Unit Outline
Driving Question: What are the positive and negative impacts of interconnection?
Early humans had pretty small social networks. At most, they probably met only a couple hundred people who probably all lived very similar lives to their own. As people started farming, these networks got larger. People were increasingly specialised in their work and trade. Populations in cities got larger. Trade reached across longer distances, bringing together people with very different lives and ways of thinking. All of this sped up the process of collective learning. It's not that humans necessarily got smarter. There were simply more of them, and they got better at sharing information. We developed ways to communicate in the form of writing, and eventually we were able to print large quantities of what we'd written. Our means of transportation became more sophisticated and included domesticated animals, ships, and systems of roads that made it easier to cover long distances.
Early humans had pretty small social networks. At most, they probably met only a couple hundred people who probably all lived very similar lives to their own. As people started farming, these networks got larger. People were increasingly specialised in their work and trade. Populations in cities got larger. Trade reached across longer distances, bringing together people with very different lives and ways of thinking. All of this sped up the process of collective learning. It's not that humans necessarily got smarter. There were simply more of them, and they got better at sharing information. We developed ways to communicate in the form of writing, and eventually we were able to print large quantities of what we'd written. Our means of transportation became more sophisticated and included domesticated animals, ships, and systems of roads that made it easier to cover long distances.
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8.0 - ExpansionThis first lesson analyses what propelled the expansion and interconnection of agrarian civilisations and examines how the four world zones reacted to this increasing interconnection.
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8.1 - Exploration & InterconnectionThis lesson explores how new networks of exchange accelerated collective learning and innovation across the world.
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8.2 - The Columbian ExchangeThis lesson looks at the short and long-term impacts of the Columbian exchange and examines the significance of the Atlantic Slave Trade.
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8.3 - Commerce & Collective LearningThis final lesson explains how new networks of exchange accelerated collective learning.
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