Social Studies: My Research Process and Presentation

My Research Process and Presentation:

• My part was presenting of the collapse of the Mongol Empire. I learned that my part was hard to research since it is very unclear and complicated. There were many tiny factors that led to the fall that it was hard to say all of them. Each factor had a long history to it and that would a long time to explain. In the end, I just pick some main factors and it turned out to work well. One of the main factors was the Battle of Marj-al Saffar. This war made quite some changes to the empire. The Yuan dynasty being taken over by the Ming dynasty also had quite some effects. Other factors included the deaths of some important leaders. 

• The Mongol empire was similar to Medeviel Europe because they focused on equality. They are known for treating everyone justly and equally. Even the slaves were treated well. Same applied to the Mongol women. Even though in some cases they were treated less, the Mongol women weren't treated harshly, they were just considered lower than the men. After all, the women also contributed to the empire. They kept the economy running while the men were out being warriors. In fact, they held one of the most highest positions in the religion. There were also some female rulers. One of them was Mandhuhai. She fought to unite the Mongol kingdom. Another similarity was the expansion of the empires. Both Medeviel Europe and the Mongol Empire expanded because of trading. In fact, it was the main factor to the expansion of Medeviel Europe. They got to know new places and take over them. It was unsafe to travel along the Silk road because people had planned attacks and but still slowly the Mongol Empire took over more and more land. This shows that the Silk road had contributions to both the empires, changed and helped it grow to become successful.

• Our empire was different compared to other empires because the collapse of the Ottoman empire was quite simple. A Turkish military officer named Mustafa Kemal Ataturk dethroned the sultan of the Ottoman caliphates. He established the modern state of Turkey. Whereas, the collapse of the Mongol empire was not that simple. It consisted of many parts that led to the fall as I explained above. Another unlike element between the empire were the main leaders. In the Tang dynasty, the emperor Yizong raised money and kept it to himself when there were natural disasters. This shows that he was not kind, but greedy.The people were quite mad and he was taken over. Whereas in the Mongolian Empire, the emperors were loyal and address the rights and needs of the people which led to not that many complaints by the people. Genghis Khan's says, "If my body dies, let my body die, but do not let my country die." This shows that he really cared for his people and his country and would not let them down.

• The hardest part of this project was finding the information in a limited amount of time. As I said before, the information was very unclear on the internet and that made it even harder. I had to look into it more deeply and with the help of  Mr.Boyd and my brother, I was able to understand it better. Another difficulty for me was going up there and presenting. My heart was beating out loud. Luckily, it was all good in the end. If I were doing this project again, I would dedicate more time to practice memorizing my part. I would also try doing more of improvising. 

• What I learned when doing this project is that I need resources/ websites with information at my reading level. Most of the websites like Wikipedia had very professional writing done by people with higher reading and levels. There were not many websites for kids. So, I really needed someone's help to understand it better. I can apply this in the future by using the information that I learned about the Mongol empire to compare and contrast it with other empires that we learn about.