Day 13: Monday, July 29, 2013

Post date: Jul 29, 2013 2:32:13 AM

Essential Questions:

1) What is collective learning? Why is this a threshold?

2) What are the characteristics of a hunter-gatherer society?

3) To what extent can the conclusions about these societies be considered valid from the evidence?

4) What makes humans human?

After we took our long quiz on the factors of the world and universe that led to Homo sapiens emerging and surviving, we talked about collective learning (for HW, you read Christian's article on Collective Learning Part 1: Using Language to Share and Build Knowledge). For supplemental information on Collective Learning, you can watch this Khan Academy video about the topic.

We watched the Unit 6 Main Lecture video entitled "What Makes Humans Different" (Video: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). We also watched the Unit 6 Main Lecture entitled "How did the First Humans Live?" (Video: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). For supplemental information, here's an article about life in a foraging society, an interesting video showing how exactly one can make stone tools, and a link to explore the caves of Lascaux. Here is a card detailing Threshold 6, the emergence of Homo sapiens and collective learning.

For this week, you already read

1. Collective Learning Part 1: Using Language to Share and Build Knowledge
2. Stokes-Brown, Big History, Chapter 4 (p. 57-71)
3. Christian, Maps of Time, Chapter 7 (p. 185-190)

For HW:

1. Your Little Big History annotated bibliographies are due on Wednesday, July 31st.
2. All sources should be presented to us and approved tomorrow.
3. Read and annotate Stokes Brown, Chapter 5, pages 75-93. (you only have half of this printed in your packet)
4. Read and annotate Collective Learning Part 2: Agriculture and the Power of Networks.
5. Read and annotate Collective Learning Part 3: Feedback Cycles and Geography.
6. (For Thursday's seminar) Read and annotate Marshall Sahlins, "The Original Affluent Society" pages 1-5.

Lastly, here are Little Big History documents:

• The assignment document, detailing steps and due dates
• The initial topic graphic organizer
• The narrowing topic graphic organizer
• Little Big History Thresholds Graphic Organizer
• Here is an anchor for the annotated bibliography.
• Here is the graphic organizer for the annotated bibliography (due Wed, July 31)
• This is a guide to different kinds of sources and how to cite them for your bibliography.
• Here is a guide to footnotes (what they are and how to use them)
• A guide to JSTOR and how to log in and search for articles
• An initial list of possible text sources you can use for the project if you're feeling stuck
• A graphic organizer to help you write your conclusion to the LBH project.
• Here is the Little Big History rubric for 2013, off of which you will be assessed.