DBQ: Explain why the evolution from the Paleolithic era to the Neolithic era is considered a turning point in human history.

Transcription

1 DBQ: Explain why the evolution from the Paleolithic era to the Neolithic era is considered a turning point in human history. Directions: The following question is based on the accompanying documents (The documents have been edited for the purpose of this exercise). This question is designed to test your ability to work with and understand historical documents. Focus Points: Write a response that: Has a relevant thesis and supports that thesis with evidence from the documents. Cites evidence from included source perspectives. Analyzes the documents by grouping them in as many appropriate ways as possible. Does not simply summarize the documents individually. Takes into account both the sources of the documents and the author s points of view. Bear in mind that you need to analyze and interpret the documents thoroughly and decide for yourself whether the evolution of from Paleolithic man to Neolithic man changed the scope of human civilization. Time to put on your examining glasses and look through the eyes of many in order to accurately create your own vision. Avoid the trap of judging solely on present day values and virtues and develop an argument that is just, takes into historical events and demonstrates your mastery of the content. Questions to ponder in order to formulate your own argument a. Are there any significant changes that occurred between the two eras? b. What role did the consumption of food play in the evolution of man? c. How do you think early man dealt with adversity? Give examples from the text. d. What do fossils and artifacts tell us about how people lived in prehistoric times? Give examples. e. What are the three divisions of the Stone Age? f. What struck you as the most significant information from the various texts? Why? g. What does this teach us to do as students of history?

2 How did Stone Age people deal with following: finding food; making shelter, clothing, tools and weapons; religious practices and developing government and social organizations? To what extent, if at all, can modern science develop an awareness of the life of early man? Probably the best way to gain insight into such questions is to examine the artifacts left behind by our distant forbearers in the way of paintings, structures and tools. Read the excerpts from the writings of modern day archeologist and anthropologist the gain a perspective of life as a early man. We label this era as prehistory (before writing records). However, there are artifacts such as pictographs that provide insight into the mind of early man. Examples of three such primary sources are presented in Documents A, B, and C, below. The remaining documents (D-M) come from secondary sources (written long after the events they describe). They provide historian views of how early man evolved from hunter and gather to civilized and domesticated." Is present day historian interpretations supported by evidence in the primary source documents or simply a extension of what science claims to be authentic? Draw your own conclusion after completing your reading of all the sources provided DOCUMENT A Clay Tablet with Pictographic Record of Daily Rations Source: The Visual Dictionary of Ancient Civilizations Dorling Kindersley (adapted)

3 DOCUMENT B Stone Age petroglyphs at Gobustan, Azerbaijan In 1939, archeologist Isaak Jafarzade began the first archeological investigation of the petroglyphs at Gobustan. Between 1940 and 1965, teams identified and documented approximately 3,500 individual rock paintings on 750 rocks. The most ancient petroglyphs have been identified as belonging to the 12-8th century B.C. However, it is assumed that life existed here even earlier and that Gobustan was one of the cradles of civilization. Jafarzade research findings were published in a book entitled "Gobustan" in Source: UNESCO World Heritage: Gobustan Rock Art Cultural Landscape DOCUMENT C

4 DOCUMENT D

5 DOCUMENT E... The Neolithic Revolution also changed the way people lived. In place of scattered hunting communities, the farmers lived in villages. Near groups of villages, small towns grew up, and later cities too. Thus the Neolithic Revolution made civilization itself possible. (The Ancient Near East) Within the villages, towns and cities, it was possible for people to specialize in the sort of work they could do best. Many stopped producing food at all, making instead tools and other goods that farmers needed, and for which they gave them food in exchange. This process of exchange led to trade and traders, and the growth of trade made it possible for people to specialize even more.... D. M. Knox The Neolithic Revolution (1980) DOCUMENT F... Man survived the fierce test of the Ice Ages because he had the flexibility of mind to recognize inventions and to turn them into community property. Evidently the Ice Ages worked a profound change in the way man could live. They forced him to depend less on plants and more on animals. The rigors of hunting on the edge of the ice also changed the strategy of hunting. It became less attractive to stalk single animals, however large. The better alternative was to follow herds and not to lose them to learn to anticipate and in the end to adopt their habits, including their wandering migrations. This is a peculiar adaptation the trans-humance [nomadic] mode of life on the move. It has some of the earlier qualities of hunting, because it is a pursuit; the place and the pace are set by the food animal. And it has some of the later qualities of herding, because the animal is tended and, as it were, stored as a mobile reservoir of food.... Jacob Bronowski The Ascent of Man DOCUMENT G... Paleolithic men could not control their food supply. So long as they relied on foraging, hunting, fishing, and trapping, they were dependent on the natural food supply in a given area to keep from starving. But while Paleolithic men continued their food-gathering pattern of existence in Europe, Africa, and Australia, groups of people in the Near East began to cultivate edible plants and to breed animals. Often described as the first economic revolution in the history of man, this momentous change from a food-gathering to a food-producing economy initiated the Neolithic Age. Paleolithic man was a hunter; Neolithic man became a farmer and herdsman.... T. Walter Wallbank Civilization: Past and Present: Prehistory to 1500 (1976)

