Taj Mahal

Almost everyone has heard of the Taj Mahal located in India, and if you have every been luck enough to see it, you will know it is a beautiful creation. Yet what is more interest8ing, is that the Taj Mahal was built on a love story, which is truly touching.

<--- Red Fort of Agra

A long time ago, around 1520, the Mughal family ruled the land of India. They built and created beautiful gardens and palaces. During this empire, in 1592, a prince named Khurram was born. Being a prince we has taught by the best scholars and was a gifted hunter. As time went by, the young boy grew older was starting to think about love but never really had the chance to meet women. Yet one day while at the Meena Bazar, which the ladies of the palaces attended as shopkeeprs and only a few men were allowed to go, he met someone special. Khurram was with friends when he saw, what was to him, the most beautiful girl in the world. After talking to his friends he discovered her name was Arjumand, and she was the daughter of the prime minister. Eventually, Khurram summoned up the courage to talk to Arujmand. After talking to the prince Arjumand, also realized that she was as well in love. And after Khurram said that they must be together again, their fate was sealed. Khurram knew his father would never except him marrying a girl that was not of royal blood, but after seeing the passion in Khurram's eyes and consulting with royal astrologers, who said the love was written in the stars, he agreed. Khurram was overjoyed! Since according to religion, a husband and wife could not see each other before the wedding, so to keep in touch they wrote poetry back and forth to each other. After forever waiting, the day of the wedding arrives, and it is was a magnificent wedding. After the wedding, to celebrate, a royal banquet was held and during this banquet Emperor Jahangir, the father of Khurram, saw Arjumand dancing and found her so graceful that he decided to honor her and give her a new name, Mumtaz Mahal, Jewel of the Palace. Everybody in the kingdom adored Mumtaz Mahal. Her husband brought her expensive gifts, years passed and they had many children together. Eventually, Prince Khurram became a skilled commander of his father's army, but this meant travelling to battles. Since the two, Khurram and his wife, were inseparable they went everywhere together. When Prince Khurram returned home from a battle, he was renamed Shah Jahan "King of the World". Sadly, in 1627, Shah Jahan's father fell ill and died. Now Shah Jahan was the new ruler, and expanding and with Mumtaz Mahal by his side, they ruled kindly, wisely and were loved. Shah Jahan was conquering and expanding territory, but resistance was coming and just when he was set out to conquer Mumtaz Mahal announced she was pregnant. Even though she was told not to, Mumtaz Mahal insisted on travelling with Shah Jahan. During the battle, the child was born but soon after Mumtaz Mahal fell ill, and one night, told Shah Jahan she was dying. Her dying wish was so that the whole world would know of their love. For days when they returned, Shah Jahan was inconsolable. He would not eat, nor would he sleep. Days and nights went by and Shah Jahan only thought about the wish of the dying queen. What could he do? An idea came to him at night, he would build a tomb and garden as beautiful as Paradise, it would be one of the most magnificent sights in the world. That is exactly what he did, he built a stunning tomb on the banks of the river in Agra. It took years and year of painstaking work the timb was finally complete, it was then called the Taj Mahal. Shah Jahan planned to build a tomb for himself on the opposite side in black, so that there hearts could be together as one. Yet a few years later, he fell ill, and one of his sons (Aurangzeb) took advantage of this and locked him the Red Fort of Agra. Eight years until the day he died, he stayed in the fort, and realized that his black tomb would never be built. Yet looking out a small window and onto his magnificent creation he knew even if the fate of the Mughal was unknown, he was certain that their love would never be forgotten.

Mapping Project: India

These are our maps.
For this project we had to create three maps of India; climate, elevation and a 3D physical features/elevation map. Look at all three of the maps,

1. How do physical features, climate and elevation relate to each other?

They are all related in different ways, elevation is related to the climate because the higher a place is it will effect the climate of a place. The physical features will obviously have effect on the climate and elevation of an area, if it is a mountainous area is will have a high elevation, if it was a rain-forest the climate will be tropical. They are all inter connecting, because one of the can cause another to change.

2. What conclusions can you draw?

The climate, elevation and physical features have an influence on where humans settle. The main thing about all these things that human look for is practicality, things like, are there resources nearby, how can certain features be beneficial and is it safe. Things like climate influence where we settle because we do not want to settle is a sweltering hot place where water is scarce yet neither do we want to settle in a extremely cold place where food is hard to farm. We look at elevation and factor things in such as, is this terrain of the side of a mountain where is will be hard to grow crops and build a house. Also physical features, physical features can mean resources if they are the beneficial kind. Things such as river give water to humans who settle there, where as people who settle in a desert, the physical features arent as beneficial.

LORD GANESH

Lord Ganesh, or Lord Ganesha is the elephant headed god. Ganesh rose to being the lord of all things that exist by triumphing over his brother, Kartikay, in a contest. The contest was a race around the whole universe, yet Ganesh did not race like his brother, he simply walked around his mother and father, Shiva and Parvati, as the center of the universe.

There are many different stories of how Lord Ganesh came to have an elephant head. One story goes that Ganesh was created by Parvati in the absence of Shiva, when Shiva returned and asked to see Parvati, Ganesh refused. Infuriated Shiva cut off his head, but later on brought life back to Ganesh and gave him a head, but the only one at the time was an elephants head. There are many other stories such as these that tell about Ganesh and his elephants head. Ganesh is the son and daughter of Parvati and Shiva, Ganesh is also one of the five prime Hindu deities ( Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva and Durga are the other four) Ganesh's head symbolizes the soul and his body symbolizes the earthly existence of human beings. The head of ganesh has wisdom and the trunk symbolizes Om, a sacred mantra.

