Weekly 2

Konnor Drewen

2/4/011

Is 'Change' a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? (Relate to the origins of art, the agricultural revolution, architecture and urban planning in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.

            Well, in the case of all of those things change could be a good thing or a bad thing. In the origins of art change was definitely a good thing. If you look at ancient art it will show pictures of animals and the people moving with them. Change was a good thing because their surrounding and the places they were staying were always changing. That is because the people of that time always stayed with the animals they hunted if they didn’t they could starve. So change seemed to be a good thing while looking through the first versions of art.

            Through the agricultural revolution I think change could have been a definite bad thing. At that time the people were farming and not moving around as much. Change could mean that the weather is changing and that would be bad. If the weather changed from wet and sunny to dry and sunny then the crops could die and that would not be good. The people of the village would either starve or start stealing from other villages and it would all end badly. So change throughout the agricultural revolution would be a definite bad change.

            In the case of architecture it is a harder one to decide than the others. In some ways it is better for change. Once architecture changed the buildings were most likely safer than they were. I think this because yes, the people who first created these buildings were architecturally minded but they may have not known as much as now. Also now we have computers that help us find out the angles and geographical facts that we need. So in that way change was a good thing.

            Now change in architecture could also be a bad thing. Some people will say that they prefer older versions of architecture. The people that have the most expensive homes will say that their homes were really old. A lot of the time the homes that have been around the longest have a rarer form of architecture.  That architecture must be prized by people because most of people looking for homes will say they want an older home. So in the way that older architecture is wanted change is a bad thing.

            Urban planning in Mesopotamia change was a good thing. It caused the Sumerians to be the first society to create the city itself as a built form. They were proud of this achievement as attested in the Epic of Gilgamesh which opens with a description of Uruk its walls, streets, markets, temples, and gardens. Uruk itself is significant as the center of an urban culture which both colonized and urbanized western Asia. The typical city divided space into residential, mixed use, commercial, and civic spaces. Urban planning caused a lot of great things to happen in Mesopotamia. In this way the change to creating urban planning was a good thing.