Cosmology

by Camille

            From whence we came is but a silly question. We humans have always been here on Earth. However, our country is rather new as our country is only 5,000 years old. Older countries have been around for tens if not hundreds of thousands of years. There are a few countries that are still around from a million years ago.

The Earth and the Sun are too big to be formed by hands, so it must be that they were always here too. The Sun is probably just a shiny large rock and the moon looks like a rock when it is all there. Rocks are solid masses that according to its kind are different like the Earth verses the Sun verses the Moon verses the stars. The Sun and Moon dance around the Earth taking turns of exhibiting their light so the other can rest while they recuperate from a tiring work day.

The land and water compete in a battle dance for control over the earth, while humans settle for being the intermediaries being both on land and water. Our animals that are here tend to be complacent with their lot in life while others are temperamental with our liability as humans to eat them. Plants start growing after seeds are planted and to get seeds, they must come from a plant so it is impossible to say if the tree or seed came first if there ever was a first (like the chicken or the egg dilemma.)

There was no beginning and so there is no end like a circle in a way. That is why it is called the circle of life. Earth is the living circle among the heavens.

My Cosmogony

by Vanessa

The Royal Tsar was birthed through the sand particles of diamond dust from a star. It was when he was in existence for 1,000 hours he finally came to his senses and began to think critically. He concluded that he desired to teach a being similar to him his ways of critical thinking, and so he created Socrates. The two chatted for decades, eventually crafting the Socratic Method. Afterward they realized that they couldn’t just float forever, so together with their critical thinking skills they created the earth based on Truth, Honor, and Virtue. They also fabricated five males and five females.

The Royal Tsar elected to make himself the God of this new world, with Socrates as an angel who would watch over and live with these 10 immortals. Only these ten would be granted the gift of everlasting life. Among them was one Karl G. Maeser, who became their leader. Maeser led the people through times of brain freezes and blonde moments. They were fortunate to have him but did not recognize it, and eventually went their own ways after a major political dispute.

Millenniums later, the immortals still wander in seclusion today. Some try to blend in with today’s society, some hide out in the Alps, and some still commit their knowledge to do some actual good in the world. But wherever they are, they each regret leaving their father figure, Karl G. Maeser.  And that was how the world was fashioned.

Three Worlds Collide Test Study Guide

People

Leif Ericson

Queen Isabella

King Ferdinand

Prince Henry “The Navigator”

Columbus

Taino

Aztecs

Cortes

Amerigo Vespucci

Balboa

Coronado

Ponce de Leon

De Soto

Cartier

Cabot

Hudson

Bering

Ribault

Places

Iberian Peninsula

Bering Straight

Bahamas (Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti)

Dates

1492 (3 events in Spain)

22,000 years ago (in the Americas)

10,000-5,000 years ago (in the Americas)

3,000 years ago (in the Americas)

Concepts

Triangular trade route

Columbian Exchange

Cosmogony

Treaty of Tordesillas

Castas

Mestizo

Mercantilism

Motives/Roots of Exploration

Renaissance

Crusades

Protestant Reformation

Technological advances

Rise of the merchant class/urban life

Short Essays

1)      What do the cosmogonies studied in class reveal about the worldviews of Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans?  How do they foreshadow the cultural clashes that would follow in history?

2)      How did Spanish colonization impact Native Americans? What were some of the motives of the European colonizers? Use evidence from the movie The Mission to support your responses.

The Creation

by Chelsey

    Once there were millions and millions of blank pieces of paper. There was nothing in the universe, so naturally nothing could be written on them. God was up in heaven gazing sullenly at the paper, and realized that something had to be done. He did what any smart guy would do, and asked his wife. So it was that she made ink, graphite and lead. From these three elements she was able to form pens and pencils.
    God’s wife grabbed five of her children and each was able to write on a page of the paper. The first wrote of the planet, Earth, and of the land and waters. The second wrote of grass, trees, and other nature. The third wrote of animals, both in the ocean and on land. The fourth wrote of berries, fruits, and other natural foods. The fifth wrote of the sun, stars and moon surrounding the Earth.
    God and his wife had two more children, however, and they were unhappy that they weren’t able to participate. The first one thrust two of the other children down to Earth so that they would be stuck there forever. The other child stole some blank pages and wrote of natural disasters and horrible creatures that were vicious and cruel. He wrote of trials and tribulations for his brother and sister.
    The two were proud of what they had done, and told God what a horrible accident it was, and they were sorry to have lost their siblings. God was furious, and blamed his sons and wife for what had occurred, but his wife had an idea. She proposed the idea of letting them live on Earth, but still being able to communicate with them. God agreed and talked with his children of this plan.
    God wrote his two Earth children to become mortal, and to create more children to fill the Earth with their posterity. After a few hundred years they began to miss their children and wished to see them again. So it was that God wrote of death, not as a trial, but merely as a passageway back to heaven. Whenever he missed his children he would write of death upon their name, and the child would return to heaven.

