Download Questions for week 1

Questions for week 1 - Intro
1. Why is it important to study history?
2. What was life like in Paleolithic times?
3. What is essential for civilization to occur and why?
Questions for week 2 - Egypt
1. What was the general outlook of Mideastern cultures in regard to the human’s
relationship with nature? To the Gods? To Justice and the laws?
2. What were the political and intellectual outlooks of the civilizations of Egypt and
Mesopotamia? How did geography influence the religious outlooks of the two
civilizations?
3. How did early civilization differ among each other?
Questions for week 3 - Greece
1. What was a polis? What role did geography play in its development, and why did
the Greeks consider it a unique and valuable institution?
2. What were the fundamental beliefs and practices of the Greek religion?
3. Why did the Greeks and Persians go to war in 490 and 480 BCE? Why did the
Persians want to conquer Greece? Why were the Greeks able to defeat the
Persians and how did they benefit from the victory?
Questions for week 4 – Alexander the Great and
Hellenism
1. How did art and literature characterize Greek life and thought in the Classical
Age? How does Hellenistic art differ from that of the Classical Age? What are the
causes of this difference?
2. Identify how Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle influenced philosophy?
3. What were the major consequences of Alexander’s death? What did he achieve?
Was he a conscious promoter of Greek civilization or just an egomaniac drunk
with the lust of conquest?
Questions for week 5 – Test 1: Beginning of civilization and the Greeks.
No Questions
Questions for week 6 – Roman Republic
1. How did the institutions of family and clientage and the establishment of patrician
and plebian classes contribute to the stability of the early Roman Republic? How
important were education and slavery to the success of the republic?
2. How was Rome able to conquer and control Italy? In their relations with Greece
and Asia Minor in the second century BCE, were the Romans looking for
security? Wealth? Power? Fame?
3. What problems plagued the Roman Republic in its last century? What caused
these problems and how did the Romans try to solve them? To what extent was
the republic destroyed by ambitious generals who loved power more than Rome
itself?
Questions for week 7 – Roman Empire
1. What solutions did Augustus provide for the political problems that had plagued
the Roman Republic? Why was the Roman population willing to accept Augustus
as head of the state?
2. Why did the Roman authorities persecute Christians? What were the most
important reasons for Christianity’s success?
3. What political, social, and economic problems beset Rome in the third and fourth
centuries C.E.? How did Roman emperors effectively stem the tide of decline and
disintegration – for some time?
Questions for week 8 – Test 2: The Roman Empire
No Questions
Questions for week 9 – Early Middle Ages
1. What role did the nobility play during Charlemagne’s rule? Why did
Charlemagne encourage learning at his court? How could the Carolingian
renaissance have been dangerous to Charlemagne’s rule? Why did his empire
break apart?
2. How and why was the history of the eastern half of the Roman empire so
different from that of the western half? What role did emperors play in the
Eastern Church?
3. How and why did feudal society begin? What were the essential ingredients of
feudalism? How easy do you think it would be for modern society to slip back
into a feudal pattern?
Questions for week 10 – High Middle Ages
1. What major development in Western and Eastern Europe encouraged the
emergence of the Crusades? Why did the Crusaders fail to establish lasting
political and religious control over the Holy Land?
2. What were the political, religious, and economic results of the Crusades?
Which do you consider most important and why?
3. What were the main reasons for the Cluny reform movement? Why did it
succeed? How did this reform movement influence the subsequent history
of the medieval church?
Questions for week 11 – Late Middle Ages
2. What were the underlying and precipitating causes of the Hundred Years’ War?
What advantages did each side have? Why were the French finally able to drive
the English almost entirely out of France?
3. What were the causes of the Black Death, and why did it spread so quickly
throughout Western Europe? Where was it most virulent? How did it affect
European society? How important do you think disease is in changing the course
of history?
4. How did the church change from 1200 to 1450? What was its response to the
growing power of monarchs? How great an influence did the church have on
secular events?
Questions for week 12 – Test 3
No Questions
Questions for week 13 – The Renaissance
1. How would you define Renaissance humanism? In what ways was the
Renaissance a break with the Middle Ages, and ion what ways did it owe
its existence to medieval civilization?
2. Who were some of the famous literary and artistic figures of the Italian
Renaissance? What did they have in common that might be described as
“The spirit of the Renaissance”?
Questions for week 14 – Reformation and Religious Wars
1. How did Spain gain a position of dominance3 in the sixteenth century?
What were Philip II’s successes and failures?
2. What led to the establishment of the Anglican Church in England? Why
did Mary I fail? What was Elizabeth I’s settlement, and why was it
difficult to impose on England? Who were her detractors and what were
their criticisms?
3. What problems in the church contributed to the Protestant Reformation?
Why was the church unable to suppress dissent as it had earlier?
Questions for week 15 – Test 4
No Questions