Historical Themes in World History | World History Project AP®
Summary
TLDRThis video script delves into the significance of themes in storytelling and their application in the AP World History course. It explains how six overarching themes—Humans and the Environment, Culture, Political Authority, Economic Systems, Social Structures, and Technology and Innovation—help contextualize historical events, fostering a deeper understanding of world history. The script illustrates the interconnectivity of these themes with examples from various historical periods and cultures, emphasizing their utility in interpreting past events and preparing for the AP exam.
Takeaways
- 📚 Themes in storytelling provide a deeper meaning beyond the surface narrative, connecting various elements into a cohesive message.
- 🧙♂️ The example of Harry Potter illustrates that the series is not solely about magic but rather themes of friendship, good and evil, and coming of age.
- 🦸♂️ Similarly, the Marvel Cinematic Universe encompasses deeper themes such as tradition vs. change, authority, fatherhood, and sacrifice, beyond the action scenes.
- 🔍 Historians use themes to make sense of the past, creating narratives that reveal more about the world than isolated events.
- 🌏 The AP World History course is structured around six themes, which help in organizing historical events and understanding their significance.
- 🌱 'Humans and the Environment' theme explores how geography and climate influence societies and how humans have transformed their environment.
- 🎭 'Culture' theme discusses how shared ideas, beliefs, and traditions form societal ties and how cross-cultural exchanges create new practices.
- 🏛 'Political Systems' theme examines the origins of political authority, the methods states use to maintain power, and the dynamics of governance.
- 💰 'Economic Systems' theme delves into production, distribution, trade, and consumption, highlighting the role of labor and profit in economic structures.
- 🤝 'Social Interactions' theme investigates how societal structures define relationships and hierarchies and how these have evolved over time.
- 🛠️ 'Technology and Innovation' theme showcases how problem-solving and technological advancements impact society and build upon previous innovations.
- 🔑 The six themes are tools for interpreting past events, offering students a framework to analyze and understand historical narratives, which is crucial for the AP exam.
Q & A
What is the primary purpose of themes in storytelling?
-The primary purpose of themes in storytelling is to give stories meaning beyond the words, making them more meaningful to the audience by providing a broad idea that runs through the narrative.
How does the theme of 'Humans and the Environment' relate to cultural development?
-The theme of 'Humans and the Environment' relates to cultural development by showing how natural resources, climate, and geography shape human culture and societies, as well as how humans have transformed their environment over time.
What is an example of how cultural exchange can lead to new cultural practices?
-An example of cultural exchange leading to new cultural practices is the story of Mansa Musa, who brought Islamic culture back to Mali, inadvertently causing economic changes such as inflation in Egypt due to the large amount of gold he spent.
What is the significance of the Mongol Empire in the context of the 'Political Systems' theme?
-The Mongol Empire is significant in the context of the 'Political Systems' theme because it demonstrates how political power was maintained and justified through unique means, such as the influence of women in forming alliances and deciding rulers.
How does the Aztec Empire's agricultural technology, Chinampas, illustrate the 'Economic Systems' theme?
-The Chinampas of the Aztec Empire illustrate the 'Economic Systems' theme by showing how innovative agricultural practices contributed to food production, which in turn sustained the empire's economy and supported a large population.
What role do social interactions play in the 'Social Organization' theme?
-Social interactions play a crucial role in the 'Social Organization' theme by influencing political, social, and cultural dynamics within societies, and by shaping how communities organize themselves over time.
How are technological innovations connected to the 'Technology and Innovation' theme?
-Technological innovations are connected to the 'Technology and Innovation' theme as they impact all levels of society and often result from interactions and exchanges among societies, building upon earlier innovations.
Why are the six themes important for students preparing for the AP World History exam?
-The six themes are important for students preparing for the AP World History exam because they help organize and make sense of historical events, allowing for easier comparison and connection between different time periods and regions, and many exam questions reference these themes.
How can the Three Close Reads Tool assist students in analyzing historical texts?
