After you've read Part III: From Food to Guns, Germs, & Steel, identify one point or issue with which you agree, disagree, or about which you would like to learn more. Use the SVHS databases or the Internet to find out more.
Your comment to this post should include the author, title, source, link or database title, and a summary of the source. In your summary, please explain why you choice this particular topic for further exploration.
"yellow fever." World History: The Modern Era. ABC-CLIO
ReplyDeleteThis article is a very brief description of the yellow fever. It says how it originated and how it became one of the worst epidemics in world history. One thing that stood out in the article is the fact that the yellow fever originated in Africa, but the first outbreaks were reported in South America and Central America. It states that the disease actually started from the Spanish conquering parts of South America. This goes along perfectly with Jared Diamonds theory in Part Three of Guns Germs and Steel that epidemics come to be from foreign people interacting with natives and spreading the disease.
“Sequoyah: Planter of the Talking Leaves” by Gregory McNamee
ReplyDeleteNative People Magazine: MasterFILE Premier
In “Blueprints and Borrowed Letters,” chapter twelve of Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond provides examples of the spread of writing through “blueprint copying” and “idea diffusion.” When he discusses idea diffusion, he describes how Sequoyah, from the Cherokee tribe, managed to create a writing system for the Cherokees after seeing white men write. He created a syllabary using some English symbols and some of his own invention. I wanted to learn more about Sequoyah and his successful attempt to create his own writing system, especially in regards to the Cherokee acceptance of the idea. This magazine article details how Sequoyah first saw power in written documents or “talking leaves” and sought to write as well. Using an English book that he could not understand, he reasoned that each symbol stood for one word but later figured that each must stand for one sound. Then, he started creating his system and assigning each symbol a unique sound. However, while Sequoyah worked on this, many of his people felt that he wanted to mimic white men, was insane, or practiced witchcraft. In fact, his wife burnt some of his early writings, believing that writing belonged to the devil. Finally, once he completed his system, many people immediately saw the benefit and adopted it. The Cherokee people quickly boasted a higher literacy rate than many whites. Others in his tribe, however, still spurned the new form of writing and left Cherokee territory for Texas. From this article, I learned that most the Cherokees initially wanted nothing to do with writing, but eventually embraced his writing system after its completion.
In Chapter 13, Necessity’s Mother, of Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond dedicates the introduction to details about the archaeological discovery of the Phaistos Disk. This is an ancient piece of early writing that depicts symbols in a circular pattern etched into a clay disk. It was found on the island of Crete in 1908, but its purpose and translation have never been identified. Since Diamond’s book was written in the late 1990s, I wanted to find out if any recent studies had uncovered additional information or history. While conducting research, I came across an article published on March 22, 2014, that does not answer all of the questions regarding the Phaistos Disk, but does offer unique insight into its possible meanings. Michael Goormachtigh wrote the article “Phaistos Disk and its meaning: a new approach” http://www.proto-english.org/phaistos.pdf which states that all of its symbols have very specific and useful meanings. He concludes that the disk does not signify religious or abstract text but that each picture represents a real life item. Since they are divided into sections on the disk, he asserts that they are a set of objects belonging to the same place. Goormachtigh believes that since it is made of clay and not silver or gold, which would indicate a religious artifact, the disk is most likely a map or guide that was used by tax collectors in Crete. His study concludes that since the king needed to collect various things as taxes, this disk was a depiction of what he expected from the villages. Each section showed the symbols that each community owed to the palace. In addition, he suggested that each side of the disk describes one half of Crete and that one can be read clockwise and the other counter-clockwise. He believes that many of these disks were made and could be used repeatedly by different tax collectors. Since the symbols were always the same, the tax revenue should remain consistent, preventing corruption among the collectors. Although we may never know what the Phaistos Disk stood for, this is a plausible explanation of an ancient artifact that has intrigued many historians.
ReplyDeleteFayu http://indonesianpeoples.com/fayu/
ReplyDeleteThis article discusses the social behaviors of the Fayu people. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond describes the violent killing behaviors of the Fayu, and I wanted to know if the advent of civilized people to the region affected this violent behavior. The article states that civilized men brought Christianity to the Fayu people and this has changed their culture dramatically. Christianity pushed the Fayu to strive for peace and forgiveness and stop the constant killing. Before the advent of Christianity, Fayu marriage would involve the chief would kill the protector of the bride, but this has stopped after Christianity came to them. It was common to wound or kill women with arrows when they do not obey their husbands, but with the advent of Christianity, the problem is now resolved with an exchange of goods. With the advent of Christianity, the population of the Fayu people has increased dramatically and the murders have decreased. In summary, the advent of civilized culture, especially Christianity, into the Fayu people has slowed the murders and increased the population.
Source Information:
ReplyDelete“Spelling and Standardization in English: Historical Overview,” an essay by Professor Suzanne Kemmer
Link: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Histengl/spelling.html
In Chapter 12: Blueprints and Borrowed Letters, Diamond discusses the origin, philosophy, spread, and evolution of writing. He covers a variety of diverse subtopics, but one idea that I found particularly interesting was the inception and evolution of alphabets and spellings. I wanted to learn how these principles applied to English throughout its history. I chose this important topic because English is our own language and one of the most spoken in the world, and I felt curious about its particular origins and development.
