Unit 2 World History

The Gate of All Nations in Persepolis which is in modern day Iran. (Creative Commons Attribution photo. Info can be found here)

Unit 2

600 CE – 1450 CE

This unit covers a wide variety of concepts from Islamic and West African Empires to the “Dark Ages” in Europe and all the way to the rise of the Mongols and the Samurai. We also do a great deal of cross cultural analysis in this chapter. The sheer amount of information in this chapter makes it relatively difficult to cover while making the type of cross-cultural connections that students should be making. For this reason I have grouped this unit into only 3 chapters, which gives students a bit more ability to see the connections between civilizations that may not be close to each other, but still had an impact on one another.

Unit Chapters

Choose from the list of Chapters below.

Chapter 4

The history of the world from 10,000 B.C.E. to 600 B.C.E. 

Chapter 5

The history of the Americas from 600 C.E. to 1450 C.E.

Chapter 6

The history of Asia from 600 C.E. to 1450 C.E.  

Critical Thinking Essay

Background:

You have been selected to be a founding father/mother of a new country on a recently discovered planet. The group that you are taking with you is very diverse and happens to include every faith currently found on Earth. The job of you and the other founders are tasked to complete is to create a constitution for this new community. The committee that you have been chosen to lead for this is the committee on religion. It is your job to make sure that religion is respected and that wars over religions don’t start. (Hint: you may not kill or kick out other faiths)

Assignment Overview:

Evaluate the stances taken by civilizations in the first TWO units of the year and give advice to the larger committee on how you should navigate the issue of religion. You may use any current constitution of your choosing to help you support this issue, but your grade will be focused on your ability to support your decision with history from the first two units.

Essay Prompt:

Explain, in detail, how YOU would deal with the issue of religion if you were chosen to help create this new constitution, with a specific focus on being as safe as possible all while making sure the long term stability of the economy is supported.