Life of a Peasant in the middle ages

Peasants dining on bread

        Life of a peasant in the middle ages was a sad class to be born into.  Since upward mobility was minimal at best (the best one could hope for was to either buy ones nobility or to be married into it, a difficult task indeed), if one stayed a peasant, one could expect to stay one.  The living conditions were rough.

      For example, a house for a single family of peasants was one room.  All the cooking, eating and sleeping were done in that one room.  The family owned a single bed, everyone slept together. This meant that children learned early on about the “birds and the bees”.

      The house was also where one kept all the animals, such as pigs or cows.  This was good in the winter when it would get cold.  The extra warmth from the animals enabled everyone to be a bit more comfortable during the worst of European winters.

           Food was a bit more vegetarian than we may be used to.  Since a peasant could make extra money selling off his livestock, eating meat was considered a treat, one that was saved for special occasions such as Easter.

Finally, the clothing that a peasant owned was minimal.  One or two sets were usually the standard.  Since bathing was unheard of, and washing clothes time consuming and expensive, the same set of clothes was worn year round.

A detailed look at a peasant's home during winter.

The Inventions of Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo Da Vinci was, simply put, a genius of his time. From famous painter to lauded military engineer, Leonardo Da Vinci was ahead of his time in all respects. So it is with great luck that the most insightful pieces of his still survives today: his journals.

One of Da Vinci's designs for an ornithopter.

From what we can garner from the journals he left the world, Leonardo was fixated on flying. He created many designs to put man in flight including two very peculiar sketches that look surprisingly similar to modern helicopters. 

 

A helicopter?

 However, such thought in the renaissance made Leonardo wary of plagiarists so from what we can tell, he deliberately encoded and left out parts to his models as a form of patent protection. As a result, we may never know the true extent of his knowledge of flight, but Leonardo didn't just stop at flight. In his life Leonardo Da Vinci invented prototypes to armored cars, parachutes, automobiles, machine guns, and even a human-shaped robot.

Work of a Genius

 

 

So, one might be asking, how many of these things actually worked? Well, you might be asking the wrong questions, as while some of them are recreated from what we can see of the sketches, it's all about how a self-taught man in the dawn of the 16th century could think so far ahead as to be studied today.

Magna Carta

King John was born December1166.  He ruled England from April 1199 till his death in October 1216.  After losing England’s territories in northern France, King John spent the better part of a decade at war with King Philip Augustus of France to regain the lands.  His means of financing this war caused many of his English barons to draw up a list of demands by which King John was forced to sign.  On June 15^th 1215, the Magna Carta, or the “Great Charter”, was established. The Magna Carta was among the first documents ever to set limits on royal authority.  It also outlines the specific roles, responsibilities, and rights of individual citizens, specifically the right to trial by Jury.

Due to the King and Lords not adhering to the Magna Carta, a civil war broke out. The final draft was issued by King Edward I in 1297.  England used these documents in developing their modern day constitutional law.  An emerging republic in the newly founded Americas referred to the Magna Carta when developing the legal system they knew and wrote the constitution of the United States.  It was this single document that facilitated the development of  democracy in the world we now live in.  

How much would you have to spend to purchase the Magna Carta?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/magazine/06wwln-lede-t.html    

A little Magna Carta British Poetry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qqsZ_5W9eQ&feature=related

The Silk Road

The name `Silk Road' itself was not used until the 19^th century, coined by a German scholar.  It was not a single roadway but a network of crisscrossing paths that eventually connected the East to the West.  Harsh terrain and  problems with security kept the eastern routes from developing as fast as the western.

 

 Commodities such as gold, precious stones, and glass headed towards China while furs, ceramics, jade, bronze objects, lacquer and iron were brought into the west.  Silk was not the most heavily traded commodity, but one of the most remarkable.  Its soft texture and light weight was completely new to  Rome were it quickly became popular.  Throughout the regions the biggest impact the Silk Road had was the expansion of religion.  Buddhism came to China from India this way, Islam spread widely.  

The decline of the Silk Road had many contributors.  The Crusades, marauding barbarians, but over time the `Sea Silk Route' brought the biggest change.  The land route was less profitable (too many middlemen) and becoming more dangerous (Mongols).   Advances in seafaring and boat construction, emerging Asian markets to the south pushed merchants to abandon the Caravan and head to sea.  From its birth before Christ into the 13th-14th century The Silk Road has had a significant impact on the development of civilizations from both sides of the continent.

Early Civilizations of the Americas and Africa

Slaves in America

The great civil right leader, Malcom X, once made a statement in one of his speeches concerning the mistreatment of African American citizens in the United States. In that speech, he stated “we didn’t land on Plymouth rock, Plymouth rock landed on us,” referring to African American ancestors who were captured by the Europeans and forced into slavery by the United States. Although this is a very true statement, the African slaves did not ask to come here to the New World nor did they deserve the brutal and inhumane treatment that was brought upon them. However, I am one who believes that we must return to scene of the crime.

Slave hunters in Africa

      And the crime scene sometimes leads back to an African tribe ruler who calls himself, Grandy King George, one of the most powerful leaders of the Efik people. Grandy King George owned hundreds of slaves whom he employed to capture and trade for still more slaves in the African Interior. He sold these slaves to Captains of European slave ships. Grandy King George nearly monopolized the Old Calabar slave trade during the 1760’s, allowing him to live in luxury, surrounded by British trade goods such as gold-headed canes, fancy mirrors, lace-trimmed clothing pewter chamber pots. In others words, the Grandy King George was living large at the expense of innocent Africans. So I’m not sure who landed on Plymouth Rock or who Plymouth Rock landed on, But I believe that there were a mutual business partnership between the European and the Native of Africa.

The horrors slaves faced if they defied their master.

 

Early Christianity

Early Christianity

The arts nature and transmit the beliefs of the christian faith.

Early Christian style of art.  Christian recognized that art could help illustrate followers.  Art become an important instrument of theology.

When Christianity was made an official state religion, the need for churches arose.  Derived from the Roman basilica and was established by the fourth century.  Old St. Peter which destroyed in the fifteenth century.

Just a Jews believe they are God's chosen people and Muslims their holy book, the Qur'an is the word of God.  Christians believe Jesus is God  and savior, they will share eternal life with him in heaven.

One element of their faith is the belief that jesus rose from the dead after being crucified by the Romans.

Jesus was born in Judea a land under the political control of the Romans during the reign of the emperor Augustus.

The Public ministry of Jesus began when he was thirty years old, with the performance of his first miracle, the changing of water into wine, at the marriage feast of Cana.

 

Jesus Teaching can be reduced to two essentials:  to love God above all, and to love others as one loves oneself.

Posted by lanruby11 at 8:57 PM 0 comments

Achilles-More than a Man?

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Achilles-More than a Man?

Achilles was the Hero of the Trojan War- the greatest warrior of Homer's Illiad. He was less than a God but more than a Man. This person is considered a Demi-God. He was invincible in battle and no one could kill him. He only had one weak spot. The Achilles Tendon was his weak point where if that was to be injured then he would die. The reason for his heel being so weak was because when Achilles was a boy his mother dipped him into the River of Styx and the only part of his body that did not go into the water was his heel. The water was a shield for Achilles. Achilles fought many men and was undefeated, he had a great life with women, wine, food, and anything he desired because he was the most feared soldier. While fighting the Trojan War, Achilles was killed by Prince Paris. Prince Paris was an excllent archer. He shot Achilles straight through the heel and Achilles fell that night. The was the last battle he ever fought.



This statue represents Achilles and he is leaning to his weak spot..the Achilles Tendon

Team 2: apupello