City-States

Today we continued our discussion regarding the Fertile Crescent. We talked about the physical features present in and around Mesopotamia. We also focused on the area surrounding the Fertile Crescent and the reasons why those areas were so hard to live in. Finally, students were given time in class to complete their vocabulary sheets which will be collected at the start of class tomorrow.

It has come to my attention that students are struggling with the concept of a city-state. It really is an unusual concept to grasp and I am not surprised that many are having a hard time understanding the concept. We will talk more about this in class tomorrow, but I will also take some time to try and explain here on the blog.

A city-state is like a very small country, with just one city in it. Basically, it is self-governing and there are no higher levels of government above it (it runs solely on the the local level). There are actually some city-states that exist in the world today: Vatican City, Singapore, and Monaco are all examples. In my opinion, those are the only true city-states. There are arguments which could be made for more, but I don't think that they are true city-states. The closest to a city-state that we have in the United States is Washington D.C., but that is considered a federally-administered city which means that there are aspects of it which fall under the authority of our national government.

Confused yet? Post more questions or anything else at all...