Download Intro to Advanced Placement World History

Advanced Placement World History Summer Homework
Instructor's Name: Mrs. Tracy Kurzendoerfer, Mrs. Katie Toy
E-mail address: [email protected] or [email protected]
COURSE INFORMATION:
The decision you have made to tackle one of the most challenging and rewarding classes on campus will prove to be one of the most
meaningful in your academic career. This college-level class entails the study of 3,500 years history in 28 weeks, and it will demand more
attention and time than any other class you have ever previously encountered. Rather than dwell on specific detail, the history we
investigate together will reveal patterns of interaction, integration, and how our global community came to exist in its present form.
Developing critical thought and analysis skills are the core objectives of this course. At its successful completion, you will learn new
appreciation for your world, a global perspective, and academic tools that will help you succeed at every level of your educational career.
Please focus on deeply learning this material, as you will need it at the end of the year for your AP exam. To provide a foundation for our
learning and to lighten our workload in the fall, we have a summer homework assignment detailed later in this handout.
This course is a history course intended to prepare students to pass the Advanced Placement exam in World History. Dealing primarily
with the time period 600 C.E. to present, the course focuses on the exchanges among major societies through history; the relationship of
change and continuity across the world; the impact of technology and demography on people and environment; systems of social and
gender structure; cultural and intellectual developments among and within societies; changes in functions and structures of states; and in
attitudes toward states and political identities including the emergence of the nation state.
SUMMER READING ASSIGNMENTS
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You must read ONE of the following books: Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond (ISBN-0393317552) or A History of the
World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage (ISBN-0802715524). You can find a copy in any library, local book store, or online. If
you have trouble finding a copy of this book, please contact one of us and we will find a copy for you. In this book, you are to
read and answer the questions attached.
All of these materials are due the second day of school. If you do not have these materials you must drop the course!
Please understand that this is not busy work; the purpose is to create a “jumping off” point for our discussions and historical
inquiry. Your understanding of this material is critical to your success in APWH.
AP RELATED ISSUES
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Colleges and universities do look carefully at transcripts. AP coursework and attempting to pass the test rank very high in admissions
consideration at impacted and competitive institutions and programs.
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AP course grades are weighted to reflect a greater level of achievement in terms of GPA and rigor in coursework.
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AP World History course content should not exceed 30% European history, but rather should reflect a global perspective of history.
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The AP exam for this course will be offered in May 2012 at 8 AM. The cost will be $86.00. More information about the exam will follow.
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Your child can expect to read at least a chapter a week in their textbooks.
Summer Homework
2011-2012
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
AP WORLD HISTORY
Questions: Guns, Germs, and Steel
Contact me if you have any questions at: [email protected] or
[email protected]
Due the second day of school. NO EXCUSES!
The following strategy is suggested for completing this study guide:
1) Read the questions for the chapter before you start reading
2) Read the entire chapter without writing full answers
- Highlight, underline or flag with post-it notes, important sections as you discover them
3) Write your answers to the questions after you have read the entire section or chapter
- Answers should be a few sentences long.
Keep in mind that all of the answers to these questions are the theories of the book’s author, Jared Diamond.
PROLOGUE:
1. What is “Yali’s Question”?
2. How does Diamond reword this question (which becomes the focal question of the entire book)?
3. Briefly describe the various possible answers to the question.
CHAPTER 1: Up to the Starting Line
* No questions but read this chapter quickly, focusing on the origins and spread of man
* Don’t get bogged down in all of the terminology like, Homo Sapien, Cro-Magnon, Clovis, etc.