-The Three Close Reads Tool can assist students by helping them take notes and identify which pieces of evidence relate to the different themes, thus enhancing their understanding of historical narratives and preparing them for the AP exam.
What is the significance of the Aztec pochteca in the context of multiple themes?
-The Aztec pochteca are significant in the context of multiple themes as they illustrate aspects of economic systems, human interaction with the environment, technology and innovation, and social organization, showing that historical events can intersect with various themes.
How do the themes give students 'a historian in training' authority to interpret the past?
-The themes give students 'a historian in training' authority to interpret the past by allowing them to make choices about how to frame past events using evidence encountered in the course, and by examining and comparing different perspectives across multiple themes.
Outlines
📚 The Power of Themes in Storytelling and History
This paragraph introduces the concept of themes as essential elements in storytelling that provide deeper meaning beyond the narrative's surface. It contrasts common misconceptions about popular stories, such as Harry Potter and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with their actual underlying themes, such as friendship, good and evil, and coming of age. The paragraph also explains how historians use themes to make sense of the past, creating a coherent narrative from disparate events. The AP World History course is mentioned, structured around six themes, which are said to help in organizing historical events and in preparing for the AP exam by understanding the questions better.
🌏 Humans and the Environment: Shaping Culture and Society
This paragraph delves into the first of the six themes, 'Humans and the Environment,' exploring how the environment influences human culture, society, and way of life. It uses examples like the Middle Eastern concept of hell being hot, Scandinavian hell being cold, and the Quran's depiction of paradise to illustrate how geography and climate shape religious beliefs. The paragraph also discusses the impact of agriculture, settlement patterns, migration, population growth, and natural disasters on society, as well as the reciprocal influence of humans on the environment.
🎭 Cultural Exchange and the Dynamics of Political Authority
The second theme, 'Culture,' is highlighted in this paragraph, emphasizing the diversity and commonalities in human societies. It discusses how culture binds societies through shared beliefs and traditions, and how cross-cultural exchanges have led to new cultural practices. The story of Mansa Musa's pilgrimage to Mecca and its economic repercussions exemplifies the impact of cultural exchange. The paragraph also touches on the theme of political authority, exploring where it comes from and how it is maintained and justified, using the Mongol Empire as an example of a unique system of governance influenced by women's alliances.
💼 Economic Systems and the Role of Labor and Trade
This paragraph focuses on the theme of 'Economic Systems,' describing the Aztec's innovative agricultural technique, Chinampas, as an example of how societies have developed to meet their economic needs. It discusses labor, profit, trade, and economic theories such as capitalism and socialism. The paragraph underscores the importance of understanding who does the labor and who benefits economically, and it encourages identifying evidence within this theme by looking for related terms and concepts.
🤝 Social Interactions and the Organization of Society
The theme of 'Social Interactions' is explored in this paragraph, which examines how societies define relationships and hierarchies among people, and how these constructs influence political, social, and cultural dynamics. It uses the example of 17th-century Japan, where samurai class restrictions on merchants' lifestyles illustrate the enforcement of social order. The paragraph encourages understanding how societies organize themselves around concepts of gender, class, race, and family, and how these structures evolve over time.
🛠️ Technology and Innovation: Driving Societal Change
This paragraph discusses the theme of 'Technology and Innovation,' showcasing how human problem-solving and technological advancements have impacted societies throughout history. It provides a historical account of the development of eyeglasses, tracing the contributions of various scholars and innovators across different cultures and time periods. The paragraph emphasizes the interconnectedness of technological progress and the cumulative nature of innovation, built upon previous discoveries and spread through interaction and exchange.
