HIST 100: Engineering The Past

Recommendation to Middle East

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If I could rewind time and go back to the days when the Middle East first was starting up and I had the opportunity to change the way the leaders ran the economical issue of water resources, I would. I would start by being sympathetic to the leaders for a better chance they would actually listen since they seem to be very straight forward and don’t care about what you have to say unless it is something that will help them develop to become better.

In the Middle East, aquifers are used very greatly in their economy. Aquifers are underground sources of water which have been formed over thousands or even millions of years: whilst they can be partially recharged by rainwater seeping into them, they are essentially non-renewable. Many other sources that would potentially help with the water scarcity, like drip-irrigation, are too expensive for more in poverty countries like Iraq or Syria. I believe that is countries like specifically, Syria were to manage their water resources more effectively then scarcity would not be as big of a problem that it is now.

Obviously, there’s no way of controlling climate and mother nature, besides global warming that is said to have a greatly big impact on the climate change, but there are ways to still manage to get by. The problem with Syria right now is that farmers are being put out of their business and going into poverty and creating riots of mass destruction in urban areas. However, if there could be a way to go back in time before the water scarcity, I would say let the farmers grow something a country, that is rich in water, is in need of and trade. However, there are bigger problems that can come into play such as political issues but I believe it would be a good start since the aquifers no longer can have a use since they run off of rainfall.

To really be able to get my point clear and understood I would ask for all past history of global warming rises in the specific areas of concern, Iraq and Syria, and see how they have risen over the years and try to see if there would be a way to predict the outcome of climate change. I would also ask for the amount of water being used for certain things. I know in Iraq, 80% is used for irrigation, but to be put into even smaller categories to help break it down more and try to conserve more water. Something else that could be helpful would be a break down of how the aquifers were made. If one knows how they were made, then maybe there could be a way to alter how water gets to them and a solution could be made from that. All of these pieces of information could most likely be found from the government of the specific areas since most of it is in mass numbers and some are private.

Concept Map

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I ended up making a Venn diagram on the treatment of the dead and looked at the Inca’s, Aztec’s, Paris catacombs and the San Francisco cemeteries. I ended up comparing and contrasting them all individually and then between one another. The main theme of my topic is that treatment of the dead is a religious practice that varies only slightly between time and place. Like everything else the more time that passes the more things evolve and change. With this passage of time, we tend to place less emphasis on the past or the dead and think more about the future or living.

As you can see from my diagram each topic has its own individual characteristics from the others but they all have similarities in the way they treated the dead right after death and as time passed. The Incas and Aztecs civilization are both further back in history where preservation of the dead, offerings and polytheism were prevalent. Religion played a much bigger role in the world and heritage and history was needed to show station. As time has passed religion isn’t as big of a driving force in how the world works, mostly there is only one god and we now believe in technology, innovation and progress. This is what shows in the Paris catacombs and San Francisco cemeteries, these events happened in a giant boom for the economy and expansion fueled our drive for a, ‘bigger and more” mentality. The world was growing at such a fast pace and it was no longer necessary to know your heritage, as your birth no longer dictated your station in life. With all of this, the treatment of the dead had to be moved out of the way into a place that would be less disturbing to progress but still enable the dead to be remembered.

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Concept Map

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For my concept map, I chose to compare and contrast the treatment of the dead between some of the cultures we have been learning about in modules 4 through 6. I focussed on the catacombs in Paris, the issue with overcrowded cemeteries in San Francisco, and the burial practices in both the Byzantine and Mughal empires. From what I discovered, it is interesting that a process that was held so sacred in ancient civilizations is now seen as an inconvenience to modern life. While the massive Taj Mahal was built for the burial of a single person, in Paris the remains of thousands of people were combined into catacombs and in San Francisco one of the biggest cemeteries was turned into a golf course. It seems as though death is becoming less of a sacred topic, and more of a problem and nuisance in modern society.

Concept Map