Agriculture & Civilization 1
What is agriculture? Where and how did it emerge?
Sample answer: Agriculture = domestication of plants and animals. It emerged independently in many places around the world but did so first in the Fertile Crescent around 12,000 years ago. One theory is that population pressure and changing climates encouraged people to settle down and start growing crops.
What are the main features of agrarian civilizations?
Sample Answer: Agrarian civilizations are large, complex societies based on agriculture. Major features include cities, states (political structures), social hierarchy, taxation, record-keeping, etc.
How did new networks of exchange accelerate collective learning and innovation?
Sample Answer: Collective learning increases when more people are more connected and when networks are more diverse because this leads to more knowledge and information being exchanged. Trade routes like the Silk Roads led to the spread of goods but also the spread of ideas and beliefs.
What was the impact of the Columbian Exchange on people in Africa and the Americas?
Sample Answer: The indigenous population of the Americas was devastated by the impact of diseases brought from Afro-Eurasia as well as military conquest and enslavement from European conquerors. As Europeans established plantations in the Americas, they relied first on enslaved indigenous labor but then turned to enslaved African people as a labor source. The transatlantic slave trade devastated West African societies and led to a drain of wealth and resources from Africa to Europe and European settler societies in the Americas.
What was the Modern Revolution, what caused it, and how did it changed human society?
Sample Answer: The Modern Revolution was a series of economic, political, and social transformations that occurred from around 1750 into the 19th and 20th centuries and created our modern world. It included the Industrial Revolution, political revolutions like the French Revolution and the Latin American revolutions, technological advances, and changes to labor and the social class structure (e.g. farmers becoming wage workers).
What are the main differences between the lifestyles of foragers and the lifestyles of farmers?
Sample Answer: Foragers = lived through hunting and gathering, moved around constantly (nomadic), more equal social structures and less hard work, but also less technology. Farmers = most people were agricultural laborers, more unequal social structures, sedentary (stayed in one place), lived in larger settlements, more risk of disease, but also greater food surpluses and better technology.
What are the main features of a state and how did the first states emerge?
Sample Answer: State = an organized community living under a unified political system. Major features include a territory, a group of elites with political authority, laws, a military, taxation, cities, and a complex economy.
How has disease shaped human history?
Sample Answer: The emergence of cities led to much more disease compared to foraging societies and served as a limit on population growth in agrarian civilizations. The Black Death killed 1/3rd of the population of Europe and led to major disruptions in trade networks and economies in Afro-Eurasia. The Great Dying killed 90% of the indigenous population of the Americas because they didn't have immunity to Afro-Eurasian diseases and made it much easier for the Spanish and Portuguese to colonize the Americas.
What were the positive and negative outcomes of the Columbian Exchange?
Examples of positive impacts: made human diets better and led to population growth overall; increased global networks led to increased collective learning
Examples of negative impacts: the transatlantic slave trade/chattel slavery, the destruction of indigenous American cultures
How did commerce, fossil fuels, and greater interconnection between world zones lead to greater innovation?
Sample Answer: Greater interconnection between the world zones led to a larger global network connecting more potential innovators than ever before. Commerce (trade) led to increased exchange of ideas as well as increased competition which led to greater innovation. Fossil fuels allowed increased energy inputs that made new inventions like the steam engine and increased production of goods possible.
Why did cities represent a new form of complexity?
Sample Answer: Complexity = more diverse, interconnected parts within a system that give rise to emergence properties (characteristics that are greater than the sum of their parts). Cities meant that more people were living together in one area which allowed for greater specialization, therefore greater diversity in work and skills, which allowed for new social features like the emergence of social classes, states, architecture, etc
What does a historian do?
Sample Answer: Historians ask questions about the past that help us to better understand how our present world came to be. They examine evidence such as written documents or artifacts to try to answer those questions.
What were the positive and negative impacts of interconnection in the period 100 BCE - 1450 CE?
Example of positive impact: increased innovation and collective learning
Example of negative impact: spread of disease (e.g. Black Death)
How did the Columbian Exchange shape the global distribution of wealth and power?
