Key Questions

If we are to learn any wisdom from the past, we have to go there. Lacking a time machine or airfare, the only way we can explore distant times and places is to use primary and secondary sources. To make sure we look at every corner of these other worlds, I've assembled this set of key questions to enrich our journey.The key to learning anything is ASKING QUESTIONS. But what can we ask of the past? Below I've listed some of the most powerful questions yet imagined. We'll seek to discover how each society we study answered them. Students in this class MUST MEMORIZE these questions. Why? Each key embodies a basic area of human study (and they also happen to correspond to many college majors). Once you know and start to use them, you'll discover that the keys are powerful and adjustable. If used properly, they can help you reconstruct a solid understanding of how a society worked. And they can also be applied to societies from any time or place, from the earliest hominins to ourselves. So without further ado, here they are. It's a good idea to memorize them.

1. Politics: Who has power? Who doesn't? Why?

government, leaders, law, police, courts, the military, services etc.

Politics has many sub-disciplines:

• 1a. Domestic Policy: How does a society treat its own people? Why?
• Laws, rights, responsibilities, privileges.
• 1b. Foreign Policy: How does a society treat others? Why?
• Concepts and rules of citizenship or belonging, alliances and enmity with foreign powers
  • 1c. Sociology: How do societies organize themselves?
  • social hierarchies, class systems, social history

1. History: What moments, events, and people shaped and changed the course of the society?
   1. Consider the motivations, actions, and consequences for all those involved - turning points, great achievements, disappointments, catastrophes
2. Economics: How do societies produce, exchange, and distribute goods and services?
3. trade, technology, money, barter, job specialization, wealth distribution, etc.
4. Technology: What kinds of solutions does a society use for its problems?
5. hunger, shelter, security, communication, transportation, entertainment, memory, disease
6. Arts: How and why does a civilization make art? What's the subject, purpose & message?
7. devotion, expression, originality, beauty, the tastes of the wealthy, the window into the soul... painting, writing, sculpture, music, dance, architecture, film, etc.
8. Religion: How do the religious views of a society affect its actions?
9. symbols, rituals, faith, higher powers, holy books, traditions & social order etc.
10. Philosophy: What questions does a society ask?
11. What is real? What is knowledge? What is right? What is the meaning of life? etc. Think of a question that the people in the society would commonly ask and you've got it.
12. Education: How do societies indoctrinate their people?
13. teaching & learning, prepare for careers, skills, preserve culture & social order, promote growth & progress
14. Race & Gender: How does ethnicity and gender affect people within a society?
15. roles, rules, changes, discrimination, methods & motives
16. Geography: How do the climate and resources of the environment affect a society?
17. water, soil, weather, seasonal variation, access to trade routes, flora, fauna, minerals, natural disasters, etc.
18. Literature: How does a society perceive itself and its past, present and future?
19. stories, history, novels, poetry, film, journalism, essay, theater, music, art, opinion, etc.

II. Using the 'Keys' to unlock the wisdom of the past

Once you've memorized the key questions, you're ready to use them to open doors to the past. When I assign you some or all of 'the keys' for homework, your task is to look up the society on two main secondary sources, abc-clio, wikipedia, or whatever resource I've provided to extract and record in your notes THREE SPECIFIC FACTS about how the society 'answered' EVERY key question. The answers must include specific names of people (name, title(s), dates), places, things, events (including the dates), ideas, artworks, or communal practices. No detail, no credit.

Also, make sure you record the source for each piece of information, the name of the article, author, date, etc. You will need to cite it when you write your wisdom from history essays.

Please open this template and copy out the contents, paste them into your doc and put the contents beneath them.

Let's walk through an example of how to do this using abc-clio and some primary sources: If I assigned you to get they keys on ancient Babylonia, the first move is to look them up on abc-clio, obviously using the ancient history database. (Use the modern history one for anything after middle ages, around 1400 c.e.) Once you're there, search for 'Babylonia.' you'd only have to glance at the first page that comes up to spot the name of King Hammurabi (1792-1750 b.c.e.). Having been a famous leader, you could obviously use him as an answer to the political question. One down.

But why stop there? Good deeper by asking the basic questions. Who the heck was this Hammurabi guy? Why's he so famous? Read just a bit about the king and you'll quickly learn about Hammurabi's famous stele with his code of laws from c. 1772 b.c.e. You could use the code as an answer to the domestic policy question and maybe the stele itself as an answer to the arts.

Use the secondary sources to find primary sources, which I find in most cases are more useful and interesting to read than dry encyclopedias. For example, if you google Hammurabi's code and actually read it, you'll be able to get all the other keys. There's all kinds of juicy stuff in there about how poor people got tougher punishments than the rich and how Hammurabi claimed he got all his authority to rule because the god Marduk (also called Bel) talked to him. Bam, you've got sociology and religion! It's so classic that it's classical... figuratively and literally. So get yourself some choice primary source material right here:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/

And guess what? When you learn to use the keys, you're doing the same work that professional historians do. All that stuff you read on abc-clio about Hammurabi's Babylon was inferred by historians who read the code. It's one of the only primary sources we have left.

The way you know you've really used the keys properly is to close your eyes and try to imagine being in the society you're studying. If you can see, hear, feel, and smell it clearly in your mind, you're there. And by the way, writing a day in the life of a person living in a society is one way I like to assess your learning. And if you find that you enjoy this work, you might consider joining the ranks of novelists, academics, screenwriters, playwrights, artists, actors, and filmmakers who do this sort of thing for a living.