Article 12/02/07

The origional article 

This happened on 10/02/07

In the state New York, in the USA, a senator exclaimed there as a major flaw in the world of portable electronics. Bringing to the attention of the world that too many people, who are absorbed into their I-pods, are being distracted from the road and getting killed. In NY it is now illegal to use an I-pod while crossing the street and any caught doing so will be fined 100 US dollars (350RM).
A senator from the state of Brooklyn, names Carl Kruger, has extended this law further, now reaching towards, mobile phones, video games, and blackberries, and that instead of simply posting the fine money they must appear in court.
It also not only applies to walking, jogging and cycling were included and summoned to court as well.
Since September there have been three cases. In one a 21 year old man was hit by a bus, this was in Brooklyn. In NY another 20 year old woman was hit crossing a street in Fifth Avenue. In one of the cases bystanders screamed warnings but the hearer could not well hear.
Yet only a proposal not yet a law in America, New York was already the first state to ban cell phones while driving.
The law was retaliated to with stamens such as “what next, will we be fined for looking both ways?” or “You look with your eyes you don’t need to hear really. I guess”

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Social notes

Archeologist- – Dictionary definition: n: an anthropologist who studies prehistoric people and their culture.

My Definition: Basically a person who studies fossils and pre historic Material.

Anthropologist- Dictionary Definition: The scientific study of the origin, the behavior, and the physical, social, and cultural development of humans.

My definition: One who studies how a culture developed, grew, lived, and eventually fell?

Economist- Dictionary Definition: a specialist in economics.

My definition: Someone who studies the economics of a situation.

Historian- Dictionary Definition: 1. a writer, student, or scholar of history.

2. One who writes or compiles a chronological record of events; a chronicler.

My definition: Someone who categories certain events and facts of a culture.

Linguist- Dictionary Definition: a specialist in linguistics. A person who is skilled in several languages; polyglot.

My definition:

Theologian- Dictionary Definition someone who is learned in theology or who speculates about theology; Theology is the field of study and analysis that treats of God and of God’s attributes and relations to the universe; study of divine things or religious truth; divinity.

My definition: Someone who studies cultures beliefs in god.

Step 1:

Before the Aztecs moved to their swampy new home of Tenochtitlan they lived in Atzlan which was somewhere in the North West of Mexico. A god named Huitzilopochtli appeared to one of the priests and told him to search for the eagle on a cactus who was eating a serpent, he said that this sign bring good fortune in their new home.

Tenoch, the priest who envisioned this, looked for an eagle perched on a cactus, growing from a rock or cave surrounded by water. They built their city there and thanked Huitzilopochtli for his brilliant idea with human sacrifices. The city they built was called Tenochtitlan, the city of Tenoch in around 1325. This entire aside they actually settled down in a murky disgusting swamp because of their ruthless nature no one wanted to take them into their cities.

Step 2:

Pros:

v Built artificial islands many ‘ordinary’ people lived on Chinampas. Piling up plants and black sticky mud made these islands from the lake.

v They dug canals and lined them with stone so that people could move easily around.

v Got to eat their favorite delicacy snake stew.

Cons:

v Face it it’s a swamp.

Lay of the land: A small piece of land in the surrounding marshes.

The Aztecs made the swampy, shallow lake into Chinampas. They used them as their city foundations. To start with they built a few thatched, mud huts, and some small temples. They dug canals and lined them with stone so that people could move easily around

Step 3:

TEZCATLIPOCA -

v The god of the Great Bear constellation.

v Tezcatlipoca’s animal disguise was the jaguar, the spotted skin of which was compared to the starry sky.

v His name means Smoking Mirror.

Quetzalcoatl

v (From quetzalli, “precious feather,” and coatl, “snake”),

v The Feathered Serpent. As the morning and evening star,

v Quetzalcoatl was the symbol of death and resurrection.

