what ended these thriving civilization. There is no evidence that yearly flooding destroyed the city and was it already abandoned by the time the city was destroyed.

Enheduana of Sumer from Outrageous Women of Ancient Times

Leon, Vicki. "Enheduana of Sumer." Outrageous Women of Ancient Times: 49-53. Print.

4,300 years ago lived beautiful Enheduana, the daughter of the greatest of all Akkadian kings, Sargon.

 Sargon ruled from 2334-2279 B.C. Enheduana had two twin brother Rimush and Manishtusu, all four lived in a new palace in the city-state of Akkad in Sumer(Where Bagdad is today). Sargon was the son of a family and farmers, but he had drive and talent to be king. He started out as a cup bearer and went to the top to be king. Enheduana, much like her father(Sargon) she had drive and talent much like her father and unlike like her brothers, since her brothers did not have the talent Sargon assigned her as high priestess of Nanna giving her the ability as royalty to learn how to write and read. 

Enheduana to lots of pride in her writing, she had written a set of 42 poems and other stories and writings. She put a lot of her religious beliefs into her writings. Enheduana didn't write on paper like we do today instead she wrote on clay tablets. She was also the only known writer to include her own name in her writings. Enheduana was the bestseller of her time, when i say best seller i don't mean people bought her writings. In this time writings weren't bought they were just copied down. Archaeologist now this because they had found over 50 copied writings of hers by other writers.  Her writings were special because they gave us a lot of information of her time period and herself. 

After her father died her brother Rimishu went into power and then her other brother Midishu. Both brothers were very ignorant and loved bloodshed so they were killed by enemies who had a lot of hatred for them. Since the two were dead a nephew of Enheduana came into power, the evil nephew kicked Enheduana out of her potion and awarded it to his own daughter and possibly threw Enheduana to the treacherous desert. Enheduana in the end in my opinion won the fight between her and him, because nobody remembers her bull headed nephew while Enheduana will be remembered for centuries due to her amazing writings.

Reflection on Cuneiform

Reflection on Cuneiform Writing Activity:

When we had first started the activity thought that writing cuneiform would be a piece of cake, i was wrong. Cuneiform for me at least was a bit difficult to write , especially getting the shapes and length of the triangles write. Like the English language the shape of the letter can change what people interpret the letter to be, so the shape obviously matters to get your message across. One thing that interested me is that all of the letters are arrangements of triangles unlike our language, all of the letters are different shapes so it is easy distinguish when there is a new word.

The Cuneiform triangles pointed in different directions ,were different lengths and sometimes were the same length and direction but just had a different amount of triangles symbolizing a different letter. For example a and n. A was 2 small triangles pointing to the right  like this >> except with ends to each of the triangles while N was 3 small triangles like this >>>. The same triangles just 1 more in the letter N symbolizing totally different letters. I paired up with Alex L. to switch our writings. Cuneiform is extremely confusing to read because of the shapes. Alex had written in cuneiform “ Sumerians created these weird symbols”, I didn't even get close i came up with “ Sumerians creater the je symbols”. It was very challenging some of the triangles were perceived to be pointing one way but actually they were pointing the other or there were supposed to be 2 triangles but it looked like one large one.

Hammurabi's Babylonia From the Babylonians By Elaine Landau

Landau, Elaine. "Hammurabi's Babylonia." The Babylonians: 39-44. Print. 

Hammurabi was the sixth king of the Mesopotamian city state of Babylonia from 

1792 B.C- 1750 B.C. Hamurrabi became the first king of the Babylonian empire when

the first Babylonian  empire evolved. Hammurrabi is known for his creation of the

"Legal Code". This code is simply a bunch of laws that the Babylonians had to 

follow. The complete "Legal code had 280

sections that consisted of laws for herdsmen, farm laborers, stealing or 

destroying property and rates for renting boats, wagons or a farm animal. 

Some sections of the legal code had laws covering marriage, divorce, adoption, 

inheritance and assault.

Other parts were about treatment and sale of slaves as well as unsatisfactory 

services. 

When i read through some of the laws that the article had exemplified I noticed 

that if something was done wrong or poorly someone would have to pay for their 

actions by being assaulted, meaning that they were punished with death of them or

their children, a broken limb, torture, or even a loss of an eye or ear. But in 

contrast I found some of the rules very reasonable and fair.

For example If a flood or drought occurs resulting in crop failure, and someone 

is unable to pay interest debt, he is excused of having to pay that years interest

debt that year. I thought this was very reasonable and fair because a natural 

disaster is not the persons fault and there is nothing he can do about this. So I 

am totally in favor of this law. Another example is that if two people engage in 

a fair fight and one is injured the other who cause the injury may have to pay for 

medical treatment but the one causing the injury cannot be punished any further 

for causing the injury. This is such a smart and fair rule, each one has to 

serve their payment for fighting.

A example for unfair laws is that if someone is helping to steal something from a 

premises that individual may be thrown into the fire. I think this is a little to

harsh but i totally agree that if you caused a crime or help cause a crime you 

should be punished for your doing but i do not think it should result in death. 

I believe that they should only be locked up or do extra work or any other punish

ment that doesn't kill them or intentionally hurt them like cutting body part or 

others. Many of the laws result in an intentional injury or death, most of these 

I disagree with but some do make sense. In cases where a person committed murder 

of higher arc hey i do believe death should be the penalty. 