Sample Answer: The Columbian Exchange massively increased the relative wealth of European and European settler societies because of the profits from trade and the plantation system. Meanwhile the wealth of West African societies and indigenous American societies was greatly reduced from conquest, enslavement, and the deaths of so many people. The Columbian Exchange marked the shift towards Europe (rather than Asia) as the wealthiest continent for the first time in human history.
What factors caused the Industrial Revolution?
Environmental factors: coal deposits
Social factors: enclosure in Britain (the privatization of common land) led to farmers being pushed into cities and wage work; higher wages in Britain compared to other places of the world created an incentive for labor-saving machinery
Political-economic factors: a powerful banking system and merchant class in Britain led to increased investment; patent laws protected innovations
The role of empire: slavery in the colonies and raw materials from places like India increased wealth in Britain that could be invested in factories
What is specialization and what impact did it have on human societies?
Sample Answer: Specialization = different groups of people developing different skill sets, a division of labor. Specialization increased with agrarian civilizations and the emergence of cities and it allowed for more complexity and collective learning because it allowed for more diverse knowledge to be shared among human beings.
How did world religions first emerge and what impact did they have on human societies?
Sample Answer: World religions emerged as communication and trade networks became larger during the era of agrarian civilizations, allowing belief systems to be exchanged across wide distances. World religions helped to bring order to the larger human communities like cities and states that arose in this period and gave people a common moral code to follow.
What caused the expansion of agrarian civilizations?
Sample Answer: Agrarian civilizations faced overpopulation that led to a need for new land and resources. Additionally, elites wanted more power by taking over more land and resources. Elites often chose military conquest rather than increased taxation on already-existing land because of the fear of rebellion.
How did the Columbian Exchange help lead to the Modern Revolution?
Sample Answer: The Columbian Exchange created the first global network. This increased collective learning and innovation because now more people were connected than ever before. This may have contributed to events like the Scientific Revolution. Additionally, the Columbian Exchange led to European imperialism. In the case of the British empire by the 18th century, this position in global trade networks and access to wealth produced by the colonies would create the capital to make the Industrial Revolution possible, which in turn created our modern world in many ways.
How did the Industrial Revolution change the balance of wealth and power in human society?
Sample Answer: Within societies that industrialized, the wealth gap between the working classes and capitalist class increased. Additionally, the wealth gap increased between industrialized and non-industrialized societies, allowing for industrialized societies to colonize non-industrialized societies (which increased the wealth gap even more). It shifted power from the old "hub zones" of the agrarian era like China, India, and the Middle East towards Europe and European settler societies.
How did writing first emerge and what impact did it have on human societies?
Sample Answer: Writing emerged to keep track of crop inventories and trade as well as for religious or divination purposes. It increased collective learning and made history possible by allowing knowledge and memories to be passed down the generations.
How did gender and social inequality first emerge?
Sample Answer: Gender and social inequality both arose with the emergence of cities and agrarian civilizations. Specialization and surpluses meant that some people could gain more wealth and power than others. Gender inequality emerged because, with agricultural lifestyles, more women were confined to childcare and household work, and also it was necessary to limit women's sexual freedom to ensure proper inheritance of land and property.
BONUS: What are the rules of collective learning?
1) more people + more connection = more collective learning
2) more diversity in a network = more collective learning
3) unequal distribution of information = unequal distribution of power and wealth
BONUS:What was the impact of the Columbian Exchange on collective learning? Were the benefits of that collective learning shared equally or not?
Sample Answer: By creating the first global network, the Columbian Exchange dramatically increased the number of people who were connected through trade, communication, and travel, and these networks were also much more diverse than before. This led to more ideas being exchanged, increasing innovation and collective learning. However, the benefits of this increased collective learning were not really shared equally, because only certain regions of the world (like Europe and European settler societies) really benefitted from them. Also, the death and enslavement of so many Africans and indigenous Americans during the Columbian Exchange led to a huge loss of potential collective learning.
Why did the Modern Revolution lead to such an acceleration in collective learning?
Sample Answer: The Modern Revolution led to increased globalization (i.e. greater global connections through trade, communication, and travel) which created larger networks for ideas and innovations to be exchanged. Industrialization led to rapid technological advances and the rise of the nation-state created the modern education system, allowing more people to become literate and access information than ever before.