🌐 The Complexity of History and the Utility of Themes
The final paragraph addresses the complexity of history and the utility of the six themes in understanding it. It uses the example of the Aztec pochteca to illustrate how historical elements can intersect multiple themes, such as economics, environment, technology, governance, and social organization. The paragraph encourages students to view history from multiple perspectives and to use the themes as interpretative tools for framing past events. It concludes by emphasizing the importance of practice in preparing for the AP exam and building a comprehensive understanding of world history.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Storytelling
💡Themes
💡AP World History Course
💡Human and the Environment
💡Culture
💡Political Authority
💡Economic Systems
💡Social Interactions
💡Technological Innovations
💡Three Close Reads Tool
💡Perspective
Highlights
Themes in storytelling provide meaning beyond the words, connecting to broad ideas like love, revenge, and the battle between good and evil.
Harry Potter and Marvel movies are used as examples to illustrate that themes like friendship, good and evil, and coming of age are more significant than the surface-level plot.
Themes help historians to make sense of the past by tying different people and events into larger narratives.
The AP World History course is structured around six themes, which aid in organizing past events and making comparisons between different regions and time periods.
Learning the six themes of the AP World History course can make the exam easier as many questions reference these themes.
The first theme, 'Humans and the Environment,' discusses how the environment shapes human culture and how humans transform their environment.
Culture, as the second theme, is described as the fabric that ties societies together through shared ideas, beliefs, and traditions, with examples of cross-cultural exchanges.
Political authority and its sources are explored in the third theme, with examples like the Mongol Empire and the influence of women in maintaining power.
The fourth theme, 'Economic Systems,' examines how societies make, distribute, trade, and consume resources, with a historical example of the Aztec Empire's agricultural technology.
The fifth theme, 'Social Interactions,' looks at the relationships within societies and how they influence political, social, and cultural dynamics.
The final theme, 'Technological Innovations,' highlights how problem-solving and technological advancements impact society, with the history of eyeglasses as an example.
History's complexity is emphasized, as events often intersect multiple themes, such as the pochteca of the Aztec Empire affecting economics, environment, technology, governance, and social organization.
The themes are tools for historians in training, providing them with the power to interpret the past and frame events using evidence.
Students are encouraged to practice using the Three Close Reads Tool to take notes on evidence related to the different themes while reading articles in the course.
Learning the six themes is crucial not only for understanding world history but also for performing well on the AP exam.
The transcript concludes by emphasizing the importance of practice and the utility of the themes in building a usable past and exam preparation.
Transcripts
Humans are storytellers. And all good stories have themes. Themes are broad ideas that run through a
story and give it meaning beyond the words. Many of humanity's greatest stories share themes in
common: love, revenge, coming of age, the battle between good and evil. Storytellers use themes
to make their stories more meaningful to their audience. Ohhh, I get it. Like how Harry Potter is
about a wizard school! Or, how the Marvel Cinematic Universe is about superheroes smashing aliens! Well...
not really. Harry Potter isn't about wands, wizards, and dark lords, it's about friendship. And good and
evil. And coming of age. And the Marvel movies aren't just flashy fight scenes. Black Panther
is about the tension between tradition and change, and how we sometimes need to challenge authority.
Themes of fatherhood, motherhood, and sacrifice run through many of the Marvel movies. In a similar way,
themes help historians make sense of the past so it's not just one darn thing after another.
Themes help historians tie a bunch of different people and events together into big, historical
narratives that tell us more about the world than smaller, disconnected narratives ever could.
Alright, I get it. So why are we talking about Harry Potter and superheroes?
Well, the people who made the AP world history course structured it around six themes, which we're
going to describe in a minute. Some teachers use these three-letter acronyms to refer to each theme,
but your teacher might use a different set of words or a mnemonic device like
SPICE-T or PIECES, but they're all talking about the same six themes. Without a tool like themes,
history kinda looks like just a bunch of different dates and names. Organizing past events into themes
helps us group different events together so we can tell what changed and what stayed the same.
That helps us make comparisons and connections between different regions and time periods. We know
that the AP exam can be stressful, but learning the themes will make the exam a lot easier.
Lots of AP exam questions reference the themes. Some questions are obvious about it, but some are
downright sneaky, so you need to learn the themes, and you need to practice decoding exam questions
to figure out which theme or themes they're asking about. Think of the themes as six different threads
that run through the course, connecting different parts of human history. As you read articles
and watch videos in this course, you should keep pulling on these "threads," uncovering new linkages.
