Foundations of Civilization

Unit 1 -- Foundations of Civilization.

Learning Targets:

• Understand how scientists, anthropologist, and historians study human origins
• Identify the characteristics of the earliest humans
• Explain what is meant by the domestication of plants and animals and why farming permitted world population to grow and people to live in larger and denser communities
• Analyze the differences between a hunter-gathering way of life and a settled agricultural one
• Discuss how agricultural societies developed around the world
• Describe the ways in which the rate of change accelerated between 10,000 BC and 1000 BC

Final Assessment: Unit test

Day 1 -- Introduction to the concept of Prehistory and the tools used by scientists to study the era before written communication.

• Prehistory Reading
• Khan academy video ( 0:00 - 1:51)
• Prehistory presentation slides

Days 2-3: Textbook reading Ch. 1, Section 1. Complete the following handout and review the following slideshow in preparation for quiz #1 on Friday.

Day 4: After completing a simulation contrasting lives of hunter-gatherers and settled farmers, complete the following handout that accompanies text pages 14-18.

Day 5: Watch the Crash Course video on the Agricultural Revolution and consider these questions:

• There are few, if any, written records from the age of foraging. So how do we know so much about this period?
• What is foraging?
• What does John Green say was one of the most efficient proteins for early human hunters and how did this affect early settlement areas?
• How did the life and health of a foreigner compare to that of a farmer?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of farming?
• Why didn't herding catch on all over the world?
• Why did agriculture begin independently around the world at the same time?
• Why is history not just a series of dates, people, and events but more about processes?

Day 6: Today we are discussing the domestication of plants and animals in the Neolithic age and further examining some of the pros and cons of life as settled farmers versus hunter-gatherers.

Handouts utilized in class can be found at the following URL (Lessons 1 &2): http://worldhistoryforusall.ss.ucla.edu/units/three/panorama/03_panorama.pdf

Day 7: Groupwork in the lab -- researching various elements of civilization -- examples from early civilizations (Indus Valley, Sumer, Shang Dynasty, Mesoamerica, Minoans, etc. Graphic organizer used in class was not graded, it was simply developed for in class discussion.

Day 8: Quiz #2 (Largely rooted in text Chapter 1, Section 2)

Day 9-10: Discussion -- Elements of Civilization. See slideshow below:

Day 10 -11: Review and Exam on the Foundations of Civilization. Study guides were distributed at the onset of the unit.