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.

Taming Fire, The First Scientist?

Beth, Mary. "Taming Fire, The First Scientist?"  

Odyssey: Adventures In Science Oct. 2009: 29-30. 

Print. 

Prehistoric people, our ancestors,created our living styles we just changed a few things as our brains

 became larger.

Wildfires are a cause of animals and prehistoric peoples migration. Wild fires would force

 the animals to migrate or just get out of the way. But these fires did help the prehistoric people in one way.

 The animals that couldn't get out of the way in time burned which left a delicious but burnt meal for prehistoric people. 

Since fires are such a scare to prehistoric man you would never think that they would make and use fires them

 selves, not wild fires though.

Humans have used fire for 250,000 years, we would know this because scientist have found hearths or remains 

of hearths. This is evidence that prehistoric people used fire intentionally. Hearths are used to contain a fire, to stop it

 from spreading these are usually in stone shaped circles. 

The hearths are also evidence that the fires weren't wild fires because hearth fires allow artifacts like bones to be closely analyzed for chemical changes because of the higher temperatures. From the analysis from the chemicals in the bones we can get a few hints that the first use was by humans more than 1,000,000 years ago.
More evidence that we used fire in different ways was discovered in the Swartlands in South Africa. Remains of prehistoric animals bones that were burnt. 

This could suggest that they learn't to cook their meat. But it is also a possibility that they did not make the fire themselves. I came to the suggestion that maybe the prehistoric people didn't light a fire or cook the animal at the time they simply dragged the animal back to the cave from the wildfire.
But fire to our ancestors was very important fire could give them
Cooked food which make it taste better
 
Killed parasites
 
Kept them warm throughout cold weather
 
provided light 
 
Kept predators away
 
And lastly made migrating from cold to warm weathers possibly for prehistoric people

Have you ever wondered how we primates came to walk on 2 legs?

 Anthropologists are among the people that can answer
this controversial question on Human evolution.
 Primates such as chimps, are not our ancestors
but they do share an ancestor in common with us,Australopithecus Afarensis,
that lived six million years ago.

 Primates have a few things in common, and many differences most notably those involving our skulls. Our face is pretty flat while chimp's stick far out.  The biggest difference between Australopithecus Afarensis "Lucy", us and Chimps is the Foramen magnum, the hole at the back of the skull that the spinal cord fits into. Our Foramen magnum is at the bottom of our skull at the back, and our spinal cord fits in horizontally,  if we are standing up it would obviously be vertical. This is what allows us to walk on two feet. Similarly the Foramen Magnum of "Lucy" is also placed at the bottom of the skull and the spinal cord is horizontal. This similarity is evidence that "Lucy" walked bipedally like us. In contrast, the chimp's Foramen Magnum is "Angled backwards and downwards," suggesting that they walked on all fours.

The fact that bipedal creatures with roughly bigger brains than chimpanzees walked the earth only 2 million years ago, that were before humans ever evolved shocked scientist all over the world.

Many theories proposed why creatures preferred to walk biped ally. One argues that it is to free their hands to create stone tools. Interestingly stone tools only appeared in the fossil record after the creation of bipedal walking. C.Owen Lovejoy a scientist at Kent State University believes that we started walking bipedally so that our hands are free to get food for the other members of the group. Thus making a parent of young to give more attention to her children. I think this is a very reasonable theory but sadly scientist don't, they have rejected his theory because they believe that there is no specific evidence. Another belief is that we started walking bipedally to cross and swim streams or even seas.