Tlaloc

v Tlaloc lived in a place the Aztecs called Tlalocan.

v He lived there with his companion, Chalchiuhtlicue (She Who Wears a Jade Skirt), also called Matlalcueye (She Who Wears a Green Skirt

v Tlalocan was also the place where all people who had drowned ‘lived’.

v His name means He Who Makes Things Sprout.

v Tlaloc was the eighth ruler of the days and the ninth lord of the nights.

Chalchuitlicu,

v Before the Sun that now shines brightly over Mexico came into being, there had been other suns; four in all.

v Each sun died away in turn before our present Sun appeared.

v The fourth Sun, Chalchuitlicu, had been a water goddess, copper-coloured and dressed in emerald green.

v For hundreds of years she provided light and warmth; and in that time the first men and women appeared on Earth.

v But other gods grew jealous of the Sun God; some reproached her for giving fire to humans — for they did not always use it wisely.

HUITZILOPOCHTLI -

v From huitzilin, “hummingbird,” and opochtli, “left”) was the Aztec sun and war god

v The Aztecs believed that dead warriors came back to life as hummingbirds and that the south was the left side of the world.

v His animal disguise was the eagle.

Why they built the temples:

v For their practice of human sacrifice.

v The cities of the Aztec empire always wanted to make their sacrificial temple better than any other cities. They decided not to destroy the old temple, but to build over it!

v And of course to worship their gods

Step 4:

Slaves:

The children of poor parents could be sold, usually for only a certain time period. Slaves could buy back their freedom.

The slaves that escaped and reached the royal palace without being caught were given their freedom instantly.

Commoners:

The social group was known as the macehualtin; these people were engaged in agriculture and the common trades. Although they worked the land in family units and were allowed to keep their crops and produce, the land itself was collectively owned by the inhabitants of the neighborhood or calpulli.

Commoners were given lifetime ownership of an area of land. The lowest group of commoners was not allowed to own property. They were tenant farmers; they just got to use the land and never be owners.

The lower social orders were made up by peasants.

Nobility:

The nobilities were the people who were nobles by birth, priests, and those who earned their rank. They were made up of a bunch of families known as the pipiltin. These people were members of the hereditary nobility and occupied the top positions in the government, the army and the priesthood. The nobles chose a leader known as the tlatoani from within their own group he ruled until his death.

Step 5:

The Aztecs have a spoken language. What was it called? Did they use any other forms of communication? Include an example of either written or visual language of the Aztecs.

The Aztecs did not use letters to write with they used small pictures called glyphs instead of words. They would join a few glyphs together to make a sentence. Some of the pictures symbolized ideas and other represented the sounds of the syllables. This writing system was seen as an aid to oral traditions rather than as a replacement. Such as the alphabet we use. The Aztec spoke a language called Nahuatl (pronounced NAH waht l).

Step 6:

How did the Aztecs grow food and what was their main crop? Did they trade and with whom? Did they have a currency (money)? Find an image for your exhibit about making a living Aztec style.

Turkeys were kept in small ‘gardens’ with a hut to go in at night. Dogs ran around freely. When the dogs were fully grown they were often killed and EATEN … the Aztecs found their meat to be rich and good. The women grew flowers. The men grew the corn. They dug the soil with a ‘digging stick’ or a wooden spade. When the corn was ripe, it was put into corn ‘bins’ until taken to market or eaten later in the year.

They also, like the Mayans, used a slash and burn method of farming.

Traders, known as pochteca, were generally held in high regard, although they were not exempt from paying tribute. The pochteca covered different trade routes to go to different zones, even going as far abroad as the Maya zone or even as far as what is today Panama, in order to bring or exchange products to trade in markets

The means for trade were diverse: purchase, using cacao, as a basic currency, and a myriad of goods equivalent in value.

Step 7:

Discuss the Impact of Spanish Contact 1519 from both the Aztec point of view and the Spanish point of view. Find an image depicting this event.

Aztec point of view: The Aztecs believed Cortez to be the human representation of the god quetzcoatl and that the apocalypse had arrived

Spanish point of view:

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