Writing my first test...

Tonight I finished up my 1st test. It is a slightly strange unit - but aren't all units titled Introductions to History. That is pretty much a license to teach whatever you want, and I taught stuff I wanted to and didn't want to. But I have to say, at least I have taught some stuff. My students will hopefully understand the fundamental role in farming in providing a surplus of food that enabled people to focus on other tasks, like learning how to shave their bodies. Here is the study guide:

Study Guide Unit 1

Vocabulary: 

fact 

opinion 

artifact 

evidence 

famine 

epidemic

bias 

generalization 

primary source 

secondary source 

social class 

domestication

chronology 

primate 

hominid 

nomads

surplus 

job specialization

raw materials

“cargo” 

theory 

natural resources 

geographic luck 

east-west axis

civilization 

institution

scribes

Bronze Age

ziggurat

cuneiform

Geography: Be able to find these places on a map.

Africa, Papua New Guinea, Europe, Middle East, Asia, “Eurasia”

Key Concepts:

Understand the few key ways in which Australopithecines were different from chimpanzees. What was the most significant way in which Australopithecines & Homo habilis began to more resemble modern humans? 

Homo erectus - they migrated down to Southern Africa and out of Africa throughout Asia all the way to China and Indonesia. Understand how Homo erectus began to more resemble modern humans in regards to diet, the use of tools and the craftsmanship to make them, and the relationship between these advancements and their larger brain size. 

Neanderthals - Know the approximate time frame that Neanderthals lived, that they lived at the same time as modern homo sapiens, but are not our direct descendants. Understand how Neanderthals were similar yet different from modern humans physically. Also, you should know the significance of their burial rituals and customs.

Homo sapiens sapiens - these are modern humans. Cro-magnons were one group that lived around Europe. They were the ones with the cave art. Know about this art - what it depicted, and what it might have meant. Most important - technologically, what skills enabled Homo sapiens to migrate throughout the world and populate every continent? 

Know about the hunter-gatherer (nomadic) lifestyle - how they found food, why they had to migrate, why they had small families, what factors prompted hunter-gatherers to first experiment with agriculture. (Mini ice age made it more difficult to find food.)

Know what domestication means. How did domestication change the nature of plants and animals? How did early farming villages and communities develop? How did people have the ability to work on things other than finding food?

The first farming communities all developed around the approximate time in history and around large rivers - why? How did farming create new needs for technology? What were some of the first technological advances? (tools to help farm, writing to record agriculture patterns etc.) 

What were the effects of the Agricultural (Neolithic) Revolution? Why would it be considered a “revolution”?

Guns Germs & Steel - know who Dr. Jared Diamond was, what Yali’s question was, and what Dr. Diamond did to answer Yali’s question (a.k.a. to discover the “roots of inequality”?) What did Yali mean by the term “cargo”?

Understand the concept of “geographical luck”. The geographical factors are the raw materials (crops and animals) that nature provides a certain location. Dr. Diamond contends the Fertile Crescent is extremely “lucky” - why? Papua New Guinea was not geographically lucky - why? (They had difficult crops that provided little nutrition, no animals to work the land so they had to do all the work themselves.)

Dr. Diamond argues that the crops, animals, technology, and overall advantage spread from the Fertile Crescent on an “east-west axis” along the latitudinal lines. Why was it harder for these advantages to spread on a north-south axis? 

The concept of food surplus is of central importance to this entire unit of study. How did farmers get a food surplus, and what did it enable them to do? How did food surplus lead to the development of tools? How did the development of tools lead to cities?

What are the components to a civilization? (advanced cities, specialized workers, complex institutions, record keeping, advanced technology)

Why were governments necessary? How did trade develop? What are the agricultural roots of civilization?