Jack S.
9/21/14
Marvin Harris

Thoughts and Reflections on: Pig Lovers and Pig Haters

Pig was not a commonly eaten food in the ancient Middle East and this is for a couple of reasons. One of the biggest and most obvious ones opens that pigs were dirty and people though if you ate them you would become dirty also. Pigs would roll around in here own waste because pigs are meant to live in a rainy environment that has trees and shade this is so they could stay cool. When you think of the Middle East those are not the first things that come to mind, so the pigs were forced to roll in their own waste to keep cool. When people would eat pig back then they would not cook it properly and/or long enough so this would cause the people who did eat it to get sick. When people at this unclean meat they thought whoever ate it was dirty and became different. To make people stop eating the pig so they would not get sick people made it into  religious ordeal. They said God had forbidden people from eating pig, so many more people began to stop eating pig. In the 12th century to physician to the Egyptian emperor had come to the conclusion that pig was truly bad for you and not just because God said it was. This silenced some of the religious side of the argument. Then in the 19th century trichinosis was discovered which people though would have put an end to the religious part of the argument, but it didn't. The religious believers said that if we found out about trichinosis then there must be a bigger concern that only God knows about and we housing question him. All in all, pig had become a frowned upon food in the Middle East. These reasons to not eat pig are all a little sketchy and people would always try to bend the argument in their favor. The true reasons pig wasn't eaten are environmental. Pigs eat the same food as humans because they're stomach can not digest grass, so when the pigs eat the humans food there is less for the actual humans which causes them to find something els to eat which can effect the environment.

Digital Scrapbook Entry #1- Hunters and Gatherers

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/683021?uid=3739920&uid=2460338175&uid=2460337935&uid=2&uid=4&uid=83&uid=63&uid=3739256&sid=21104151874361

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers

                                                                     Friendship

In the days of the Foragers sharing, friendship, and kinship were the most important virtues to people. This was partially because they didn't know any better and there were not conflicts that make people dislike each other like there are today. This is still true in some aspects of the world today, The Quaker religion believes in these same qualities. They often refer to themselves as the Religious Society of Friends or just Friends. Acceptance like this is extremely scarce in today's world. The Foragers believed in the same qualities as the Quakers and it helped their community stay tightly knit and make everyone feel like they were just as important as the person next to them. They also share the belief that even though some of their closest friends may not be related to them in blood they treat them as if they were. The foraging era was also the longest era of human history, so this idea of friendship and sharing was the core of everyone's beliefs for about 250,000 years.
The Quakers do have a more Christian spin on their religious beliefs unlike the foragers. Quakerism was started around 1650, so like the foragers their beliefs have been running strong for a long time. When everyone feels included and important they seem to be much less arrogant and mean and actually are happier and more cooperative. When Quakers pray they stand in a circle as opposed to a regular church where they sit in rows with a priest at the front. This is a way to represent an understanding that there is no hierarchy and everyone is equal. Similarly, Foragers treated everyone in their community with the same amount of respect and kindness which was crucial to their long lived era.
Community was extremely important to Foragers because they would hunt, live, and survive together. Foragers believed in putting the community before themselves because if they did not they would die without each others support and services. Quakers also believe in putting their community first, but for different reasons. Quakers live a very simple life for the purpose of focusing more on God than things like money or clothes. This makes live without certain luxuries, and therefore be more inclined to live a philanthropic lifestyle. Doing this means not taking more than you need and also sharing what you have.
Foragers also had ways of maintaining tightly knit communities. One way they would do this is giving one another gifts or things they need. This can be easily misinterpreted and trading but they would not give each other goods for goods in return they do it to just show their appreciation for one another. This brought their communities closer together and made everyone realize how important community is.
There are many similarities between a group of people who were some of the first to inhabit the earth and those who's religion was created in only the 1600's. It's truly astounding to see the many connections between these two groups of people because of how different they are in some ways, but if you can see them it will open your eyes and your mind to the idea that just because we live in a different time period than the foragers doesn't mean we don't live like them in someways.

Jack S. Per. 4      9/9/14
Thoughts and reflections on: How Man Invented Cities
John Pfeiffer

Cities

When the glaciers melted the foragers had much less space to move around to. Because they were nomadic it was very new to them. The foragers settled down partially because they had to, but also because they had very easy access to food. With the increased amount of water there were more fish and birds near the foragers therefore it was much easier for them to get to so they decided to stick around for a while. During the time when the foragers were less nomadic their population grew significantly. This is because the amount of babies women were having a year doubled. With more mouths to feed it made even more sense to stay in this spot near food, and even if they did become nomadic once again it would be much harder to move around with young kids and babies. As the population grew fish and birds weren't enough to live off of so the foragers had to come up with a new source of food. This brilliant idea was agriculture. Agriculture was a huge and beneficial advancement but to maintain it you had to stay near it. This meant that they would not be able to leave of they wanted food. Cities were invented partially by accident, but throughout time they began to make more and more sense to humans.

1.) Did settling down benefit the foragers?
2.) Did settling down allow technology to advance faster?
3.) Was the brith of more children beneficial to the foragers?

1.) Why were foragers so strict about population control?

2.) Did the strict population control effect the progression and growth of the foragers?

3.) If other eras found ways to avoid disease like the foragers did would they be around longer?

4.) Even though the foragers didn't have many technological advancements were the ones they did have important to their progression/era In general?

5.) Did the lose of the younger kids have an effect on the foragers? If so what kind of effect?

Jack S.
9/2/14
Per. 4


                      Thoughts and Reflections on: This Fleeting World (by David Christian)  

The Foraging era lasted much longer than any other era in human history. The foragers took so long to make significant technological advancements that their basic lifestyle could maintained for large amounts of history. The foragers were able to survive for so long for a couple of reasons. For example, the foragers liked to keep their population very small so that they could travel faster and not have to support a growing population. The mortality rate for infants was also extremely high in this era, probably because it would be extremely hard to support brand new babies if the grown ups can barely keep themselves alive. It was hard to progress technology quickly because  of their small population. Foragers also did not accumulate lots of garbage and did not stay in one play very long. This allowed them to avoid contacting diseases throughout their era.The lifestyle of the foragers was very nomadic and they were entirely hunter gatherers. The foragers were the longest era in history due to their small population. Also, the fact that they were extremely nomadic, and did not have a agricultural lifestyle to keep them settled it was difficult to make technological advancements.