Working with frames allows you to understand how and why people lived the way they did throughout history. They help you recognize how communities (such as societies and nations); networks (such as those for trade and exchange); and the production and distribution of goods, impacted, and still impact, people in different parts of the world. Viewing history through frames gives us a usable knowledge of history that allows us to make sense of the world today and think critically about the future. The process of depicting frames by drawing them—mixing language with imagery—will make the information more memorable.

In this activity, you will draw the course frames, much like you did earlier in the course. However, instead of coming up with your own ideas about each of the frames, you will draw them according to the frame narratives at this point in the course. This will not only help you gain a sense of your understanding of the frames, but will also give you a chance to review what you’ve already learned, which will help you remember all that stuff!

Don’t worry about your drawing skills—you don’t have to be an artist to complete this activity. However, try to use more pictures than words. And feel free to be creative! Here are the criteria:

• Draw a representation of community based on the content of this era. Be sure to label that area of the picture with “community.”
• Draw a representation of production and distribution based on the content of this era. Be sure to label that area of the drawing with “P&D.”
• Finally, draw the networks between communities (people, states, empires, and so on) based on the content of this era.
• Where possible, use arrows and other lines to show movement. This will largely apply to P&D and networks.

Once you’re done, be ready to share your drawings and thinking behind them with your class. Was your approach the same as your classmates? Or did you think about the frames differently? Frames are no different from anything else we study in history—there can be many perspectives on the same topic.

You will be practicing claim testing throughout the course—and in everyday life. At times, you’ll find that using one claim tester will be sufficient for determining a claim’s validity. In other instances, you’ll need to use multiple claim testers. Up to this point in the course, you’ve learned about the claim testers in general, and about authority specifically. In order to develop as writers, readers, and speakers, you’ll need to be able to use evidence to prove your claims and assertions. Evidence is often considered the most important claim tester because it relies largely on factual information, research, and data. Not only will using evidence help you prove your own claims, it will also help you determine what to believe in the writing of others. By applying multiple claim testers at the same time, you’ll be able to determine if evidence is being proposed by a credible authority, and then be able to use it to further your claims.

Reading, writing
In this activity, you’ll read “Village Networks” to identify the major claim or claims and evidence used in the article. You’ll also analyze the strength of evidence, which will increase your awareness of how to incorporate strong evidence in your own writing.

Evidence is information that we can gather to understand the world around us—specifically things that we can see and observe. You’re going to read “Village Networks,” by Eman Elshaikh, to see how the author uses evidence to support her claims. Remember, evidence doesn’t mean a lot if you don’t have the claim it supports (or refutes) in mind, so as you read the article, focus on the claims that Elshaikh makes.

Once you’re done reading, highlight the claim or claims you find in the article. Be prepared to share your claims with the class.

Now that you’ve found the claims, it’s time to think about evidence. Is all evidence the same? Are some types of evidence better than others? As a class, brainstorm as many types of evidence people use in history as you can.

Now, read the article again, this time looking for and underlining the supporting statements or evidence being used to support the claim or claims.

Remember that there can also be arguments against a claim or evidence. So, as you underline the evidence, look out for counterclaims, or sections of the article where Eman Elshaikh refutes or questions the evidence for these claims. Circle any counterclaims you find. Again, be prepared to share your answers with the class.

Finally, answer the following questions on a piece of paper to submit as an exit ticket:

• Write a claim about which piece of evidence is strongest in supporting its claim and why.
• Write a claim about which piece of evidence would be easiest to refute and why.

The idea of civilization is pretty common—but it has its problems. It’s a complicated and loaded concept. It can mean a lot of different things, from having a refined culture to living in a state. In this video, John Green talks through many of these meanings and problems, asking us to think about what civilization means for the communities living in the hills, forests, and steppes—and how this might be different from what it means for those living in states in the valleys.

This video’s purpose is to critically examine the typical narrative that civilization is an obviously good thing. It uses evidence sourced from multiple perspectives and scales to evaluate (support, extend, or challenge) narratives. This video helps you understand why certain human communities began to organize into more complex societies, states, and empires. It also helps you evaluate characteristics of societies like social hierarchies, specialization of labor, farming, taxes, writing, and cities. Finally, this video will help you think through the Era 3 Problem: What made life in cities and agrarian societies different from life in pastoral, nomadic communities or Neolithic villages?

