Before beginning the content of this curriculum, it is essential that students and parents understand their roles and the expectations for this course.

Students need to be familiar with their dual roles as individual learners and as members of a learning community

During the first week of school, parents and students should spend time each evening to complete the following tasks.

1. What is World History?
2. How is World History studied?

New World History is a new and exciting field of study in which scholars, students, and historians search for patterns and processes of historical events in order to better explain the existence of our complex, highly-developed, interconnected globalized world. New World Historians often examine smaller (and seemingly isolated) events to see how they fit into the Big Picture of History (Macro-Historical) . It is not simply a branch of history, but a multi-disciplined endeavor which combines:

• Social Studies: history, anthropology, archaeology, geography, linguistics, etc.
• Earth Science: climatology, geology, ecology, oceanography, etc.
• Biological Science: botany, genetics, DNA studies, etc.
• Humanities: literary studies, philosophy, theology, art history, etc.

in order to paint a more accurate and detailed picture of The Human Past.

New World History reaches beyond studying individual societies and cultures to studying, researching, analyzing and discovering complex patterns and processes that have shaped our world.

World historians tend to view the analytical frameworks of time, place, and events on large scales. Also, they employ a wide-variety of resources from different cultural backgrounds in order to construct their narratives.

Within this unit, we will explore basic issues that historian face when considering time, place, and events, and we will also examine the impact that culture has on one's perception of those frameworks.

1. How do world historians use the components of history to gain a better picture of the past? (Time/Place/Event)
2. How does culture impact someone's perspectives of time, place, and events?

What's the Use of "Big History?" by David Christian (When you need a break: Just for Fun)

View the video: Bridging World History: Unit 1: Maps, Time and World History [After you create an account, this video will be available on-line].

The Case for Big History by David Christian

Cross-cultural Interactions and Periodization in World History by Jerry Bentley

Sea and Ocean Basins as Frameworks of Historical Analysis by Jerry Bentley

Some things to get you started thinking about time.

Songs: "Fly Like an Eagle" by Steve Miller Band, "Circle of Life" by Elton John, or "Time in a Bottle" by Jim Croce

Video Clips: The scene about the Mayan Calendar from "Maya: The Blood of Kings" in Time Life's Lost Civilzations [19:50 to22:58 (3:08 minutes)]

Movie Clips: Scene 5 ('Ship of Death') from Sahara. Watch the scene between the main character, Dirk Pitt (Matthew McConaughey), and an imam in a West African mosque. After viewing the scene, discuss how the culture backgrounds of each character impact their perceptions on the passage of time.

Complete the following exercises in order to gain a better understanding of some of the issues facing historians in regard to time.

The reasons and motives behind human interactions and activities are usually complex and involve multiple factors; however, historians have developed a variety of approaches to assist them in their search for patterns within historical events.

Several approaches for studying New World History are currently being researched, expanded, and developed. I selected the approaches that I feel have the strongest potential for use in an introductory world history course: human ecological, thematic (cross-cultural), world-systems, and comparative world history.

During this course, we will examine topics through all of these approaches. Now, we will examine some of these approaches in more detail.

The Human Ecological Approach to World History examines the complex relationship between humans and their natural environment. In this approach, it is necessary to view humans as animals with certain biological requirements necessary for survival such as air, food, water, and shelter. Human Ecological Historians are concerned with humans' reactions to significant changes in their natural environment, such as:

Human responses have been just as dramatic as the events themselves:

Studying world history from a thematic (cross-cultural) approach tends to be particularity beneficial to secondary students (Manning, 367), and institutions of higher learning are taking more interest in world history programs based on thematic studies (Lewis and Wigens, 193).

There are many cross-cultural themes that recur throughout world history, but we will focus on the following themes because of their special implications to the pre-modern world.

Historical patterns and processes are complex and not always obvious because often they cross cultural boundaries; however, the following two methods will assist us in our quest:

1. Thematic Approach : By following topics through time, we will start to see the patterns emerge. It helps to think of these topics as historical threads of various sizes and strengths sewn into a fabric of time-- the threads remain unbroken even if they are not always visible.
2. Case Studies Approach : By selecting examples of historical events as models of historical processes, we can then search for similarities and differences in patterns of change over time.

Also, we need to understand under what conditions a new technology or idea is accepted or rejected.

Professor Jerry H. Bentley in Old World Encounters: Cross Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times outlined a model for the patterns of cross-cultural diffusion and conversion that will help us understand the process of how information flows.

(Bentley, 9)

World-systems exist when diverse groups and cultures are interlinked through intercommunicating networks of economic, intellectual, and cultural exchange.

The most significant debate concerning the World-Systems Approach tends to revolve around the issue of whether a single 'World System' (which could have only come into existence after the voyages of Columbus re-established contact between the Old and New Worlds), or a series of 'World-Systems' that have existed for the past 5,000 years should be considered (Wallerstein, 294).

It is important to consider that, "even today, the world, more globally integrated than ever before in history is broken up into important subspheres or subsystems" (Abu-Lughod, 32). Therefore, we will approach the four main world zones (Afro-Eurasia, The Americas, Australia, and Oceania) as primarily developing independently of one another until they began to be integrated and fused into a global-wide system around the 16th century.

World-systems are characterized by the complex relationships between the central and outlying locations. World-systems are usually divided into the following three levels:

(Wilkinson, 229)

This approach often takes on the characteristics of the core exploiting the natural resources of the periphery and/or semi-periphery, and major criticism of this approach has been its concentration on economic factors as the main driving force of world-systems development.

Therefore, for our purposes, we will utilize the Systems Analysis Model developed by the College of William and Mary in order to establish a clear definition for a system. Systems are a collection of processes that interact with each other to create a meaningful whole. The following key components of a system have been applied to the Afro-Eurasian pre-modern world-systems:

• Essential/Required Elements: World-systems are networks of communication based on trade, commerce, and intellectual exchange.
• Boundaries: The extent of the world-systems is often marked by major natural barriers, such as oceans, mountain ranges, and deserts. Over time, as barriers were overcome, smaller world-systems were fused together.
• Interactions: Groups were connected throughout the world-systems through long-distance trade; local, regional, and trans-regional markets; trade ports and cities; etc.
• Inputs: Natural goods and resources, such as honey, spices, amber, sugar, timber, stone, precious metals, crops, salt, slaves, turquoise, livestock, etc. were mined, harvested, and exchanged in the world-systems.
• Outputs: Ideas and manufactured goods, such as, dyes, cotton and silk textiles, religions, art work, crafted items, math, science, technology, writing, etc. were produced and created in the world-systems.