World History for Us Allbig Era 5 - Panorama Unit

World History for Us AllBig Era 5 - Panorama Unit

Big Era Five

Patterns of Interregional Unity

300-1500 CE

Panorama Teaching Unit

Patterns of Interregional Unity

300-1500 CE

PowerPoint Overview Presentation

Patterns of Interregional Unity

Table of Contents

Why this unit?

This teaching unit will help students understand and appreciate the many types of interactions that took place among the world’s peoples during the period 300-1500 CE. While many teachers and students are familiar with the histories and contributions of individual civilizations and regions, traditional instructional materials provide few opportunities to link and compare developments that connected societies across regions and around the world. This unit provides an overview of several important varieties of change. Students will get a “big picture” of the rise and fall of empires and states. They will learn how world population changed during this era. They will view examples of cultural exchanges involving trade, migrations, religious expansion, transfer of knowledge, and diffusion of inventions and crops. These exchanges all contributed in one way or another to the speedup of technological, cultural, political, and economic change in the world.

This unit leads teachers and students to appreciate the cross-cultural exchanges that preceded and laid the groundwork for scientific, technological, and other developments often incorrectly assumed to have originated only in Europe. Cultural achievements typically associated only with one particular civilization or another are presented in the larger context of dynamic interrelations among diverse peoples.

Unit objectives

Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1. Analyze connections between demographic change, migrations, trade, and empire-building, on one hand, and the intensification of cultural exchanges among human societies, on the other, between 300 and 1500 CE.
2. Give examples of exchanges that took place in the political, economic, technological, scientific, and cultural spheres, 300-1500 CE.
3. Assess the effects of some of the important cultural exchanges that took place during this era.

Time and materials

• Butcher paper
• Black markers for large writing
• Crayons or transparent water-based paint

Time devoted to this unit may vary depending on the number of lessons taught and class time spent on each. Time needed might range anywhere from 60 to 400 minutes.

Authors

Sharon Cohen teaches world history at SpringbrookHigh School in Silver Spring, Maryland. She is a member of the Advanced Placement World History Test Development Committee and a founding member of the editorial board for World History Connected: The EJournal of Learning and Teaching. She joined the World History for Us All development team in 2002.

Susan Douglass is Principal Researcher and Analyst for the Council on Islamic Education, Fountain Valley, CA, and author of numerous teaching units and books on Islam and world history. In 2002, she edited World Eras, Vol. 2, Rise and Spread of Islam (Gale).She joined the World History for Us All development team in 2001.

Introductory Activity: Using the PowerPoint Overview Presentation

Activity 1: How to use the PowerPoint Overview Presentation format

Students take notes from the PowerPoint Overview Presentation regarding the four major factors that increased cultural exchange and helped form patterns of interregional unity from 300 to 1500 CE.Students can use the table in Student Handout 0.1to record questions they have about the information from the presentation slides.

Students discuss in small groups or as a whole class the questions they raised. If students ask questions that will be addressed in later lessons, the teachershould compliment them by letting them know that they are thinking like historians and that the questions they asked will be answered in the next few lessons.

The teacher may also project the presentation to the whole class on the computer or wall screen, stopping at each slide to help students record the information in the chart. Students are encouraged to write their questions in the third column and to share their questions as the slide is viewed.

The teacher shows students the outline for the subsequent lessons and asks them to match their questions with the lesson outline. If the students’ questions are not addressed in the lessons, the teacher can create lessons to answer those questions, or encourage students to do independent research.

Activity 2: How to use a printed version of the PowerPoint Overview Presentation:

The teacher distributes copies of the PowerPoint Overview Presentation slides to students in small groups.Students use the slides to record the evidence of the four major factors that increased cultural exchange and created patterns of interregional unity from 300 to 1500. They should record their answers in Student Handout 0.2.

As students write down the information from the slides they should alsorecord questions they have about the evidence. Students also write down questions they might like to ask people represented by images in the slides.

Tell students to discuss the questions they raised in small groups or ask students to share their questions as a whole class. If the slide presentation is being used as a preview to the unit, the teacher may tell students that the subsequent lessons will address their questions. If the slide presentation is used as a review of the era, then the teacher may use some student questionsas an assessment.

Introductory Activity

Student Handout 0.1—PowerPoint Overview Presentation

Introductory Activity

Student Handout 0.2—PowerPoint Overview Presentation

Lesson 1Population and Migration

Graph Interpretation

PowerPoint Overview Presentation Slides 8 and 10 show historians’ estimates of world population figures for Big Era Five. Ask students how demographers get data on local, national, and world population during our own era. How do historians gather evidence of population in the recent and distant past? What documentary evidence might be available for ancient times, and how accurate might that data be? Which groups in a society were most likely to be counted or not counted?(Some of the historical evidence onthese questions may be found in imperial tax surveys, chronicles of cities, and geographers’ and travelers’ accounts.)