The Game of Everything

by Tage

    Things began.... How they did our minds cannot comprehend for we can only understand things through what we have understood. But there was nothing in the started startless infinity but The Great Presence. It knows of all the was and there was nothing, It knew it could make the rules and laws and twist them to its will, It was all and started with itself and selves for it was many but it was one, and it was nothing.
    It decided that it would do things for they wished to do things and the created the all and did everything.... Then ,after nothing was all that was left of everything, it decided to play a game. The rules are the laws that govern this universe we live in and that it can’t know that all is itself. So it spilt its self into countless minds and caused them to forget then it set the started point, a point of space the held a everything. A ultimate game board that would explode and create all available space for the players. And when everything was ready it began.
    It took time for the players to appear but appear they did and they evolved and changed and lived and died and adapted, and now after a timeless eternity that tics like a clock we became what we are now. We play the game and fallow the rules that guide our everything trying to understand what we are and what to do. rolling dice and and learning shortcuts in the game without rules. and one day we will return to the Great Presence with the all inside our minds after the board is done we will play a new game......

How the World Was Created

by Joseph

           In the palace in the swirling night sky a very long time ago lived a mighty man, his wife, and his beautiful twin daughters. One day, the daughters Lukisha and Solaka grew bored of their life with only each other and their parents to play with, so they went to their father and asked for dolls to play with. They wanted powerful men and beautiful women, wise elders, and little children. Their father, a master craftsmen created these dolls. They were so lifelike in the imagination of Lukisha and Solaka they were real and they could talk and walk. Their mother, wise in the ways of magic poured life, feeling and emotion into the dolls, hoping to delight the two girls. The girls called them "Man" and kept them in a special pen.
           Years passed. The elders of mankind grew old and died, the beautiful women and powerful men grew old and became elders, the children became the beautiful men and women, and more children were made by their father periodically. While the cycle changed the face of man in their pen, it also changed the beautiful twins. Lukisha grew hair as black and as long as the wing of an eagle. Solaka stayed light skinned and fair and as equally stunning in beauty. While they were both beautiful, they grew apart in personality. Lukisha became closed, dark, and unhappy with her simple life with her loving parents. Solaka was ever happy, shiny, and open. However, the two girls were still united in their passion for Man. However, Man was unhappy in living such a boring life in their pen.
           Solaka could not bear the thought of her precious beings being unhappy, so she asked her parents if they could create a larger pen for their precious beings. Her father and mother had grown aged and feeble and had lost their touch in the arts of building and magic. "
           Solaka," said her father, "you and Lukisha know your little beings best and together you can create the most perfect land for your beings."
           So Solaka and Lukisha met together to discuss the ideal world for their beings. "It should be dark and cold to make sure that Man will never forget us," Lukisha insisted. "But they glory in the warmth and light," Solaka insisted. In the end, neither Solaka or Lukisha could compromise and Man suffered. Solaka and Lukisha's father slowly withered away to where the children he made for man were flawed, calloused, imperfect. Their mother could no longer perform the complex magical spells. Because of this, Man had to eat and drink and do other inconveniences that they did not have to do earlier. Man made many pleas for Solaka and Lukisha to compromise. In the end, the pleadings of Man won.
           Eventually Solaka conjured  a cold, but white landscape of ice, and Lukisha made a dark roaring sea. Solaka made day to warm up the cold landscape. Lukisha created night to keep the balance. Solaka made the stars to light up the darkest of nights. Lukisha made the storm, to dampen the day.  Solaka made the fish of the sea, the eagle and the majestic walrus to provide food and supplies for the people. Not to be out done, Lukisha made the whale, sled dog for transportation and the mighty polar bear to keep a little bit of control over the creation of Solaka.. But the girls still quarreled after creating the perfect environment on who had control of Man. They finally settled on 12 months of the year: Three when Lukisha would have control, and night would prevail  three when Solaka would be ruler and there would be no night and in between these times, Lukisha and Solaka would share the time. They created a window from their palace in the sky so they could keep watch and still take care of their ailing parents. Solaka's face can be seen every day in the window, moving east to west to check on her people. And at night Lukisha's white face can be seen in the sky silently governing the people below. In fact the descendents still call when the northern lights dance across the window to the Kingdom of the Sky,  they call it Solaka's scarves, and when the winds howl and the show rides the gusts across the land, Man's descendents call it Lukisha's dance.
           Over the years, Man's descendents figured out how to make igloos to stay warm, boats to conquer the water, and how to cultivate their gifts from the heavens. But they still remember Lukisha and Solaka, the benevolent creators of their world.

