Early Peoples of the Americas: The diverse geography of the Eastern Hemisphere has influenced human culture and settlement patterns in distinct ways. Human communities in the Eastern Hemisphere have adapted to or modified the physical environment. This is a unit which begins with an introduction of the impact of geography and includes a study of the roots of current political and environmental issues in the hemisphere.
Students will study the first humans through the Neolithic Revolution in the Eastern Hemisphere. The unit builds on the geographic themes of Unit 1 and students will gather evidence about a group of people and how they lived at a particular time making judgments about the Neolithic Revolution’s technological advances in agriculture and domestication of animals. In this unit students will develop skills to gather, interpret and use evidence and use chronological and geographic reasoning.
Complex societies and civilizations developed in the Eastern Hemisphere.Although these complex societies and civilizations have certain defining characteristics in common, each is also known for unique cultural achievements and contributions. In this unit, students will study early human communities in the Eastern Hemisphere and how they adapted to and modified the physical environment.
Major religions and belief systems developed in the Eastern Hemisphere. There were important similarities and differences between these belief systems. In this unit, students will have the opportunity to explore belief systems and religions developed by complex civilizations and societies that have similar, as well as different, characteristics. Students will also learn about how belief systems and religions are based on sets of mutually held values and how they are often used to unify groups of people, and may affect social order and gender roles.
As complex societies and civilizations change over time, their political and economic structures evolve. A golden age may be indicated when there is an extended period of time that is peaceful, prosperous, and demonstrates great cultural achievements. In this unit, students will study how geographic factors influence the development of classical civilizations and their political structures. Students will investigate why political structures were developed and established and the character traits indicative of a Golden Age.
The Mediterranean world was reshaped with the fall of the Roman Empire. Three distinct cultural regions developed: feudal Western Europe, the Byzantine Empire, and the Islamic caliphates. These regions interacted with each other and clashed over control of holy lands. In this unit, students will study the overexpansion, corruption, invasions, civil wars, and discord that led to the fall of Rome and led to the rise of Feudalism. Students will examine the Byzantine Empire and how Islam spread within the Mediterranean region from southwest Asia to northern Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. In addition, students will investigate how competition and rivalry over religious, economic, and political control over holy lands led to conflict such as the Crusades.
Trade networks promoted the exchange and diffusion of language, belief systems, tools, intellectual ideas, inventions, and diseases. In this unit, students will study major Afro-Eurasian trade networks connecting the East and the West and how ideas, people, technologies, products, and diseases moved along these routes. Students will explore how the Mongols served as important agents of change and cultural diffusion and fostered connections between the East and the West. In addition, students will investigate how complex societies and civilizations adapted and designed technologies for transportation.