CHAPTER 2: A Natural Experiment of History
4. Why did the Maori and the Moriori evolve differently?
5. How did population density affect economies, social complexity, and political organization?
CHAPTER 3: Collision at Cajamarca
6. Who are Atahualpa and Pizzarro and why was their meeting significant?
7. Explain the variety of reasons why Pizzarro’s small force defeated Atahualpa’s empire.
CHAPTER 4: Farmer Power
8. How did food production lead to Spanish advantages over the Inca?
CHAPTER 5: History’s Haves and Have-Nots
9. What are the 5 areas of independent domestication of plants (food production)?
10. What are the 4 areas that are possible sites of independent domestication of plants?
11. What 3-4 other areas received “founder packages” from Southwest Asia?
CHAPTER 6: To Farm or Not to Farm
12. Why did hunter-gatherers evolve to become farmers in some areas and not in others?
CHAPTER 7: How to Make an Almond
13. What does “plant domestication” mean?
14. Why is it important to understand when and why people became farmers?
15. What made some plants easier and more attractive to domesticate than others?
CHAPTER 8: Apples or Indians
16. Where is the fertile Crescent?
17. Why did its domesticated plants and animals give it such a head start over the rest of the world?
CHAPTER 9: Zebras, Unhappy Marriages, and the Anna Karenina Principle
Summer Homework
2011-2012
18. Why did Eurasia have the most domesticated animals of all continents?
19. What are the 6 characteristics of domesticated animals?
CHAPTER 10: Spacious Skies and Tilted Axes
20. Why is it significant that Eurasia is the only continent with an East/West axis?
21. What does this mean for continents with a North/South axis?
CHAPTER 11: Lethal Gift of Livestock
22. Following the arrival of European explorers in the New World, why did European diseases wipe-out Native Americans and not
the other way around (Native American diseases killing Euros)?
CHAPTER 12: Blueprints and Borrowed Letters
23. What do the following terms mean: “blueprint copying” and “idea diffusion”?
24. Why did kings want to limit writing to the elites?
CHAPTER 13: Necessity’s Mother
25. How does Diamond feel about the old adage, “Necessity is the mother of invention”?
26. What are the 4 factors that affect societal acceptance of an invention?
27. What are the 4 vehicles of diffusion (ways that ideas or items move) (top of page 256)?
28. Why did Japan lose gun technology?
29. Why did leading a sedentary lifestyle (living in one place) lead to an explosion of technology?
CHAPTER 14: From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy
30. Summarize the differences between: bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states.
31. What are 4 reasons why large populations require complex, centralized political organization?
CHAPTER 15: Yali’s People
* Skip reading this chapter altogether (Yeah!!!)
CHAPTER 16 : How China Became Chinese
* Skip reading this chapter altogether (Yeah!!!)
CHAPTER 17: Speedboat to Polynesia
* Skip reading this chapter altogether (Yeah!!!)
CHAPTER 18: Hemispheres Colliding
32. Why did Native American societies lag so far behind Eurasian societies in the areas of food production, germs, technology,
political organization, and writing?
33. Why did the diffusion of wheat from Mesopotamia prevent independent domestication elsewhere?
CHAPTER 19: How Africa Became Black
34. What were the 5 major human groups that dominated Africa by A.D. 1000?
35. How, when, and why did the Bantu come to dominate sub-Saharan Africa?
EPILOGUE: The Future of Human History as a Science
* Skip reading this chapter altogether (Yeah!!!)
Summer Homework
2011-2012


AP WORLD HISTORY
Questions: A History the of the World in Six Glasses
Contact us if you have any questions at: [email protected] or
[email protected]
Due the second day of school. NO EXCUSES!
The following strategy is suggested for completing this study guide:
1) Read the questions for the chapter before you start reading
2) Read the entire chapter without writing full answers
- Highlight, underline or flag with post-it notes, important sections as you discover them
3) Write your answers to the questions after you have read the entire section or chapter.
SECTION SUMMARIES
For each of the six beverages, and for the epilogue, write a ½ page summary of the
author’s main points. Explain when, where, why and how that beverage became
important and what effect it had on world history. Give specific examples of how the
beverage affected history.
QUESTIONS- Answer the following questions in at least a paragraph.
1. How might beer have influenced the transition from hunting and gathering to
agricultural-based societies?
2. What opportunities associated with wine drinking did men have in ancient Greece
that women did not?
3. Why was wine adopted as a ritual drink in Christianity, but Islam prohibited the
use of alcohol?
4. Describe coffee’s effect on the balance of power between various regions of the
world.
5. Why was tea important to China’s economy and its relationships with other
countries?
6. How did tea change history in India?
7. How did coca-cola become the world’s most recognized product?
8. How does coca-cola affect, and how is it affected by, people’s views of the United
States?
INTERPRETATIONS - Respond to the following statements with at least a paragraph in length.
9. One criticism of this book is that the author focuses too much on Europe and not
on other parts of the world. Do you agree or disagree with this criticism? Which
parts of the world do not receive much attention in this book?
11. What do you think of Standage’s approach to history? Is this a useful way to
think about history? What other approaches might one take?
12. Did you like this book? Why or why not?
Summer Homework
2011-2012