World History Origins Course Overview
WORLD HISTORY ORIGINS COURSE OVERVIEWOER Project: World History Origins (WH Origins), is a dynamic high-school history course. Easily aligned to your state’s social studies standards, this course provides teachers with the tools to turn every student into a young historian. To learn more about the overall OER Project: World History curriculum’s approach, structure, and materials, please visit the World History Course Guide. This guide provides specific information for the WH Origins course.What is World History Origins?If you’re looking for a course that covers 250,000 years of human history and aligns with standards that begin with that period, WH Origins is the right course for you. Starting with the first communities and global migrations of Homo sapiens, this course covers key topics from ancient empires and religions through global interconnections, revolutions, and global conflicts, and continues right up to the world we live in today. Students analyze history through the course’s three frames: communities, networks, and production and distribution.Periodization SchemeThis course uses a periodization scheme that mirrors one used by historians in the field. While some periods overlap—some aspects of history (urbanization, for example) don’t have defined start and stop dates—we’ve done our best to break down our units in a way that reflects key periods of transition in history.Standards AlignmentThe Origins course is perfect if you need to cover world history beginning with early humans. This is the only World History Project course that covers topics prior to 1200 CE, such as ancient civilizations, the formation of belief systems, the rise and fall of empires, and the so-called Dark Ages.
2World History Origins Course GuideWH Origins Course FrameworkThe following is an overview of the course framework. Within each unit, you’ll find a series of lessons, each divided into sections. Most lessons will take one to three 50-minute class periods. For more detailed information, follow the links to unit guides.Unit 1: Origins of History (13.82 Billion Years Ago to the Future)Unit 1 Problem: How does changing perspectives change our understanding of history?1. How do historians use evidence to create narratives about the past? 2. How can frames help us understand history?3. How does scale switching help you make sense of your world?Click here for the Unit 1 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.Unit 2: Early Humans (c. 250,000 Years Ago to 3000 BCE)Unit 2 Problem: What caused some humans to shift from foraging to farming and what were the effects of this change?1. How did Homo sapiens manage to migrate across much of the Earth?2. In what ways were foraging cultures similar to each other despite differences in the environments in which they lived?3. Why did farming develop first in certain regions?4. Was farming positive or negative for humans?Click here for the Unit 2 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.Unit 3: Early Agrarian Societies (c. 6000 BCE to 100 CE)Unit 3 Problem: How did complex societies develop and how did they impact humans inside and outside these communities? 1. What made life in agrarian societies different from life in pastoral and nomadic communities?2. How did urbanization change how humans live?3. Why did most complex societies develop social hierarchies?Click here for the Unit 3 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.
3World History Origins Course GuideUnit 4: Empires and Belief Systems (c. 600 BCE to 700 CE)Unit 4 Problem: How did the emergence of portable belief systems change human communities and networks?1. Why did belief systems transform as they spread along networks?2. How did empires expand, and how did they maintain control over diverse peoples?3. In what ways were the Roman and Han Empires similar and different?Click here for the Unit 4 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.Unit 5: Regional Webs (c. 200 to 1500 CE)Unit 5 Problem: How do human systems restructure after catastrophe?1. How did societal collapse affect the lives of people living in and around those societies?2. How and why did the interconnections among human societies grow and shrink at different times, and how did these changes affect communities in different places?3. In what ways is the label “Dark Ages” both useful and inaccurate?Click here for the Unit 5 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.Unit 6: The First Global Age (c. 1200 to 1750 CE)Unit 6 Problem: How did the first ongoing connections between the hemispheres change the world?1. To what extent can the Columbian Exchange be considered one of the most important turning points in history?2. What were the impacts of the Columbian Exchange for people living in different regions and social classes around the world?3. How did environmental change, demographics shifts, and the development of the transatlantic slave trade affect some regions of the world more than others?Click here for the Unit 6 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.
