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Notes on Papua New Guniea

- 53.7% of the population can read and write

             - 63.4% of males can read and write

             - 50.9% of females can read and write

- 1/3 of population is living on less than $1 a day

- 125,000 Internet users (152 comparison to the world)

- 37% is below the poverty line

- GDP growth is 8.9

- around 860 different languages

- 130,000 main telephone lines in use

- 2.4 million people use a cellular device

- 1.4% of GDP goes to their military

- unemployment rate is 1.9%

- 562 airports, only about 20 are paid
- Modern part of New Guinea is like a city, is developing (away from people in the Highlands)
- 12th fastest growing economy in the world
- Birth rate is 25.92 births/1,000 population
- GDP per capita is $2,500
- TFR is 3.39
- NMR is 0, just as many people coming as there are leaving
- 13% of the population is urban
- rate of urbanization is 2.9%
- export $6.791 billion
- import $4.07 billion
- English is spoken by 1% - 2% of people
- 2 TV stations and 1 radio station in the entire country

My Participation Grade for the Semester

Well I'm just going to start out saying how sad I am that the semester is coming to an end, especially because I am going to Mr. Powell's class! I am going to miss Mr. Schick and my class so much! Okay before I start getting too emotional let me tell you what participation grade I would give myself. I would give myself probably a 95 - 99 because I participate a lot and involve myself in the class. I ask a lot of questions and I try to be on my best behavior, although sometimes I know I can get a little out of hand. I always try to do my best and I want to learn and be involved and interested with whats going on in the class. I loved this class, it was always lots of fun, and I'm going to miss it a lot ): Mr. Schick was a great teacher! He is really funny and nice and is always trying to help us out. He always tries to answer our questions to the best of his ability so that we understand everything, and I really feel like he knows a lot about the subject and related stuff that is going on today, which makes the class more relate-able and interesting. He is definitely one of my all time favorite teachers, although I have a lot of favorite teachers... I really wish that I had him next semester, even though Mr. Powell is super cool too, just personally, I would rather have Mr. Schick.

The Fertile Crescent

Today we watched the video AGAIN. Thankfully, these notes aren't as long as the other ones because we talked a lot in class about the video... More than usual anyways. Okay! So let's begin... Any two points on the earth that have the same latitude, will have roughly the same climate and vegetation, growing season, temperature, time of day, etc. The animals started spreading from the Fertile Crescent, and wherever the animals spread, they transformed human ways of life. Crops from the Fertile Crescent (which I'm changing to FC) fed people all around. The same crops and animals that were in the FC where taken to the Americas, and now there are over 100 million cows in the USA alone. Also, Americans consume around 20 million tons (40 billion pounds) of wheat every year. New Guniea didn't get any of the things from the FC like wheat or barley, and they didn't get any of the good, large farming animals with the exception of pigs.

Beasts of Burden

Today in class, we continued to watch the video on Guns, Germs, and Steel. The main point in the video today was domesticated animals and the best ones to use for farming. The beasts of burden were the most powerful "machines" of the time before to Industrial Revolution. In New Guniea, the only big animals that they had were pigs, and they couldn't be used for hides or used to pull plows. Almost all farm work is done by hand in NG. The best animals to use for farming are large, plant eating animals. It is also beneficial when they have a hierarchy which means that they have one animal in charge and once humans take control of that head animal, they have control of the group. It is also important that they get along with humans. There are 14 large, plant eating animals that can be domesticated. They are goats, sheep, pigs, cows, horses, donkeys, Bactrian camels, Arabian camels, water buffalo, llamas, reindeer, yaks, mithans, and Bali cattle. The ancestors of these ideal domestic animals came from South America, which had only the llama, and the other 13 came from Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. None of them came from Subsaharan Africa, North America, Australia, or NG. The area were the very best animals and crops were in the Middle East is known as the Fertile Crescent, which gave them a huge head start. There was a 9,000 year old town that had rows of houses. It changed from having a just a place to sleep to having a house where you lived. People started to develop new skills and technologies when they didn't need everyone to farm. The use of steel transformed the world. NG never developed advanced technologies because they had no specialists considering farming took so long. After awhile, the Fertile Crescent lost its head start from its climate and the people destroyed the environment.