Let's take a tour of the six themes and get a sense of what they're all about. And once
we're done with that, we promise, we'll get back to how themes help with exam questions.
Let's start with Humans and the Environment. The environments in which we live have always shaped
how we live, contributing to the great diversity, and surprising commonalities,
among human groups in different places. For example, natural resources and climate shape human culture.
There's a reason why religions like Christianity, that arose in the Middle East, believe hell is
super hot. Well, the Vikings who came from frosty Scandinavia, imagined it must be terribly cold.
In the Islamic holy book, the Quran, paradise is described as an oasis, filled with flowing
rivers and verdant greens—a welcome site for the peoples who lived in the arid lands of the Arabian
Peninsula, where Islam first developed. This theme is about stuff like our methods of agriculture;
the places that people choose to settle; how factors like geography and climate impact
society. It also covers topics like migration, population growth, disease, and natural disasters.
But, it's also about how humans have increasingly transformed our environment.
Culture is what makes us, us. It's the fabric that ties our societies together
through shared ideas, beliefs, and traditions. Culture differs dramatically from place to place,
but cross-cultural exchange has frequently produced entirely new cultural practices.
Today we can exchange culture instantaneously over the internet, but in the 14th century, it took a bit
more effort. Mansa Musa ruled the West African Mali empire. He was Muslim, but he ruled a diverse people
who worshipped many different gods. In 1324, he decided to complete the year-long pilgrimage to
the Islamic holy city of Mecca. He traveled with 60,000 servants and an astounding amount of gold.
He spent lavishly and donated generously. Though he ruled a powerful empire that was rich beyond
measure, he wanted to recruit Muslim scholars from the Middle East and North Africa to help him
spread Islam across West Africa. In his attempts to bring Islamic culture back to Mali, he spent
so much gold, that he caused runaway inflation in Egypt, sending the whole region into a recession.
The questions you'll see on this theme will often relate to religions
and belief systems, but certainly music, art, architecture, literature, language, and fashion
are all part of cultural developments and interactions.
Who has the right to rule? Where does political authority come from? Societies have produced
different answers to these questions as new states emerged, expanded, and collapsed. Governments have
used a variety of methods to maintain and justify their power. For example, consider
the mighty Mongol Empire. When we think about the Mongols, we think about men with swords on horses
riding across the open plains of Eurasia. But, did you know that the empire was mostly held together
by women? Mongol nobles and rulers married the daughters of people they conquered, and these women
formed networks of sisters and cousins who formed alliances with each other. Their alliances helped
stop the fighting between their husbands, and sometimes, they decided who the next ruler would be.
Wife-power and sister-power ran the empire. This theme is one of the easiest to identify,
just keep an eye out for words like, "empire," "governments," "politics," "nations," "revolutions,"
"military," "taxes," and "ideology." This theme is all about how states form, expand, govern, and collapse.
Economics is a fancy Greek word used to describe how we make, distribute, trade, and consume all our
stuff. Take, for example, the agricultural output of the Aztec Empire. To feed the six million
people living in their empire, the Aztecs developed an agricultural technology called
Chinampas. These were man-made islands that floated on the shallow lakes of central Mexico.
The lakes kept the islands moist and Aztec farmers covered them in mud, vegetable scraps, and night
soil. This method of fertilization allowed these flotillas of feces to be so productive
that crops could be harvested up to six times a year from each. This level of food production is
what kept the engine of empire running. This theme often focuses on who does the labor,
and who makes the profit. To identify evidence in this theme, keep an eye out for terms like
"money," "resources," "trade," "labor," "industry," and for economic theories like capitalism and socialism.
All societies develop ideas about how people ought to interact with each other.
These interactions influence political, social, and cultural dynamics in every society.
This theme can help you understand how these relationships have changed over time,
and how communities in different parts of the world have organized themselves.