What other methods might demographers use to estimate past populations? (These would includestatistical extrapolation from known evidence and information on fertility.)In small groups or as a class, discuss the population trends for each century, over a500-year period, a 1000-year period, and the wholeperiodof Big Era Five. Ask students to draw upon prior knowledge to make hypotheses about the probable causes of population growth or decline. How might invasions, trade, and the rise and fall of empires have affectedpopulation? (For example, there was a major decline in the population of Afroeurasia from 200-600 CE, but then population grew again. What factors might explain that trend?)

Migration

Using the migration map given on slide 16 in the PowerPoint Overview Presentation, identify the groups indicated and associate them with geographic regions of origin and destination. Many major migrations occurred during Big Era Five, which are merely suggested by the map. During your class’s study of this era, assign students to list important migratory movements and the approximate beginning and ending dates. Discuss or write about conditions that gave rise to migrations. (These might includeshifts in pastoralism, drought, trade, pilgrimage, invasion, population growth, and the“bumper car effect” of one migrating group on another.) By what means did various groups travel? What evidence of transport technology is available? (See the seafaring vessels shown on the map and investigate types of animals, harnesses, and vehicles used intransport.)How have peoples expressed their migrations culturally? What evidence can be found that newcomers dominated others already living in a region or that the newcomers assimilated to the existing society? (Categories here might include language, religion, cookery, dress, music, visual arts, architecture, and military technology.)

Lesson 2States and Empires

Part One

Teacher Notes

Students will have prior knowledge of some, though not all of the states and empires that were prominent between 300 and 1500 CE. This lesson will help students learn or review the names, locations, and duration of the major states and empires of the era. Students will discover where states and empires have existed in a single region. This raises questions about historical succession. The lesson should prompt students to ask questions about why one empire replaced another or why most empires in the era tended to be located in particular areas of the world (for example, China but not Australia, the Mediterranean region but not Canada).

Lesson Procedure

Using the political maps on the PowerPoint Overview Presentation slides 20-23, assess students’ prior knowledge of what political maps signify and what symbols (for example, shading) are used to indicate the territory that specific states or empires ruled.

Drawing on their prior knowledge, students should construct maps on blank pieces of paper that show the major states and empires that existed in 1500 for the Americas and in 600, 800, 1237, and 1400 CE for Afroeurasia. It may take students ten to fifteen minutes to create a north-south-east-west orientation, sketch an outline of the continents, and record the location of the major states and empires from memory.Tell students that they will not be graded on the correctness of the continent shapes orthe location of the states and empires.

While students are making their maps, the teacher should give positive feedback of students’ accomplishments. For example, “As a group, you know quite a bit about which states and empires existed from 300 to 1500 CE.” Then, tell them that the lesson will help them learn or relearn what states and empires were prominent during the era.Organize students in pairs or small groups to transfer information from a series of maps into a simple chart with columns for the names of states and empires, the regions they dominated, and the duration of their political control (see Student Handout 2.1). Tell students that they can use the table and the maps to study for aquiz.Ask students to discuss how political control of a region for a period of time might have affected economic life, cultural traditions and values, religion, and style of government.

Extensionactivity

Ask more advanced students why they may remember certain states or empires rather than others. Why have some empires, the Roman empirefor example, received more attention than others in textbooks, movies, television, and literature? Students who have attended schools outside the U.S. may contribute their own experienceof gaining knowledge about empires of the past.For example, students might reportthat empires they learned about in their school in the country they came from was different from the ones that most students know about.

Lesson 2

Student Handout 2.1—States and Empires

Part Two

Have students use the maps indicated inPart One to trace historical succession for states and empires in Big Era Five. Have the class use the Student Handoutsand activities below to discuss the following two questions:

• Which empires and states existed in the same regions?
• What geographical factors might have made some regions more favorable than others for the development of states?

Using the climate and vegetation maps (Student Handouts 2.2 and 2.3),have students correlate them with the political maps in order to find out what physical regions and topographical features were encompassed by various states and empires.

Ask students also to consider how a map might be designed to show that the borders of empires expanded and contracted over time and that they were fuzzy and fluid, not sharp and fixed. How might students use computers to design maps that show how empires changed over time?

As an extension activity, scan relevant chapters in the textbook used in class to identify which states and empires get more coverage than others. Discuss what factors might determine how much coverage an empire gets in a textbook. What criteria might textbook authors use to determine which states and empires receive the most attention? Teacher and students might also discuss this issue using the National Standards for World History or state/local content standards.

