Sam_N

Primary Source- Japanese industrialization swords. When Mathew Perry first made his way into Japan, he brought more with him than just a flag and a treaty, he brought Industrialization. This frantic industrialization Japan went through led to incredible economic and political changes. But more than anything else the culture changed in this are. The once traditional and prestigious land was changing into rapid westernized land. The tradition dies off in the port cities but the samurai of the inner land remained true to their ancestors. Their perfection and discipline in the ways of battle led to revolutions and opposition to the westernizing powers. The perfection that went into the sword of the samurai makes them still world renowned today. The craftsmanship of the samurai sword is still un-comparable to most other swords. Harsh laboring over a coal stove with repetitive beating of a piece of metal gave birth to the most renowned fighting machine in Japanese history. Precision cutting and balance proved itself superior to their opponents swords. The new westernized swords and customs brought from America were not as well crafted as the Katana. With more decorative properties than battle properties, the long sword was still cheaper in resources and labor, thus effective in numbers, not in skill. These swords show us that the spread of culture into Japan from America was not always proven effective. The influx of ideas and goods coming into Japan was definitely for its better, but when it came to battle swords, the culture spread into Japan was still inferior to what was already their. The Crafting of both of these swords in incredibly different. Yes the blacksmith would pound his hammer against mettle, but how the Katana was built was a refined art for many centuries. The repetitive folding of steel was proven to increase sharpness, sturdiness, and accuracy and swiftness. Where as the opponent, the long sword, was more commercialized at the time and the same care was not there when building these battle tools. How the making of either weapon went about tells us a lot about the culture in these areas. The Katana was praised when being built and lavishly refined to make something that the Japanese truly appreciated and cared for. The time and effort that went into these swords carried on generations of legacy and tradition. Whereas the long sword was strictly a killing machine. The grace and beauty that went behind it was not there, but the effectiveness did somewhat rival its opponent. Although the power lies in the hands of the one using the sword, the Katana was still a superior weapon in culture and in capability.

Primary source- Tokugawa free time activities. The reason I chose to do instruments from this time period is because in my opinion, the Tokugawa time period was an all time high from most of Japan. I mean the usually oppressed class of peasants now becoming somewhat nobility?! That's insane! Instruments from this time period I also feel hugely contribute to this idea of some freedom in the lower class ranks. Normally Instruments represent wealth and comfort in life. And the peasant class in this time period hugely changed this idea of social ranks in my opinion. To compare, The Renaissance period was hugely effected with things like painting, music and fun time activities. That is because, as well is this true for the Tokugawa period, when you aren't warring over land ad constantly having to pay money into the military, excess money flows into the life of people. The people use this money to increase their ways of life. Music is a sign of comfort. Usually there isn't music present in an oppressed society for the fact that the people have more to worry about then songs. And when these peasants made these instruments or took the ideas from high classes, it shows their comfort in life. I also think its hard to ignore the fact that and abundance of free time activities in a peasant culture shows how unstable the whole 'social structure ' is. Cooking also shows the wealth in a class. The cooking with spices in Tokugawa shows that they have the money to get imports from other parts of either japan or further away areas. And overall the Wealth of the peasant class allows flexibility in a comfortable life style. So what do these thinks show us as a primary source ? When ever activities arise such as sports or cooking or music arise, it tells us that the people partaking are happy, surplus in time, people.This time period I think really shows the ability of a class of people, poor or rich, to change their style of life into something they actually want.



Something I founds really interesting. After talking about art in class and making my extra credit projects I found this really fun to look at- []