4World History Origins Course GuideUnit 7: The Long Nineteenth Century (c. 1750 to 1914 CE)Unit 7 Problem: What were the engines of change that created our “modern” world?1. What were the causes and consequences of national and liberal revolutions in the Atlantic region of the world?2. Why did the Industrial Revolution begin in Britain and how did it spread to new places?3. What were the short-term and longer-term impacts of industrialization and how did these differ for different groups and communities?4. How did the slave trade and plantation system support European empires and industrialization?5. How did imperialism and colonialism change during the long nineteenth century?Click here for the Unit 7 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.Unit 8: Global Conflict (c. 1914 to 1991 CE)Unit 8 Problem: What caused the global conflicts from 1914 to 1991, and how did people experience this period of global war?1. What transformations of the long nineteenth century helped cause the First and Second World Wars? 2. To what extent were the First and Second World Wars both global and “total” wars?3. What can we learn when we study the Cold War and decolonization together?Click here for the Unit 8 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.Unit 9: Globalization (c. 1900 to the Future)Unit 9 Problem: How has globalization made our lives today more interconnected while also producing new divisions and conflicts?1. What are the positive and negative impacts of globalization?2. How has the increasingly rapid movement of people and ideas through global networks changed our sense of identity, and how have people responded to these changes?3. How have the transformations and conflicts of globalization influenced the ways that people imagine communities at different scales?4. What other historical frames do you think would be most useful for understanding our world?Click here for the Unit 9 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.
5World History Origins Course GuideWH Origins Frames NarrativeThis course asks you and your students to examine world history through three different lenses, or frames. The frames for this course are communities, networks, and production and distribution. The frames provide narratives that help students organize all the information they will encounter in this course, which will give them a way to make sense of the vastness of world history. For more information on the frames and how to teach them, please refer to the WH Frames Guide. CommunitiesNetworksProduction and DistributionCommunities are the ways in which we organize the groups we live in, from families and neighborhoods to massive empires and religions. Throughout history, human communities have generally grown, and frequently changed.Students will encounter:• Forager bands• Early human migration• Farming villages• Urbanization and social hierarchies• The first states• Empires and belief systems• Revolutionary ideas about sovereignty• Nationalism and the nation- state• The nuclear family• Imperialist hierarchies• The rise of fascism• International institutions• Globalization of culture• Digital communitiesNetworks are the connections linking people and their communities. They enable people to move and share ideas, goods, crops, animals, pathogens, and even people. In general, humans have built larger and larger networks over time. Students will encounter:• Early human language networks• Village and regional networks• Long-distance trade routes• How portable beliefs connected people across political borders• Spread of the Black Death• The Columbian Exchange and the spread of plants and animals across networks• Revolutionary networks• Transnational reform movements• Industrial communication technology• Digital networks and globalizationProduction refers to how we make things. Distribution is how we share, sell, or trade the things we make. Production and distribution have changed dramatically over time, becoming increasingly larger and more complex. Students will encounter:• Hunter-gatherers• The Agricultural Revolution• Agricultural surplus• New technologies such as iron smelting and paper• Development of taxation and money• Colonialism and resource extraction• The Industrial Revolution• New economic systems such as capitalism and socialism• Industrial transportation technology• Division of labor• Total war and global conflict• Digital systems of distribution
6World History Origins Course GuideCourse Pacing GuideUnitLessonsPacingUnit 1: Origins of History4up to 10 daysUnit 2: Early Humans (250,000 BP to 3000 BCE)5up to 20 daysUnit 3: Early Agrarian Societies (6000 BCE to 100 CE)6up to 22 daysUnit 4: Empires and Belief Systems (600 BCE to 700 CE)7up to 23 daysUnit 5: Regional Webs (200 to 1500 CE)7up to 23 daysUnit 6: The First Global Age (1200 to 1750 CE)9up to 25 daysUnit 7: The Long Nineteenth Century (1750 to 1914 CE)11up to 27 daysUnit 8: Global Conflict (1914 to 1991 CE)9up to 25 daysUnit 9: Globalization 1900 to the Future8up to 24 days