Fire in the Wheel

Prior to this week, I knew of some significance and various forms of usages of fire. However, I never before thought about where and when and who used it first. Apparently, since after the scientific revolution or the renaissance, we, today’s men, have been taking a lot of things for granted. Just like the prehistoric men, we use fire in many aspects of our daily life, but the prehistoric men must have had found it more meaningful, more useful, and probably more amazing to their way of life. To them, it fire was a mean for survival against nature itself, perhaps the only way to cook raw food that eventually contribute in their physical transformation particularly their teeth and ultimately their faces. They used fire to protect their shelters against animals and to keep them warmed during cold seasons or as needed. There have been many proofs found in various parts of the world that fire and/or its use was controlled by prehistoric men in their time as they migrated around. In the invention of wheel, one can conceive the very nature of man at best. It is very similar to the way the evolution of man is explained. The idea was to simply move heavy objects by use of something round and some logs that were already being used for that purpose. As the plan started to work, new ideas were evolved. They modified the logs and the round thing to an actual wheel with holes and logs to an axle. From there, we had the first cart(s). More improvements lead to the first wheeled chariot in Sumeria to our today’s sophisticated mass transportation machines that require wheels.
Between the eras of 4100-3000 BCE, almost all the major civilizations had felt the need for some written form of communication. When looking at the way we, westerners, write today and where writing originated from and the collective ideas and creativities that were used, it is safe to ambiguously say that we have come a long way. In this invention, men started with themselves. They used symbols that enumerate their own possessions or wealth, their body parts, animals, and objects of nature to create consonantal sounds, vowels, syllabic systems, and ultimately an ALPHABET that later extended to the rest of world. They went from pictographic representation to ideographic interpretation and sounds. As a pre-teacher intern, it is very essential to read and reflect on such materials because they teach or remind me of things that I had little or no prior knowledge of. In any case, the information will help in preparing and enhancing the skills set that I need to become a good and an effective instructor. And in the context of transformation, these materials, especially those of histories and inventions, clearly show the impact of change in our society that I can utilize to bring change in classroom and /or in a child’s life.