After researching, I found the lengthy informative essay “Spelling and Standardization in English: Historical Overview,” by Professor Suzanne Kemmer. In summary, the piece informs that English originated from the Anglo-Saxon alphabet, which was derived from the Roman alphabet. The Anglo-Saxons created new letters to account for sounds that were not present in Roman phonetics. There was a lot of inconsistency in “Old English” due to many factors such as dialects and foreign influence. This latter idea of external influence references and coincides with Diamond’s description of “blueprint copying” – the spread of writing from one region to another by direct imitation. Furthermore, the essay reveals that early English people had much difficulty “coding” and “decoding” messages – that is, changing words from spoken to written and from written to spoken – because this skill set is “not an obvious or natural one for humans.” Finally, Kemmer details how printing, schooling, and dictionaries affected the language and its spelling.
In short, Kemmer’s essay relates to Diamond’s discussion in Part 3 about the development of writing. Particularly, the article helped me learn more regarding the evolution of written English. The piece explains that spelling was inconsistent and literacy was difficult for early writers. This shows that it was a complicated ordeal for people to alter the language to meet their needs and to develop literacy through the unnatural skills of reading and writing. To compare the two compositions, in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond focuses more on very early writing and how different societies came to possess this technology, while Kemmer on the other hand focuses on English after its adoption and its changes throughout history. Overall, the article supports Diamond’s claims and taught me the many factors that caused the complicated, lengthy transition of English from the Roman alphabet to its standardized language today.
“The Wonder Workers” by Robert Peterson
ReplyDeleteDatabase: MasterFILE Main Edition
Original Publication: Boys’ Life, Aug. 1995, Vol. 85, Issue 8: 28-31
In Chapter Thirteen, “Necessity’s Mother,” Diamond reverses the common statement that “necessity is the mother of invention,” meaning that inventors create things to fulfill needs. Diamond says that most inventions, in fact, start as a result of tinkering around and then trying to find a purpose for them, such as with Edison’s phonograph and the motor vehicle. Additionally, he challenges the commonplace view that a single inventor is responsible for a single item, such as with James Watt and the steam engine. Instead, Diamond says that “the hero customarily credited with the invention followed previous inventors who had had similar aims and had already produced designs, working models, or ... commercially successful models” (242-45). Although Diamond touches on many great modern inventions while explaining this, he does not mention the modern computer (except by mentioning the QWERTY keyboard), and I was curious if the computer followed a similar pattern as these other inventions.
Upon looking further into this, I found an article titled “The Wonder Workers” by Robert Peterson. This article details the history of the modern computer and the men who made them. The article begins with Charles Babbage, who, in the 1830s, designed what he called an “analytical engine,” which, if built, would have been the size of a locomotive and able to store a thousand 50-digit numbers. The article then jumps over a hundred years to Howard Aiken, who, in 1944, built “the first working digital binary computer,” known as the Mark I. This had the practical application of working out complex equations to aim guns for the U.S. Navy. Computers continued to evolve over the next few decades, but they were confined to professional, practical use until 1972, when Nolan Bushnell introduced the video game Pong with his company Atari, Inc. These games were much smaller and used electronic circuitry, unlike Aiken’s Mark I. The personal computer was conceptualized by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976, and they began selling the Apple II in 1977, which was a massive success. This computer was the very first version of the sleek Macintosh computers that many people have today. The article ends with Bill Gates, who, in 1975, developed computer languages, operating systems, and software programs through his company Microsoft.
This long chain of inventors correlates with what Diamond explained in his book about the history of inventions. Instead of one person developing the computer, the popular invention was the result of each inventor building on what came before them, all the way from Babbage’s clunky analytical engine to Gates’s modern operating system. This article greatly supports Diamond’s theory of the evolution of inventions.
“Coding in N.J. classrooms: ‘Language’ of computer science grows as life-skill”
ReplyDeleteby: Susan Bloom
http://www.nj.com/inside-jersey/index.ssf/2014/08/coding_in_nj_classrooms_language_of_computer_science_grows_as_life-skill.html
In chapter 12, "blueprints and borrowed letters", Friedman discusses the power that writing can give when it comes to knowledge and communication. This chapter describes three strategies for writing systems: the alphabet, logograms, and termed syllabaries. After reading, I found myself wanting to learn more about new languages.
This article by Susan Bloom explores the new ‘language’ of the world: coding. In this world full of technology, code is how almost everything works, “from computers to phones, coffee pots, cars and electronics. Anything driven by a computer mechanism requires code”. The article explains how coding is starting to be introduced to schools so that students can prepare for the future and the careers of tomorrow. More jobs are coming to rely on computer technology and coding techniques.
This article helped me understand the new ‘language’ of coding that is becoming a huge factor in the world’s business platform. This relates back to Friedman’s discussion on the creation of new languages.
"Conquest-Syphilis"
ReplyDeleteBy: Unknown
http://historyanddisease.tripod.com/exchange/id11.html
In chapter 11 Diamond says that almost all germs in the Columbian exchange went from Europe to the new world, with the possible exception of syphilis. I wanted to know why it was a possibility, and not a clear certainty. It turns out that a less dangerous strain of the disease did exist in Asia and Africa, but it was not easily recognizable and the new strain brought from the west was far more dangerous.
Why are the keys arranged the way they are on a QWERTY keyboard?
ReplyDeleteBy Unknown
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question458.htm
In chapter 13, Diamond says that the QWERTY keyboard was invented to slow down typists, and to keep them from jamming their typewriter. I wanted to know why America hasn't switched to a more efficient keyboard to type with. As it turns out, there is a more effective keyboard called the Dvorak keyboard. On the Dvorak keyboard vowels and consonants are placed on opposite sides of the keyboard, making it supposedly easier to type with. However when tests were ran the person typing with a QWERTY keyboard typed at about the same time as a person using the Dvorak keyboard. This source agrees with Diamond about the QWERTY keyboard being an anti invention of sorts and helped me learn more about the topic.