Written Assignment 2: Due on email by Sunday,
6 pm, January 22. In a way, what we are reading in Diamond is
a new "scientific" creation story. After you have begun reading
his book, read the following three
"creation stories". Which of these, including Diamond's, is
most likely? Why? We will see in other societies that we
study in this course that almost every society has developed its own
"creation story."
There is no class Thursday, January 19, this week.
There is an interesting article from the New York Times of January 5, 1999, on new discoveries about the "flood."
Throughout the textbook, the authors provide "primary sources" or fragments of such sources. We'll spend a good deal of time in this class with "primary" as well as "secondary" sources, and it will be important to know the difference and why each are important. I'll give some questions for you to think about as you read the primary ones in the text. For this week, click on Week 2 Primary Source Questions.
Click on this map to see a good visualization of the origins of agriculture - taken from the textbook.
Another viewpoint, in the news in this country recently, is that of "intelligent design" - as an opposing view to "evolution." One version of this view is presented by Stephen Meyer, Director of the "Discovery Institute" in Seattle, Washington.
We will go over this in class, but you might like to check it out and explore this very interesting web site produced by the archaeologists who are working at çatal höyũk.
I provide here a chart on which you can put information for comparative purposes - comparisons between the different "civilizations" we'll be studying this semester. I'll put the chart on each week's web page; and we'll fill in some of the most important information that we identify in class each week.
Here is an example of your responses for week 2 which I thought was especially "thought-provoking". I'm not expecting that everyone model their own after this one, but did think that it is worth reading and thinking about!