In the documents of chapter two, the question that I chose to respond to was, "How Does the Epic of Gilgamesh portray the gods and their relationship to humankind?" (93). In short, the gods in the Epic of Gilgamesh are portrayed as spiteful and very unsympathetic of the human race, much like the Roman gods and goddesses. The excerpt clearly states that, "The gods agreed to exterminate mankind" (95). In their attempt to destroy the humans, the gods made their own lives miserable and they created circumstances that were negative, even for themselves. From this excerpt I can very easily assume that the gods and the people had a very negative relationship wherein the gods saw the people as more of a burden than anything else.

In chapter two, i think that the most interesting part of the chapter was the section on the erosion of equality. I think it is interesting that the hierarchies of class and gender were pinned as the two top causes of inequality in ancient societies. I thought it was interesting because it still stands to be true today in modern society. The book says, "Upper classes everywhere enjoyed great wealth in land or salaries, were able to avoid physical labor, had the finest of everything, and occupied the top positions in political, military, and religious life" (p.71). This caught my eye because other than the part about religious positions this is extremely true. In modern society, the 1% consists mostly of political figures and CEOs that control 90% of America's wealth and are, therefore, able to avoid massive amounts of work that they, themselves, should be doing; instead, they pay the rest of the poorer population to do this work for them. I also thought the hierarchies of gender was interesting because, as a woman, I can strongly identify with the fact that we live in a male-dominant society wherein women are oppressed. The book says that women were "largely limited to the home" which still stands to be for the most part true. It is interesting to see that while we have progressed as a society, combatting inequalities by both class and gender, we have not actually come too far.

Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what these blog posts are supposed to consist of. Today I read the remainder of Chapter One of Ways of the World.  The chapter focused almost entirely on agriculture, which was not, personally, very interesting. The chapter focused on the emigration of the homo sapiens from Africa into the surrounding areas and them learning to cultivate and domesticate plants and animals. While these developments are very impressive and a grand achievement that have lead to the life we are able to live today, they are not very interesting to read about. The most interesting part of the reading, in my opinion, was the portion that focused on Nissa's account of Paleolithic people and how Hunters and Gatherers live. I thought it was interesting because instead of being a subjective account of how an anthropologist thinks the Paleolithic people lived, Nissa's account is almost a direct account of how they lived in the past as she has lived the same way as they did for the entire duration of her life. I especially thought that it was interesting when she talked about marriage in her community. I thought it was interesting because it was quite different to marriage in our own society, but at the same time it was still quite similar. I thought it was interesting that the women were able to leave their husbands as they saw fit, because while it is legally permitted in today's society, it is still extremely frowned upon. There were other similarities and differences (such as building the "marriage hut"), but that was the one that was, personally, the most striking.

First post is officially done!