Assessment: Twister “Find the Empire” Political Geography Game

This activity is designed to put some dynamism into the exercise of memorizing location and time period (historical succession) of states and empires. It is especially appropriate for Big Era Five, when political change was quite rapid.

Students work in small groups to create large maps of the hemispheres, with states and empires in the regions outlined and labeled for each of the time periods shown in the PowerPoint Overview Presentation slides 22-23.Each group reproduces the maps sized large enough so that all members of the group can stand on their map. Have them use colored markers or crayons to shade in the major states and empires in the locations where they belong.

Students tape the big maps of the states and empires to the floor of the classroom. Students then stand in a circle around the maps, either around each individual map or around the group of maps. Then, the teacher calls out a name of a state or empire, and students identify the correct time period map. They also locate the state or empire by placing one hand or one foot on the correct shaded area, taking a maximum of ten seconds to act. The teacher calls out another name of a state or empire, and another student puts a hand or a foot on the correct spot.The winner is the first player who identifies four states or empires by placing all four limbs on the map at once.

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World History for Us AllBig Era 5 - Panorama Unit

Lesson 2

Student Handout 2.2—States and Empires

Map: ©Houghton Mifflin Co.

Lesson 2

Student Handout 2.3—States and Empires

Map: ©Houghton Mifflin Co.

Lesson 3
Trade and Transfers of Products and Technology

The following activities are intended to get students thinking about the transfer of knowledge, technology, and products as a hallmark of Big Era Five.

Procedures

First, assess students’ prior knowledge of map symbols used to indicate routes and places connected with trade during specific historical periods. Using a trade route map in a textbook or other source, ask students to:

• List ten cities through which trade routes passed.

• List all the major seas and oceans that trade routes crossed.
• List geographic regions (e.g., West Africa, Southwest Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Inner Eurasia) that were connected by trade routes with other regions.
• List geographic areas that may have been only infrequently connected by trade routes to other regions, or never connected at all.

In groups of five or six, have students use trade route mapsto discuss the following questions, filling in the chart of technologies, goods, and ideas (Student Handout 3.1). A trade route map may found on slide 27 of the PowerPoint Overview Presentation for this era. Other maps may be found in Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, Vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 75, or in Francis Robinson, ed., Cambridge Illustrated History of the Islamic World (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996), 126.

• Which trade goods may have moved within regional networks and which ones may havebeen traded on long-distance routes? (Bulk, perishable, and relatively cheap goods locally or regionally; light-weight, precious, prestigious, and expensive goods onlong-distance routes.)
• Which crops or resources were particular goods made from, and what technologies were needed to process or manufacture them? (Cotton, metals, clay, dyestuffs, wood, precious stones.)
• What kinds of people or groups might have transferred these items within or between regional networks during Big Era Five? (Merchants, pilgrims, soldiers, migrant farmers, pastoral nomads,and itinerant scholars.)
• Give examples of items that were widely distributed across Afroeurasia during this period. (Paper, silk, cotton, gunpowder, stirrup.) What geographic factors might have caused some items to be desirable in specific regions? (Arid lands need irrigation devices, areas affected by disease need medicines and medical techniques, maritime routes need useful transport technology.)
• What factors in specific regions may have facilitated or motivated people to trade and travel during Big Era Five?(Opportunities for income and profit, religious pilgrimage, invasion, flight from drought or flooding, governments present to maintain and protect routes, andgrowth of cities.)
• As a class, discuss what factors might have facilitated the movement of some items within specific regions? Across regions? Across Afroeurasia? (Usefulness of new inventions, culture-specific goods in demand like incense for religious rituals, fibers such as cotton, linen, furs and wool suitable for specific climates, books and manuscripts for religious use.)
• How did increases in regional or hemispheric population affect the transfer of crops, trade goods, technologies, andideas? (It created a demand for goods, increased the available labor force, caused urbanization, or broughtmore people into contact with one another.)
• What kinds of places were involved in the transfer of goods, ideas, crops, and technologies across the hemisphere? (Permanent and seasonal markets, urban bazaars, royal courts, libraries, universities, caravansaries, monasteries, landowners’ estates, castles, route junctions, andriver crossing-points.)
• How did the introduction of specific technologies during Big Era Five affect societies that received them? What evidence might be found to show that an item was accepted, modified, or rejected?
• To include the Americas in this activity, list items that were traded among indigenous American groups(Turquoise, mica, gold, silver, shell). Discuss as a class what might make it difficult for historians to create maps of trade networks in the Americas for Big Era Five? (Lack of written records, disappearance of some groups after1500 CE, loss of languages,and incompleteness of archaeological record.)

Assessment