Viewpoint on Griots of Africa

In my opinion I believe history would be more memorable if it were to be passed down the way the African Griots had done. Though this may be, there are issues with this method of preserving history. One of these issues concern the originality of the story, which means that when a story is being passed down from generation to generation, variations may be added to the original story to make it more easier to express. This depreciation of the originality of the concepts/events that have cured in history may ultimately lead to false interpretations of the story. Therefore, even though it would be more well known through words, by having it in text would preserve the accuracy of history as it happened. Thus I would not really like to learn history the way the Griots did, and would instead prefer history in text.

History Head Project

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.