Farming > Hunting & Gathering

Today in class we watched a documentary about Jared Diamond's book Germs, Guns, and Steel. I have so many notes from the video, IT'S INSANE! I'm going to put a lot of them on here so be prepared.... First of all, the video is primarily about people of European descent and then people in New Guniea. The people in New Guniea (which I will from here on out abbreviate as NG) are quick to learn and extremely culturally diverse and adaptable. One of the main questions of the video that a man named Yali asks is, "why do white men have so much cargo and New Guniean's have so little?" Awhile ago, white men thought they were genetically superior to other races because they have advanced so much more than others, but Jared Diamond argues that race has nothing to do with it. And we will get back to that farther on in my post. Jared Diamond says that there are three things that all great civilizations have in common, they have advanced technology, large populations, and a well organized work force. The world is also divided into haves and have nots, which basically is developed countries (haves) compared to developing/not developed countries (have nots). Humans first started becoming "humans" around the Middle East, and because of how the land was, it wasn't as arid and dry as today's Middle East. The people there were originally hunters and gatherers, or nomads. In NG, an important source of food is wild Sago tree. It is meant to fill you up, it has no protein or any other nutritional value and it cannot be stored for long, so you need to eat it fast or it goes bad quickly. In NG, the women gather, and gathering is more productive than hunting. In the Middle East, barley and wheat were two cereal grasses that were very important to the people that lived there. Some other cereal grasses are oats, corn, and rice. After the second ice age, the Middle East suffered from a drought that lasted 1000's of years. Drah is a place in the Middle East that was found. It was found to be way more advanced than any normal hunter and gathering shelter and was found to be on of the earliest villages EVER. It is said that is emerged 11.5 thousand years ago, shortly after the drought ended in the Middle East. In Drah, they had the world's first granary which is a place that grain could be stored and protected. Drah is the world's oldest surviving village ever found. In the granary, cereal grasses were the primary thing that was stored and they could be stored for years. Shortly after the drought in the Middle East, they started growing barley and wheat around them, like a farm. This was the first time ever that is known where people plant food and have a sedentary place. This helped them to have extras in time of need. Domestication is taking the best crops to make them better over time. The new farmers produced more food than hunters and gatherers. After the Middle East, China began planting rice, the Americas began planting corn, squash, and beans, and sorghum, millet, and yams were planted in Africa. The people in NG farmed for just as long as the people in the Middle East but didn't get the same benefits. This is what Diamond refers to as geographic luck, which has to do with what you have around you impacted how you thrived. In the Americas, healthier crops are grown compared to NG's sago. Another thing that was soon started after farming was animal domestication which is where humans control an animals feeding, breeding, etc. It helps with having a food source and clothing from hides. There is an important cycle connecting crops, animals, and humans. The humans grow and eat the plants (and animals), they give the remains that they don't eat to the animals which then fertilizes the land with their feces. Woah. This was a long blog. I need a break now....

Jared Diamond & Guns, Germs, and Steel

Jared Diamond was born in Boston, MA to a Jewish family. His father, Louis K. Diamond, was a physician and his mother, Flora Kaplan, was a teacher, musician, and linguist. He went to Harvard College and graduated in 1958 with a Bachelor of Arts and in 1961 he graduated from University of Cambridge with a PhD on the physiology and biophysics of membranes in the gall bladder. In 1968, he became Professor of Physiology at UCLA Medical School. While in his twenties, he developed another career in ornithology and ecology. In his fifties, he developed a third career in environmental history and became Professor of Geography at UCLA, which is his current position. In 1999, he was awarded the National Medal of Science and an honorary doctorate by Westfield State University in 2009. He is married to Marie Diamond and has twin sons that were born in 1987. 

The book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies was written by Jared Diamond and was published in 1997. Since then it has sold more than 1.5 million copies. In 1998, it won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction and the Aventis Prize for Best Science Book. The book explains why Eurasian civilizations have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian dominance and power is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral or inherent genetic superiority. In the book, Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate in environmental differences. When cultural or genetic differences favored Eurasians, he says that the advantages occurred because of the influence of geography on societies and cultures, and had nothing to do with anything found in their genes.