Day 15: Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Post date: Jul 31, 2013 5:06:08 PM

Essential Questions:

1) What innovations allowed for increased population density?

2) What institutions are products of increased population density?

3) How does a Big History perspective help us notice larger trends in the development of cities?

Today, we looked at Cities. First, here is the card detailing Threshold 7 of Big History: agriculture and the development of cities. We watched the Unit 7 Main Lecture entitled "Where and Why did the First Cities Appear?" (Video: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). For more information on the need for agrarian civilizations to expand, watch this video.

We split into groups and looked at a series of articles written by Stokes Brown about early agrarian civilizations. Here is the introduction (that you read for HW). Here are the separate articles on the civilizations: Australian Aborginial, East Asia, Greco-Roman, Jericho, Mesoamerica, Uruk.

For HW,

1. Study for a quiz on cities and agrarian civilizations tomorrow
2. Please prep for seminar on the questions and texts, below.

Seminar Questions:

1. Stokes Brown says that prehistorians are convinced that homo sapiens from 35,000 years ago are the same as us with the full brain power of modern people. Using the earliest hunter gatherers as your lens, what makes humans human?
2. What are the characteristics of a hunter-gatherer society? To what extent was the hunter-gatherer society considered the “original affluent society”?
3. To what extent did the Agricultural Revolution and the development of cities improve the lives of humans?
4. Using the 20th century as a lens, to what extent is collective learning beneficial?

Seminar Texts

1. Stokes-Brown, Big History, Chapter 4 (pages. 57-71)
2. Stokes Brown, Big History, Chapter 5 (pages 75-93)
3. Christian, Maps of Time, Chapter 7 (p. 185-190)
4. Marshall Sahlins, "The Original Affluent Society" pages 1-5
5. Collective Learning Part 1: Using Language to Share and Build Knowledge
6. Collective Learning Part 2: Agriculture and the Power of Networks
7. Collective Learning Part 3: Feedback Cycles and Geography
8. Stokes Brown, "Agrarian Civilizations": Introduction, Australian Aborginial, East Asia, Greco-Roman, Jericho, Mesoamerica, Uruk (use only the introduction and the one you read in class - the rest are extra)

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.