Cadillac Desert

Ben Howson, World History 6                                                                  September 26, 2013

thoughts and reflections on: Cadillac Desert 

By Marc Reisney

A cupple hundred years ago, the ocean was freash enought to drink. Insted of salty horible water. It became salty when the salt started to evaporate in the water and at that point it started to leave behind the salt. Day by Day, week by week, month by month the ocean slowly became saltier. This was not good for the people who lived near the ocean, because it started to affect plants and many other things. The only thing that the salt water didn't affect was cotten. But still it didn't do the farmers any good, because they could not farm, and for many of them farming was the only thing that they had, and knew to do. But luckaly for them a fertile crecent started to form by the Tigris Rivers, so that they were not limited with their environment. This basicaly means that the Mesopotamians never ran out of water. This when agriculture really started to form. For example one of the civilizations depended completaly on irrigation, because it was a way to survive uninterruptedly for thousands of years.  Ancient people that lived in mespatamia were able to live with in the limitations of their harsh environment because of salt, and irragation. If they did not have these two very important things, I don't think that they would of been able to live where they did. 

Thats how People were able to to live in their harsh environment.

World History Scrapbook #2 Agriculture

The first article that I read was talking about how the Mayans home was a very tough environment with a lot of droughts, and rising sea levels, but the worsed thing was the land that that they had to farm. The land that they had to farm was rough, rocky terrain interixed with vast swamps, or wetlands. The other article that I read was talking about the very poor soil in Malawi, Africa, and about how it is very hard to farm, and that Agriculture expertes are worring that Africa's soil problems are heading towards a crisis. 

Some simularitys between the two are that both the Mayans and the Africans live in very tough enviroments, and that they are both very hard lands to farm on. Africa is has very dry soil, and the soil is also pretty rocky, and where the mayans lived in mexico was also very rocky, but it was also wetlands. Another simularity between the two is that they both really depend on mothernature because   if they have a bad season, they could die of starvation. In the end the Mayans did find a very good and smart way to farm. They would dig ditches, which would elavate the root system of their crops above the waterlogged soil. But Africa still does not know what they should do. But African goverments and scientists all agree that the farmers of Africa must refertilize their soils. But they do not know the best way to do this. So for now Africas farmers will strugle for a little bit longer, unless they can aford to buy fertilizer by them selves. 

So as you can see farming has been quite an issue throught history, and we are still learing the best way how to do it.

Urls of articles:

www.nature.com/news/african-agriculture-dirt-poor-1.10311

www.nature.com/news/2010/101105/full/news.2010.587.html

Mexico 

Malawi Africa

World History Scrapbook # 1: Hunters and Gathers

Even though it does not seem that there are a lot of comparisons between the past and present, there actually are. The first article that I read was about the Eskimos, and that they are starting to use more modern tools to kill animals for food. It was talking about how they recently killed a whale, but they used a exploding harpoon and many other modern tools to kill the whale. The other article that I read about was Hunters and Gathers, and it talked a lot about that they hunted animals and gathered vegetables to create meals so that they could survive. Some similarities between the two articles are that both Hunters/gathers and Eskimos had to hunt for their food in order to survive. When they would kill the animal they would both use it's skin to create clothing, and they would use the bones to make knives and many other useful tools. Another similarity is that the Hunters/Gathers were slowly modernizing their tools, And now the Eskimos are now starting to modernize their tools. Also Hunters/Gathers settled down and created little settlements, and Eskimos settled down and created little settlements. After they settled down they both had to adapt to their environment, learn the land, and where to find food. As you can see Hunters/Gathers and Eskimos are actually quite similar to one another, even though one of them is from the past, and the other is from the present.

There are some comparisons between Hunters/Gathers and Eskimos.