6 DOCUMENT H This extract summarizes the findings of several archaeologists in the 1950s and 1960s.... The first archaeological evidence for the domestication of cereals, and some of the earliest evidence for the domestication of animals, comes from a broad region stretching from Greece and Crete in the west to the foothills of the Hindu Kush south of the Caspian in the east. Here are found the wild plants from which wheat and barley were domesticated, whilst it is only in this zone that the wild progenitors [ancestors] of sheep, goats, cattle and pigs were found together, for the latter two had a much broader distribution than wild sheep and goats. By the tenth millennium B.C. peoples who relied upon hunting and gathering were reaping wild barley and wild wheat with knives, grinding the grain and using storage pits. By the sixth millennium there is evidence of village communities growing wheat and barley, and keeping sheep and goats, in Greece and Crete in the west, in southern Turkey, the Galilean uplands of the eastern littoral [coastal region] of the Mediterranean, in the Zagros mountains of Iran and Iraq, the interior plateau of Iran, and in the foothills south east of the Caspian. Subsequently the number of domesticated plants grown was increased, including flax, for its oil rather than for fiber, peas, lentils and vetch [plants used for food]. By the fourth millennium the olive, vine and fig, the crops which give traditional Mediterranean agriculture much of its distinctiveness, had been domesticated in the eastern Mediterranean. Cattle and pigs are thought to have been domesticated after sheep and goats. Cattle were used as draught animals, and for meat; not until the late fourth millennium is there evidence of milking in South West Asia.... D. B. Grigg The Agricultural Systems of the World (1974) DOCUMENT I

7 DOCUMENT J DOCUMENT K

8 DOCUMENT L Figure (on left): The skeleton of an 18 year old male wears a shell hat and necklace in a burial at the Mesolithic site of Arene Candide in Italy. Figure (on right): Burial Cave of the Children called "double burial" near the Italian Riviera. They are Approximately 25,000 years old (adolescent and adult woman.) Roberto Maggi Arene Candide: A Functional and Environmental Assessment of the Holocene Sequence (1997) DOCUMENT M In addition to stone, early man used other materials for making tools. These materials included bones, antlers, teeth, and ivory. With these new materials, they were able to create sharper blades, needles for sewing, and fishhooks for fishing. Early man also invented new kinds of long distance weapons, such as bow and arrows and spear throwers. Source:

9 Core-Scoring Guide for Honors World History Document-Based Question Basic Core Competence Points 1. Has acceptable thesis Addresses all of the documents and demonstrates understanding of all or all but one Supports thesis with appropriate evidence from all or all but one document 2 (Supports thesis with appropriate evidence from all but two documents) (1) 4. Analyzes point of view in at least two documents Analyzes documents by grouping them in two or three ways, depending on the question 1 6. Identifies and explains the need for one type of appropriate additional document or source. 1 Expanded Core Excellence Expands beyond basic core of 1-7 points. A student must earn 7 points 0-2 in the basic core before earning points in the expanded core area. Examples: Has a clear, analytical, and comprehensive thesis. Shows careful and insightful analysis of the documents. Uses documents persuasively as evidence. Analyzes point of view In most or all documents. Analyzes the documents in additional ways groupings, comparisons, syntheses. Brings in relevant outside information. Explains why additional types of document(s) or sources are needed. TOTAL TOTAL POINTS BASIC CORE TOTAL POINTS EXPANDED CORE TOTAL POINTS EARNED FINAL GRADE RUBRIC PERCENT POINTS