History Head Comment Assignment

For this Assignment I have selected Hiren Patel's poster/blog and the region he has done is, India.

         -Hello Hiren, before I say anything, I just want to say that I like how your poster exceeds the expectations. You did a phenomenal job in illustrating the different aspects of early civilizations in the region of India, especially with number five, where you so clearly showed the class distinctions between various classes in the Aryan society. In addition I also found that you typing out the key instead of hand writing it, made your poster much neater, overall. Whereas I believe writing it out might have taken up more space and made it less legible. Although you have done very well in putting together your poster, I do see a few flaws that could have been improved on. The images on your poster would have made a more appealing view if they were organized in a better way and also I thought you could have improved on how you showed which image represented which theme and which exterior images were related to which internal images. I thought navigation was harder than it had to be, with your poster. Besides these two minor issues, I overall, loved how you made your poster. Of course, I did not choose to write about your poster just because it was beautiful. I choose your poster because I found some interesting similarities and differences between the early Indian civilizations you have illustrated on your poster, and the Latin American civilizations I illustrated on my poster. One of the biggest thing I found similar was the development of agriculture and its effects. I was clearly able to relate my work and yours to see just how similarly the development of agriculture had lead to large complex societies consisting of cities with very similar social classes. I feel that the cast system in the Aryan civilization was highly similar to that of the Olmec civilization, where there was a ruler at the top, followed by priests, artisans, and commoners versus the Aryan's brahmans, kshatriya, vaishyas, and shudras. On the other hand, there was also a difference I noticed, between the Indian societies and Latin American societies. Latin American societies did no develop irrigation systems since water was always abundant in that region whereas in India the weather was not always suited for growing crops. Latin American societies also did not have any domestic animals like your Indian societies did, therefore the wheel was not invented in Latin America like how it was in India. In conclusion, Hiren, you have done a fantastic job and in my opinion, you have met and exceeded the expectations as far as informative content goes. I must ask though, why did you choose to print out pictures for the majority of your poster instead of drawing the images yourself?