Assigned Region: Latin America
Group Members: Jay Patel, Hammad Sadiq, Prateek Rana
Hello, fellow Bloggers, this here is my first AP World project. It is about how the average person lived in the first person of time. My group was assigned Latin America, which as you can see is highlighted in black on the images above. Latin America consisted of several civilizations and we will be summing up the experiences of an average person in these complex societies. The poster displayed above consists of a first and second part. The first part being the most important, which is the head with the images representing five themes respectively. The second part being that of a key consisting the five themes that the images support or symbolize, accordingly.
Image 1: I choose to draw this image to represent patterns and impacts of interaction between humans and the environment because the Olmec people have displayed such examples by developing a complex society, through agriculture power. As it can be seen in the image, once agriculture was discovered, the abundance in food permitted a larger and more organized civilization with more potential for social expansion.
Image 2: This second image is supposed to visualize development and interactions of cultures of a worker society where like it is shown in the image, commoners labored to build large monuments and palaces for their ruler/leader. Sculptures of large heads were built by commoners and servants, in respect to the ruler they live under.
Image 3: Image three is a representation of how societies such as the Olmec came to an end through civil conflicts over politics, religion, and power. Starting by emerging in the minds of ordinary citizens, these conflicts ended with the destruction of the very cities they inhabited. In the end the cities burned as social classes became meaningless and the people who were once part of a great civilization had dispersed or disappeared.
Image 4: In this image the expansion of economic systems in Latin America is illustrated. With the discovery of Jade and Obsidian several civilizations had developed skills in metallurgy leading to their development in Jade and Obsidian weapons, which were eventually used to trade with neighboring societies that offered them pottery or other goods as such.
Image 5: In the final image on the poster, I have choose to display how common citizens of these societies in Latin America honored their ruler or king by sculpting figures of their head on a larger scale. These resulting large head served to be a sort of token of gratitude and respect citizens had towards their ruler/king. Therefore such actions please the ruler or king who takes his subjects into his good grace, formally establishing a social structure or class difference between the ruler and his subjects.
Hello Harsha!
ReplyDeleteYour artistic talent caught my eye, and I felt the need to comment on your project.
I like how you drew all of the pictures. I particularly like the external image for theme two. You can see the smugness of the ruler by the way he is slouching. In contrast to the ruler are the two laborers working to satisfy the desires of the wealthy. The drawing really conveys the idea that rulers held the power to get things they wanted. I was also pleased with the fact that you took the external image from theme two and split it into two to make an internal and external images. The inequality shows with how the laborers had to work for those who ranked higher than them, and they had to remain submissive to the rulers.
This poster could benefit from some colors. If maybe you just outlined some of the people or landscape with colored pencils or printed out some pictures, the poster would look even better. Organization is another thing that could use some work. The key could be condensed, and the pictures could be spread out across the construction paper. I think the poster would look much better if the pictures were much larger and scattered across the construction paper.
One similarity that really had me intrigued was the fact that laborers had no other option other than to serve the elites. The Caste system had people in the shudras Varna that had similar roles; shudras were composed of washers, sweepers, shoemakers, and more whose purpose was to serve others. The laborers of Latin America’s purpose were to serve the elites.
A difference that caught my eye was that the people of Latin America conquered in order to gain knowledge. India had many chiefdoms while the Aryans were there, and they often fell into conflict. The Aryans were able to develop kingdoms with a more complex political system through conquest.
Why did you choose to show laborers building giant heads for rulers in theme two instead of talking about the temples that the Latin Americans built?
Why do you think that the Olmec were unable to maintain their control, but India was able to?