One rule that i really like is that the women had some right for example is that 

women were allowed to have their own property and their own money. This is nothing

compared to what we have now but back then I believe that this is great privilege

for women.

All in all I think that Hammurabi's legal code does have some fantastic and fair

rules and some that  truly dislike and do not favor in. 

Blog post: Beginnings of Civilization

The wakanari tribe was just waking up to a orange sky next to a shining blue river, and their families houses. Everyone walked out and streched and the hard working day started. Eveyone had their own special job that thwy were good at either, Farming, being an artisan, building trenches connecting a small canal of water to each trench where the plants were harvested or being a local trader/ the person who sold goods.Of course there was also a tribe leader.

As the only goods seller walked through the arrangements of wood houses, he walked wit his head high and flattening the green grass everywhere. 
Everyone loved this goods trader he was always nice and worked hard. After a minutes of walking he reached his wood shack where his goods were. He sold all types of things, fresh meat, already prepared grain pancakes, berries and the most special thing which was unique about his goods is that he had the only figs in the land. Nobody knew where he had gotten these and he intended to keep it this way or else he will not have the wealth that he had if he wasn't special. His meat was held by a thin line of bronze metal that had one end in the sticks and the other was sharp to put through the meat and then put in the mud so that the meat hung. Today was that he would have to go and get figs, everyone from his city and other villages and cities had devoured all of them in two day, 50 figs in 2 day!!

As he started to leave he knew people would look at him and try to follow him to be able to be a seller like him so each time he would go he would fake that he was either going to go hunting or go buy berries from other seller from different villages or cities or even go to bathe in the river. But really a while away from his city there is a place on the river where a huge tree lay where he would cross, so he went on his way and always looked out for other people. He hopped on the tree and held tight with legs and arms and crawled up the tree, as he looked down he looked at the calm water of the sparkling water watching his reflection. His black hair with pieces of tree added on to look tough. His sympathetic face with a little bit of dirt on his flickering eye lashes. When he got to the end of the tree he rolled off onto leaves and dark green grass surrounded by a thick forest or pine trees ad berry trees. This was where he got some of his berries when the others much closer to his village were rotten. The fig trees were much further into the fores, almost completely hidden fro any person. Finally after a 20 minute walk he reached the fig trees. All the trees were big filled with thousands of ripe figs filled with delicious fruit juice  just waiting to be picked. He twirled around, and all over were thousands of figs, a fig paradise. The sun shined perfectly on each of the figs making them almost sparkle as bright as his big green eyes. He ran up to the biggest tree and filled his deer skin bag with 100 figs. Then he plopped him and his bag filled with treasures under the tree and leaned his back against the tree and rested his head against the moist tree bark. He reached hs hairy arms up and grabbed a fig and bit into it. At the moment he felt relaxed and relieved. That fig recharged his whole body but nobody can just have one fig when their that good so he reached up a couple more times.

When he was totally recharged he headed home. After the long run and walk home he came to the town he made sure his sack was closed so that nobody could know about the figs because even though he was going to sell them they knew what direction he went. He walked up to his shack and secretly put all the figs in a bowl. When nobody was looking he put the figs on the shack top to make it look like they were there the whole time.

Article Summary: From Grunt To Grammar

Miller, Jeanne. 

"From Grunts To Grammar: The Evolution of Language."  

Odyssey, Adventures In Science 

Oct. 2009: 34-36. Print. 

Current scientists from different fields of science try to answer this puzzling question" When did human learn to use talk with actual language?" There is a couple possible ways we could get a small idea of how. First we would have to determine when the human body was ready, meaning when did the brain become complex/smart enough and when was the voice box ready. 

 Some evidence found in the cavities of Homo Habilis's brain suggests that the brain evolved in speech. This gave scientist the theory that small parts of speech evolved 2 and 1/2 million year ago.

As speech evolved over  the years the Larnyx also known as the voice box (it is what makes the sounds)for mammals started to descend down the throat and to diconnect from the nasal cavity. Before this change the Larnyx sat high in the throat and connects to the nasal cavities allowing us to breathe and swallow at the same time. After this change for the genus homo that lived 1 1/2 years ago changed the way they breathed, swallowed and made sounds. 

As many of you know we don't breath through  our nose as much as we breath through our mouth. Scientists believe that we changed from breathing through our nose to our mouth more because it helped us let more air in while chasing game and let us run longer distances. Ever wonder why or how our brains grew? Well scientist believe that what we eat/ our diets is what make brains grow. Of course not in a week but over a couple if years.

Our ancestors must have used some type communication, if they didn't how would they be able to tell each other that there are predators around, where they had to go during a journey and teaching each other  how to make things just like we do. Our ancestors possibly communicated with  language, speech and sign language. Sign language such as gestures. One thing that I found interesting is that maybe they didn't communicate at all with real languages (English), well just until later. Maybe they really didn't need language, they had big enough brains to see and copy things like a parrot. They could have just looked what others were doing to learn. We see people everyday wearing clothes that we don't have and things that we don't do, but we don't always have to talk to them to wear and do what they do we could just look at them.