Ganesh rides a rat that symbolizes the dominated demon of vanity and impertinence. Ganesh has many hands, in these hands he holds many objects these include a conch that makes the sound of Akash, a Laddu that symbolizes Sattva, a snake means control over poison and passion (reference to Shiva), hatchet cuts away desires, Mudra gives fearlessness, and the broken tusk is the object with which Ganesh wrote the Mahabaratha. There are 32 forms of Ganesh, the changes are usually minor, for example one form of Ganesh he is sitting on a lion rather than a rat.

People worship Ganesh beacause he symbolizes many great things such as, Lord of success, destroyer of evil and obstacles, education, knowledge, wisdom, and wealth.

Lost City of Mohenjo-Daro

Mohenjo-Daro: The Lost City

Well-planned features tell us that Mohenjo-Daro was a well planned civilization. They were skilled and made there city clearly thinking about benefits for the people. It was located in modern day Pakistan around the third millennium B.C, but who inhabited this city we don't know. As Gregory Possehl, an Indus expert, says, "It's pretty faceless" There is no clue to the religion, language, or people in the city of Mohenjo-Daro, neither is there evidence of a certain government or ruling system. If there was no evidence of a ruler, it was most likely that the city was governed as a city-state. Mohenjo-Daro, from evidence was a very "neat" and organized city. Pottery, copper, and stone tools were mainly used and seals and weight say that there was a system of trade that might have been tightly contained. Artifacts such as ivory, lapis, gold beads, etc. were found, suggesting wealth and trade in the city. Adding to the theory of cleanliness, wells were found throughout the city and every house included a bathing area and drainage system

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Mahenjo-Daro is a city built on mounds, and in it's prime, it spread out over 250 acres, or 100 hectares. On the tallest mound, there was the Great Bath and a large building. According to historians, the people of the city actually built the houses and other buildings around the mounds as they organically grew. The city was visited for the first time in 1911, but then excavated several times over a period between 1920s-1931.

A celebrated find by Archaeologists was that of a nude, bronze statuette of a women, which was named the dancing girl, and was discovered in 1926. Other statues are of seated, male figures that are decorated. they are called Priest Kings even though there is no evidence whatsoever of the statues being of priests. This might be some kind of evidence of a ruler in the city of Mohenjo-Daro. Yet all these sculptures were found broken, maybe some showing dislike towards the certain people portrayed in the figurine?

Just like other great civilizations (Atlantis?) the fate of the Indus civilization is unknown? WHat ended them? It is thought that the river changed course, effecting the agriculture and the trade routes for the city. Still, historians are puzzled a river changing course couldn't cause the Indus civilization to collapse and effect the culture around it?

Roach, John. "Lost City of Mohenjo Daro -- National Geographic." Science and Space Facts, Science and Space, Human Body, Health, Earth, Human Disease - National Geographic. Natural Geographic. Web. 17 May 2011. .

Ancient Egypt Unit Reflection

In this unit we studied Ancient Egypt, we looked at the geography and a little bit of the culture.

In the IB learner profile there are 10 profiles these include:

1. Caring
2. Balanced
3. Open-Minded
4. Reflective
5. Principled
6. Communicator
7. Risk-Taker
8. Thinkers
9. Inquirers
10. Knowledgeable

In this unit we did not use all the learner profiles, or cover them all but we did use a few of them in our work.

1. Open-Minded- I think through the unit we had to be open-minded because there were rituals, traditions and certain things that ancient Egyptians did where we had to stop and think "Yes, this might be strange but it was part of their culture." We couldn't just label things as "stupid" or "dumb" right away we had to think about it from a different point-of-view.
2. Knowledgeable - Through this unit we also had to be knowledgeable about the different things that we learn. Even though this profile is kind of obvious it was very important. Being knowledgeable means that you can take information in and then remember it using it for other tasks that require knowledge about the subject. One time in the unit that presented our knowledge on ancient Egypt, was playing the Jeopardy game.
3. Inquirers - I think through this unit we had to be inquirers because as the last project of Ancient Egypt we had to pick something about Egypt and then create a presentation about it. To learn about the topic that we picked we had to be interested about it and have the want to find out more about the topic.

In IB we also have the Approaches to learning categories these include:

1. Organizational

2. Collaborative

3. Communication

4. Information Literacy

5. Reflection

6. Problem Solving and Thinking Skills

Through this unit I think that the approaches that we have covered include:

1. Organizational – Through this unit we had to be organized, this is because we had quite a few small projects going on. We had to organize time so that we could be efficient and get our work done while making it good quality. We also got a lot of papers that we had to keep organized so that when we needed something specific we would have it with us.

2. Collaborative – We only had one project where we needed to collaborate but it was a project that we didn’t really have that long of a period to work on, even though it was quite simple, we had to work on the project together quickly and well.

How did the physical environment affect the development of civilizations?

In every civilization the surroundings of the physical environment effect the development because physical environment can either kill a civilization or build it up. An example is a civilization that would start in the desert compared to one that starts near a lush, green river the civilization near the river is definitely going to develop much faster and become so much better than the civilization that starts in the desert. This is because the civilization near the river has so many more advantages and “gifts” than the desert has. A river can provide food for people, irrigation, land that is fertile for farming and much more. The physical environment can affect the civilization because it either gives the civilization more and builds it up or it take away, causing things like droughts, or famine.