Preview – Skimming for Gist

As a reminder, open and skim the transcript, and read the questions before you watch the video.

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

Think about the following question as you watch this video:

1. What do the earliest civilizations have in common? What does food have to do with civilization?
2. People often use the term “civilized” to mean having a refined culture. Does John Green agree with this definition? If not, what does he think is a more historically accurate way to understand the concept of civilization?
3. What do states have to do with barbarians? As people who live in states, what three things do we tend to assume about states?
4. According to John Green, what two things are really important for the power of the state? What’s needed to make sure those two things can happen?
5. What is James Scott's “big idea” about people who live in the hills? What other evidence – from other authors – does John Green present which may corroborate Scott’s idea?
6. What are some benefits to life in the hills? What are some drawbacks?
7. Where is Zomia and how many people live there? What’s unique about this region?
8. What makes it difficult for historians to understand people living outside of states?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. Using evidence from the video and anything else you have learned in this Era, make a claim about whether it’s more advantageous to live outside a state, like people in Zomia, or within a state, like people in the United States or China. For whom might it be advantageous, and for whom might it pose problems? Provide specific reasons and use specific evidence to support your reasoning.
2. How can evidence from this video help you think through the Era 3 Problem: what made life in cities and agrarian societies different from life in pastoral, nomadic communities or Neolithic villages?

Even after many people became farmers, cities and states weren’t the norm for most of human history—we lived in villages and towns. For a long time, people continued to live in small communities. We don’t have many written records of this era, but archaeological data tells us a lot about village life and shows us that villages and towns traded with each other in vibrant local networks. The data also shows us how villages and towns grew and changed over time.

This article describes how local trade networks expanded during this era. It will help you trace how social hierarchies, specialization of labor, food production and trade, and population changed over time—partly as a result of expanding village networks. Thinking about these changes will help you get a fuller story of the networks, communities, and systems of production and distribution in this period and think about how these each contributed to the development of complex societies.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming 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 was life like in early farming villages?
2. How was life in early farming villages different from life in hunter-gatherer communities?
3. What do we know about women’s lives in early farming villages? How did this change as early farming villages grew?
4. What are some examples of trade between villages? How do historians know about this trade?
5. How did changes in production and distribution affect communities?
6. In what ways did village networks affect the population of villages, towns, and cities?

Evaluating and Corroborating

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

1. Because there’s a lack of written records from early villages, historians and anthropologists mostly rely on archeological data as evidence. What do you think are some of the limitations of archeological evidence? Are there any pieces of evidence presented in this article that you could interpret differently than the author did?
2. How does this article help you think about the Era 3 Problem: How did new complex societies develop and what was their impact on humans both inside and outside these communities?

We often get so caught up in questions about agriculture’s origins and consequences that we forget about everyone who didn’t farm. Farming wasn’t adopted everywhere, and it was adopted to different extents among different communities. Pastoralist, nomadic, and foraging communities had very different ways of making food. Yet, they interacted with farming communities and even domesticated their own plants and animals. Their different system of food production led to pretty different community structures, which are often poorly understood.

This article will help you think through the Era 3 problem: what made life in cities and agrarian societies different from life in pastoral, nomadic communities or Neolithic villages? It will also help provide evidence for you to consider whether the narrative you were given for the production and distribution frame is accurate, or if it needs to be changed.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming 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. In what ways was farming “uneven?”
2. What is the relationship between living a sedentary life and cultivating or domesticating food?
3. What was central to nomadic pastoralists’ way of life? Why?
4. How did different kinds of food production affect community structures?
5. What networks were pastoralists, nomads, and foragers a part of? How did these networks affect the communities of people involved in trade?
6. What are some advantages that nomadic communities had over settled communities?

Evaluating and Corroborating

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

1. You may remember that the production and distribution frame narrative seems to suggest that people were foragers, and later became farmers. How does this article, and the primary source, cause you to think about that narrative?
2. Looking at the primary source excerpts in this article, what claims do you think are credible? What are the limitations of these sources, and how does the author, audience, or purpose of the source influence your evaluation of this source?