In this final vocab activity of the era, as with all the final vocab activities in each era, you will engage in a deeper exploration of the era’s vocabulary. You’ll move beyond simply defining words to applying them in this activity, and by doing so, you’ll solidify your understanding and use of the words in context.

In this activity, you’re going to create a live concept map using Era 1’s vocabulary. In case you haven’t heard of a concept map, it’s typically a diagram that shows the relationships among concepts, with the concepts drawn in circles or boxes. Lines are used to connect the related concepts. In this activity, either string or hand holding will function as the connecting lines.

Your teacher will either give you a vocab card or assign a word and have you make your own card. Then, you’ll take a few minutes to go around the room, making connections to other students’ words. Connections can be made in a number of different ways: You can think about synonyms, antonyms, word families, and even connections to similar ideas. Each time you make a connection, explain what it is to the other student, and then write the word on the back of your vocab card. Every few minutes, your teacher will ask you to explain your current connection. You will start to notice some patterns.

This article outlines two different perspectives on the Big History story of the universe, and humanity’s place in it. The first perspective is David Christian’s thresholds of increasing complexity. The second is Walter Alvarez’s four regimes: the Cosmos, Earth, Life, and Humanity. Using these two perspectives, the article discusses how Big History can help us deepen our understanding of human history.

Comparing these two perspectives will help you start thinking about how history is made up of many different narratives. By learning how Big History sets the stage for understanding human history, you will begin forming an answer to the Era 1 Problem: “Why begin a course in human history before humans existed?” In particular, this article will help you understand how our narratives of history change when we include physical, geological, and biological contexts.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What does it mean to periodize history?
2. What are origin stories? What makes Big History a unique kind of origin story, according to the author?
3. What is a “threshold of increasing complexity?”
4. How is David Christian’s narrative of Big History different from Walter Alvarez’s?
5. How are David Christian and Walter Alvarez’s narratives of Big History similar?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. How might studying Big History support our learning in a world history course?
2. Based on what you learned from the text, what do you think could be the next threshold of increasing complexity?

In this first activity in the Causation Practice Progression, you’ll get familiar with different ways of understanding cause and consequence, and you’ll learn to use cause and consequence as analytical tools for understanding change over time. Historical events rarely have a single, proximate cause—some happen immediately before an event, some long before an event; some play a central role, and some merely contribute. Some causes may also be considered consequences, and the significance of the event may change depending on your framing of that event. In this activity, you will quickly learn about different types of causes.

Note that “Alphonse the Camel” is a story that was used in the Big History Project course, so you might be familiar with it. Although the story is being reused in this course, the way it’s being used is different, so be sure to pay close attention to the differences!

Start by reading the following story:

Alphonse the Camel

Once upon a time, there was a camel (called Alphonse). For various reasons (relating to an unfortunate accident during his birth) the camel had severe back problems. This was not the end of his misfortune, however, because he also had an evil, exploitative owner (called Frank the Camel Killer). Frank had hated camels ever since he experienced a nasty incident in his childhood involving a camel’s hoof and his rear end. He was very bitter and hadn’t trusted camels since.

Frank regularly overloaded his camels prior to taking them on grueling and totally unnecessary round trips up and down mountains on his way to deliver goods to his customers. These customers, shockingly, were completely indifferent to these frequent and gross violations of the rights of camels and even found Frank and his antics vaguely endearing. On top of it all, Alphonse was sometimes his own worst enemy. Camels are very proud creatures, and he would act tough in front of his camel friends, and on his rare breaks he would show off how much he could carry.

Plenty of camels had died doing similar work to Alphonse and his friends. After a particularly nasty few weeks when camels were keeling over left, right, and center, the camels decided to form a union to defend their rights and protect them from evil owners. However, when it comes down to it, camels are selfish creatures who don’t trust each other. They were more worried about looking after themselves than about working together, and the union soon fizzled out.

One Friday, Frank had just finished loading up Alphonse and his poor exploited fellow creatures for yet another grueling and totally unnecessary round trip up and down the mountains. He had piled and piled and piled up the goods onto Alphonse’s back and was taking a break, chewing a straw while thinking smugly about his handiwork. On a whim, he decided to add the bedraggled straw he had been chewing to Alphonse’s load. Alphonse groaned obligingly. He eyed his owner with disgust. He keeled over and died of radical and irreversible back collapse.

Now, list all the reasons you can think of for why Alphonse died. Once you and your class have come up with a final list, write all the reasons on sticky notes or cards.

Arrange your stickies or cards into three different categories: short-, intermediate-, and long-term causes. Once you’ve arranged your cards by timeframe, look at your short-term cards to identify the triggering event in the story. The triggering event is defined as the most immediate cause of an event. Be ready to share your categorizations with the class.

You might notice that you didn’t categorize long-, intermediate-, and short-term causes the same way as some of your classmates. That’s OK! Our perspective—in this case, timeframe—can shift how we categorize the causes. Therefore, the definitions of long term, intermediate term, and short term vary and depend on the timeframe or periodization that you use to examine an event.

Finally, take a look at the Causation Tool (included in the Causation – Introduction worksheet), which is meant to help you categorize causes and consequences. Although you haven’t been introduced to everything on the tool quite yet, you will become familiar with role, type, and effects soon enough! You can use this tool to create a causal map or other representation of causation. Eventually, you will probably get so used to the tool that you won’t need it anymore. But for now, it will help as you get used to this type of historical analysis.

Make sure you have the EP Notebook worksheets that you partially filled out earlier in the era.

This is a continuation of the EP Notebook activity that you started in this era. As part of WHP, you are asked to revisit the Era Problems in order to maintain a connection to the core themes of the course. Because this is the second time you’re working with this era’s problems, you are asked to explain how your understanding of the era’s core concepts has changed over the unit. Make sure you use evidence from this era and sound reasoning in your answers.

Fill out the second table on your partially completed worksheet from earlier in the era. Be prepared to talk about your ideas with your class.

DBQ Prompt: Evaluate the extent to which globalization since the Second World War has benefited everyone.

DBQ 0 is the baseline writing assessment for the course. Your teacher will use it to provide you with an understanding of your ability to use a range of texts to construct an evidence-based, well-structured explanation or argument. Although you should do the best you can, don’t worry about your score on this assignment. You will retake this same DBQ later in the course, which will give you an opportunity to see your growth.

You’re going to use today’s class period to take the baseline assessment for the course. Your teacher may score your essay, but this won’t be a grade that “counts”—it’s just to give you an idea of where you are in your writing right now. However, it’s really important to take this essay seriously for a few reasons. First, it will help your teacher decide what to focus on teaching this year in order to help you become a better writer. Second, since it’s early in the course and you’ll be working on writing a lot, at the end of the year you’ll most likely see a big improvement in your scores, which is always satisfying. Chances are you won’t get a very high score on this first essay and that’s OK—it’s really challenging!

Take out the DBQ and follow the directions. You also might want to look through the WHP Writing Rubric so you have a clear sense of the goals you are trying to meet.