Written Assignment 2: Due on email by Sunday,
6 pm, January 20. In a way, what we are reading in Christian is
a new "scientific" creation story. After you have begun reading
his book, read the following three "creation stories". Which of these, including Christian's, is
most likely? Why? We will see in other societies that we
study in this course that almost every group of people has developed its own
"creation story."
There is an interesting article from the New York Times of January 5, 1999, on new discoveries about the "flood."
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.My own web site on materials on çatal höyuk
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.