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| When
discussing the historical significance of resources in ancient culture,
one cannot help but see many different categories of resources. By definition
resources are the total means available for economic and political development.
However it is important to extended past the limits of these definitions
and see that there are resources of all kinds. There are food, labor,
power, and intellectual resources. There were also many important historical
figures who used these resources to their maximum capabilities. A few
examples of these figures are Pliny the Younger, Pericles, Hammurabi
and Augustus Caesar. |
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By Ali Kappes |
Campus Kitchens is a program based
the labor of its volunteers. Theses people play a huge part
in preparing the food and delivering it; with out this coordination
and willingness these services would not be provided. This basic
formula for organizing and performing labor in order to accomplish
a common goal is not a new concept; rather, it has been around
since the beginning of time.
In History 101 you begin to realize that most everyone in history
utilized labor as a resource to carry out an action or project.
One example of a leader who used labor to accomplish a goal
was Hatshepsut, an Egyptian pharaoh who was really a woman but
wanted to be remembered as a strong man. She used here servants
to build obelisks in her name to show her power. Another leader
who believed in the labor of his men was Pericles, a Greek general
who fought in the Peloponnesian wars. He was quoted on saying,
“Trees, though they are cut and lopped, grow up again
quickly, but if men are destroyed, it is not easy to get them
again.” Campus Kitchens runs under the same aspect, that
volunteers are wonderful and that they make this project possible.
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By Katie Winter |
| Many
important historical figures are important because of the positions
of power that they held and how they used that power. Power as
a resource is not easily defined. The power that many kings and
other political leaders had from their high status in society
gave them a great advantage to make significant accomplishments
for their civilizations. Some of the largest obstacles were removed
from their path. They did not need to seek approval from anyone
because no one governed over them. These leaders had the ability
to make the changes that were either in their best interest or
in the best interest of the people they were governing. Power
allowed Pericles, the great leader of ancient Athens Greece to
transfer the treasury of the Delian League, a confederacy designed
to protect Greece from Persian attacks, to Athens, to build a
great naval defense system and to build the Parthenon, a magnificent
place for religious rituals. If he had not been in a position
of power these crucial additions to Athens may have never come
to pass. |
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By Maria Power
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Throughout
history there is an evident distribution of resources, however,
when someone mentions “distribution of resources”
it is often thought as the distribution of money and food only.
Yet, there are more aspects that constitute our lives, and in
fact could be considered even more important than food or money.
What is being referred to, is the intellectual resource, the distribution
of information and/or knowledge. How else would we know about
the ancient rulers in Rome, or even our grandparents’ lives,
if it was not for the sharing of such important information? The
distribution of food, money and other resources seems very important
at the time, but when we look back in time, there is a better
appreciation or criticism of the way the information was passed
on and how we know what we know.
An example of the distribution of information as a resource
is Pliny the
Younger. As part of my introduction to my paper “Pliny
the Younger”, you can
see how the distribution of the intellectual resource of information
is not as
simple as telling a story to a friend. For a story to be considered
an
intellectual resource or what we call “history”,
it has to be written by
certain people, in certain situations. Usually these situations
involve
wealthy white men. It is not often that we hear about a piece
of literature
written by a black poor woman from the ancient world. This might
also be
because of the lack of education given to minorities and women,
which brings
us to another issue of resources, which is not relevant to this
topic.
Here is the excerpt from “Pliny the Younger”
to which I was referring to earlier:
“Even though Pliny did
not do anything spectacular, he had the right
characteristics to provide important information on a not-well
known period of
Rome; his writings, mainly letters, hold important information
on very
different aspects of Roman life. Pliny’s background, his
public life, and most
important of all, his power as a member of the elite, and the
use of this
power to write, are essential for the distribution of information
about his
time, mainly about major events that happened, and the doings
that occurred
during this time.”
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