School of Athens Aristotle(right). Why chose Aristotle is fairly simple, because he is histories most brilliant philosopher, in my opinion. His Metaphysics and ideas are incomparable to anyone. His look on life was very interesting. Diving deep into the questions of why, completely breaking down any and every subject into simple concepts. It is extremely clear why the painter chose him to be in this picture. He is brilliant in wide variety of subjects along with his Greek decent makes him perfect for this concept of a Renaissance Man. Like textbook example Someone I thought should have been in this painting was shakyamuni, Original founder of Buddhism. Because of this renaissance view of rebirth through old thoughts I think this is perfect. Because this individual was so influential and had a lot of great quality's such as peace and will to spread good, its only fair for him to be in the painting. All the people in the picture are universally talented and there is no hesitation of anyone not being a good person for what they did. I just like the idea of a good religion being spread peacefully through land for the cause of greater good. Because religion sprouts new beliefs and salvation, like Buddhism, I think someone who created that should be in the school of Athens Primary Source #2- A true technological break through for ancient times and something so influential that we still, today, hold power to, The Mayan Calender. These calenders showed a system of tracking and recording time. So not only putting intangible to a tangible form but also showing an advanced civilization through a system of simple carvings. Not only did these calenders track the year but also longer periods of time. The calenders where sectioned into groups of 260day tablets and longer durations called The Long Count Tablets. What this tells us is that when we look back on the mayans we see very advanced ways of thought. Asking the bigger questions and expanding, as a civilizations, through new ideas and thoughts. The main thing that these calenders showed us, looking back on them, is that not only did this group of people understand the importance of recording things but mainly they understood that there where reoccurring events, eventually leading to the concept of continuum. Most of these calenders where based off of reoccurring events such as eclipses or floods. I personally feel that we look down on these places as being inferior or less complicated(in comparison to modern times), and in a sense we are right, but mostly wrong. The thought of harnessing electricity and using it to power handheld devices is unimaginable to them, of course, but in their respected period of time. The only reason we see these things and are unimpressed is because of the previous knowledge we where fortunate enough to have. But Im going to make an argument, This time period of the Mayans where much smarter than us. Think about the amount of knowledge that they had prior to the great things that that accomplished, things such as simple simple math and concepts of science. And yet they can track reoccurring events and make sense out of things that others thought to be unworldly. It would be equivalent in modern times of something to the magnitude of using math and science to prove gods or myths to be fake or abstract. So prior knowledge is the only thing that gives us what we have today. Are new inventions or break through really new or crazy? Things such as the cure for polio or the plague truly are incredible but science break through make new knowledge from prior knowledge. So I leave you with this question- If we take our whole world and place it back into these Mayan times, with stripped knowledge and nothing to take back into this time, could we do what the Mayans did? Could we make sense of things through simple science or reasoning without the knowledge that we have been given? and how do you think our world would be different today? Great Q's. -SW

Sam, I read your piece yesterday, and have had a whole 24 hours to think about your questions, and today I came to an answer (to the few of them that I did think extensively about). Now, since I am a natural optimist, it may sway my view, but personally, I think we have glimpses today of what the Mayans did back in their time. In times of stress and constraints, humans have seen - one example, off of the top of my head, being in Apollo 13, I believe - when engineers were, in a matter of seconds, given a task with a restricted amount of materials that seemed quite impossible. I find, however, that it in the seemingly "darkest" part of life, humans find the ingenuity to help their way out of it, as they have done countless times and did so in that situation. So, in application of that to your question: Looking at today's world, we have lots of options with our time, and the fact that we have most of our physical and safety needs taken care of, we don't worry about things other than what show on Netflix to watch. The options we have to day are simply confounding, in almost every way imaginable. It wouldn't seem very likely, then, that we would be able to compete with people like the Mayans, who seemed to have it together. However, I believe that if we were in fact stripped of all prior knowledge and the luxuries in our life, and dropped back into the Mayan times by some probably incredibly awesome time warp, I think that we would quickly adapt to our situation, and somehow, within those "dark times" amid the struggles for food and survival, we would find the ingenuity, like the Mayans, to explain the world around us in order to survive, since that is the basic instinct in every human, or so it is said.

At least, that's what I would hope. ~ Marisa Gonzalez-Mabbutt

Primary Source- What I chose for my artifact was something I truly found to be incredibly interesting.

This is the paper of ancient times. These clay tablets ranged in information from shopping lists to epic stories, said to be written in up to 12 languages. Perhaps one of the most famous stories was written on these clay tablets, The Epic of Gilgamesh. It goes to show how these ancient people improvised communication with very little given previous information. Its funny to think what we, as a modern civilization, would be like if we where put in their situation. We only know what we know because of previous information passed onto us. They made these from firing earth combined substances then wedged their information into them.

Coruvs

The corvus was an ancient roman battle device used in aqua warfare. This was a bridge like structure that was used to connect two ships and change the marine warfare into land warfare. The Romans would cross this structure and board the eminy ship and eliminate the defenders This was first used in the first Punic war against Carthage. Its interesting to see how the Romans solved this problem of not being very effective at naval war.