Aiden's Western Civ Blog

Today we furthered the conversation on Cleisthenes. He started the first democracy meaning anyone can vote on problems. Voting took place in the agora, like we learned in Human Geo earlier this year when I still kind of tried on the blogs.

Hippias was a tyrant who ruled from 527 - 510 BCE. When his brother was murdered he became a very harsh ruler. He was eventually ostracized from Athens. After that, Isagoras took over. He ostarcised his competition, Cleisthenes. Cleisthenes and his supporters trapped Isagoras on the acropolis for 2 days then he finally left and was banished. This happened in 508 BCE.  

Today in class we continued to talk about aristocrats.They went to symposiums to talk about the laws and everything. Only the elite men were allowed to go. There were women there for entertainment purposes only. A tyrant is a leader who takes a lot of land. Back in the Ancient Greece days anyway. Now it is a very cruel ruler. Draco, 621 BCE, made it so all athenians under law were equal.

Today in class, we debated whether or not we should be allowed to watch YouTube (www.youtube.com) in school. I argued that it is your responsibility to finish your work so you should be able to do what you want. On the other hand, you should pay attention to the teacher even if you aren't interested in the subject because that is just respectful. We also listened to a book of The Odyssey by Homer. It was about the main character, Odysseus, and his men being stuck on an island with a giant Cyclops that wanted to eat everyone. He and the few men he has left were able to outsmart the beast and were able to leave.

Today in class we started talking about people such as Homer. Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey. Since there is no actual evidence that he existed, some speculating says that he may be just another Greek myth but it is more likely that he did. We also talked about the Mycenaeans. They lived in the Peloponnese region of Greece but were taken over by mysterious sea people at around 1200 BCE.

Today in class we started talking about Ancient Greece. There are many different city-states within Greece. Greece is a very mountainous country with around 1,000 islands around it.

Today in class we took our final test of the semester and the Human Geography class. It was probably one of the more easy tests I've had to take in a long time. It was all about the different world leaders. Like which country the lead and what they are like. I was able to finish in less than 10 minutes.

Today in class we finished up the different world leaders and are preparing for the final test of the semester in this class. We will have to cover the different world leaders and their backgrounds and we will have to cover the different terms that we have defined already.

Today in class we went over the different political leaders. Not only did we get to see if we were right on the power point. We learned new things about the world leaders. For example: The president of  Mexico (Enrique Pena Nieto) is very interesting. He married a woman and cheated on her and had kids with another woman. His wife mysteriously died shortly after because of a reported stroke.

Today in class we worked on a project about political leaders. Mr. Schick said that's all we need for our blog today. 👍

Today was our first class of the new year ad we talked about political geography. A country is an identifiable land area. A nation has a population with a common culture. State is a population under a single government and can be synonymous with country. An institution is a significant practice, relationship or organization in a society or culture. An independent state has space or territory which has internationally recognized borders, people who live there regularly, has economic activity and the power of social engineering.