For example, I may or may not have had an 80s workout clothing phase in college,
but... I never got arrested for it. Well, in 17th century Japan, the stakes were a little higher.
You see, the ruling samurai classes were jealous of how much money merchants made, so the samurai
passed laws that regulated the smallest details of how fancy a merchant could dress.
And they limited how big their house could be and how rich they could act.
There was even a law that forbade any merchant from using a silver clasp on their tobacco pouch.
Too fancy. One woman was exiled just because she wore an elaborate dress to court—
all because the samurai didn't want to be out fancied! This theme is all about how society's
determine how people fit into groups: gender, class, race, and ethnic hierarchies, as well as how family
and social life are organized in different places, and how these relationships change over time.
Humans have always been problem solvers. Our technological innovations have impacted all levels
of society, and these innovations often resulted from interaction and exchange among societies.
For example, if you're using eyeglasses or contact lenses to watch this video, you should thank the
ancient Greek astronomer, Ptolemy... Actually, you should thank the 11th century Arab scholar, Ibn
al-Haytham, who corrected and improved Ptolemy's ideas and revolutionized the field of optics.
Well... I mean, really you ought to thank the the 12th century Italian who translated al-Haytham into
Latin... Or maybe the 13th century Catholic friars, who probably made the first spectacles for reading.
Then, maybe give a shout out to Lenscrafters. The point is: technologies change over time,
and innovations in one place, are usually built on earlier innovations that spread from other places.
Phew. Six themes. Nine units. 800 years. That's a lot to take in. The themes help you to make
sense of all that history, but it's still not a simple job. But hey, they don't call it Advanced
Placement for nothing. It's not really all that hard, I bet I can do it in 10 seconds. Watch:
the Industrial Revolution—steam-powered machines, factories, and the telegraph—that's
obviously about technology and innovation. Boom. Done with two seconds left over. What's next?
John—that's great, but come on. It's not always so simple. For example, I'm going to describe
something, and you tell me which theme it belongs to. In the Aztec Empire, a merchant class known as
pochteca, carried trade goods to markets hundreds of miles away by foot, collecting tribute for the
Aztec emperor and spying on foreign governments. Do they walk across any of those poop islands?
This one's easy—merchants, markets, trade? It's "Economic Systems"—E-C-N. Not so fast. History is messy and
some things don't fit neatly into just one theme. The Aztec pochteca were important to the economy,
but they also tell us about the environment, technology, governance, and social organization.
Mesoamerican societies didn't have pack animals like horses or oxen, and there weren't many rivers
you could sail. On on top of that, these societies never developed sailing technologies. So, pochteca
had to carry everything themselves, on their backs. Alright, so that's economics, humans and
the environment, and technology and innovation. Wow, that's a lot of—the pochteca also played
political roles, helping the Aztec emperors collect tribute—a sort of tax. They also spied on enemy
governments. And, pochteca were a class of people who— like those Japanese merchants—made a lot of money.
But the nobility made laws to keep them subservient, and limit how they spent their
wealth, no matter how much money they made. So, when you see an exam question that asks you to compare
the growth of trade routes, the pochteca can serve as a useful piece of evidence. But they're also
great for an exam question asking you to explain how environmental factors shaped economic systems.
Or, for a discussion of how different empires maintained their hold on power.
Wow. You're right, Rachel. History really is like night soil—it's messy! The themes in this course
are all about perspective, and in that way, they give you—a historian in training—a lot of power.
The six themes will help you interpret the past, but they also give you some authority to
make choices about how to frame past events using evidence you encounter in this course. By examining
and comparing many different perspectives across multiple themes, you'll be better equipped to
support, extend, and challenge the historical narratives you encounter in this course.
And, you'll be better equipped for the AP exam in May. The key is to practice. As you read articles
in this course, use the Three Close Reads Tool to take notes about which pieces of evidence relate
to the different themes. Remember, these six themes are tools to help you make sense of world history,
learning them will help you build a usable past, and—yes, John—it will also help you on the exam.
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