The Coon Cosmogony

by McKinzie

    Once, many years ago, there lived a wild pack of Raccoons. They ran all day amongst the stars playing, and running, and racing, until one day as they were traveling they came across a lone Woodchuck who existed only to eat all the stars in the heavens. Surrounding the Woodchuck was a huge expanse of empty space where the Woodchuck had eaten all of the stars. The Raccoons disheveled by the emptiness, as they could not cross the empty space with no stars to step on, and they could not simply make more stars because they would only be eaten again. And so, a young Raccoon and an old Raccoon determined together to create a series of planets that they could use to cross the heavens, but that were too big for the Woodchuck to swallow. They liked the new planets so much that they spread them all over the universe so they would never again have to worry about empty spaces.
    They crossed over all the planets they had created, and passed from one planet some of its dust and dirt and colors, to all of the others. The more they crossed each planet, the more beautiful they became. Soon sounds, sights, and feelings were spreading across the galaxy until certain planets became so great that they could only exist to have been home to some creature.
    And so the next time a Raccoon ran over one of these most beautiful planets, the touch of its paw created life. When the raccoon that did this saw what had happened he was surprised. The Raccoons then realized that they couldn’t cross these most beautiful planets anymore or they would crush all the life that they had created. So they marked that part of the heavens off with a sun so they would know even from far away not to cross that part of the stars.
    And the Raccoons called these spaces with life, where they could not run, Earths, just as they called their burrows in the heavens.
    The Woodchuck was then left to eat stars undisturbed. And he still swallows them today, unnoticed by the Raccoons, who, now without worry, have eyes only for the planets which they have created. But the life upon their Earths have eyes for all, and still feel it every time the Raccoons run too close and shake the Earth, and see it every time the Woodchuck dines and a star disappears.

Exploration Storytelling Project

The exploration of the Americas includes some of the best stories from history.  Your job is to learn the story of one of the explorers and tell it in a way that would be fun and interesting to your peers.  You can choose the mode of storytelling—consider one of the following:

• A children’s picture book
• A comic book chapter
• A short video
• A one-act play
• A song (lyrics and music)
• A travel journal
• A collection of “lost letters”
• A story in the style of another author
• A documentary told through pictures
• A poem

On the due date, you will present your story to the class.  You will also submit a typed report (using Googledocs) responding to the following questions:

1.      What were the motives behind the exploration? Economic motives? Political motives? Social motives? Religious motives?

2.      What areas were explored/discovered?

3.      How did the exploration impact either Native Americans or Africans?  Which specific groups were affected?  (Consider impact in terms of economics, society, politics, religion, and culture.)

4.      What was the explorer’s legacy?

5.      What were some fun facts you discovered about your explorer?

The last page of your report should be a Works Cited page, using MLA guidelines.  You must use at least one primary source and one secondary source.

You may present on any one of the following explorers (Note that the indicated country is the sponsor of exploration, not necessarily the nation of origin.):

• Henry “The Navigator” (Portugal)
• Coronado (Spain)
• Ponce de Leon (Spain)
• Balboa (Spain)
• De Soto (Spain)
• Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (Spain)
• Jacques Cartier (France)
• Jean Ribault (France)
• Henry Hudson (Netherlands)
• Amerigo Vespucci (Italy)
• John Cabot (England)
• Vitus Bering (Russia)
• Leif Ericson (Norway)
• Zheng He (China)