Main content
Course: World History Project - Origins to the Present > Unit 1
Lesson 3: History Frames | 1.2- BEFORE YOU WATCH: Frame Concept Introduction
- WATCH: Frame Concept Introduction
- BEFORE YOU WATCH: Communities Frame Introduction
- WATCH: Communities Frame Introduction
- BEFORE YOU WATCH: Networks Frame Introduction
- WATCH: Networks Frame Introduction
- BEFORE YOU WATCH: Production and Distribution Frame Introduction
- WATCH: Production and Distribution Frame Introduction
- History Frames
© 2024 Khan AcademyTerms of usePrivacy PolicyCookie Notice
WATCH: Networks Frame Introduction
We already know that we humans create and live in different communities. But we also share ideas, material goods, and other things (including people) among communities. Sometimes we share across vast distances. This sharing happens through systems called networks. In general, humans have built larger and larger networks over time, leading up to the global exchange of ideas through the internet. But very small networks, often within this bigger pattern, are also still important today.
Website: https://whp.oerproject.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OERProject/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OERProject. Created by World History Project.
Website: https://whp.oerproject.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OERProject/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OERProject. Created by World History Project.
Want to join the conversation?
- eh history its interesting but I'm not gonna remember anything(11 votes)
- Yes, but we will probably remember the most important things.(2 votes)
- We Are All Just People No Matter What Answer to the Quote At0:01(3 votes)
- ? What do you mean(1 vote)
- Humans are not animals(1 vote)
- Well there is the little issue of TikTok Tics...(0 votes)
Video transcript
(music playing) Humans are social animals. We need contact with other
humans to live and to thrive. Over time, our species
has developed patterns of connections between and among people
and their communities. We call these
our networks of interaction. Networks link
populations of people, enabling people living
in different communities to move and share ideas,
material goods, crops, animals, pathogens, and even people. We communicate across
and through our networks. Sometimes, what moves
through and across networks are physical items,
such as clothing or food. Sometimes they're concepts, like mathematics or ideas
of what's in the universe. At times, networks encourage
and enable cooperation and prove to be
mutually beneficial. At other times, networks allow competition, violence, disease,
and decay to spread. For good or bad,
progress or decline, our networks of interaction
have been among the most enduring
and significant features of our lives. They are a central factor in
understanding historical change and how the present came to be. Developing a brief
but big picture of major changes
in human networks over our very long history might help us
as we study the human past, connect the past to the present,
and face the future. (music playing) So, how might
we frame this story? We might begin by pointing
to the early networks our nomadic hunter-gatherer
ancestors developed. They created local networks
of interaction, supported by shared language
or systems of communication, a story we begin
to explore in Era Two. These language networks
made possible the exchange and
then collection of ideas. They helped our earliest
ancestors to survive and thrive in new environments, and thus spread humanity
around the world. As people settled down
into more permanent communities, their population grew. The number of people with whom
they interacted grew, too. You will investigate
this transition that began about 8,000 years ago in Era Three. These now-sedentary people
built village networks using new technologies of
communication, such as writing, and new means of transportation,
such as boats and roads. As populations
continued to grow, some villages became cities. Metropolitan networks emerged and connected villages and farms
to cities. Eventually, these networks
connected cities to each other. Few communities lived
in total isolation. Now, that was particularly true for large-scale agrarian
or farming societies, which developed as settled
populations continued to grow and became denser
in particular areas or regions. You will explore
this process in Era Four. You'll study
how people intensified and consolidated
their interactions with other agrarian societies
and metropolitan areas. They developed long-distance
routes of exchange across vast regions
in Afro-Eurasia, Oceania, Australia, and Meso-America. These larger,
"Old World" networks across Afro-Eurasia
and the Americas meant that fewer and fewer
humans lived in isolation. Although these networks
sometimes collapsed, people rebuilt
and restructured them. Starting about 500 years ago--
during Era Five in our course-- oceanic travel connected those previously disconnected
Old-World networks. The networks came together to form the first truly global
networks of interactions. Now, this happened
slowly at first, as the regions and
communities of the world developed loose connections. Ideas, material goods,
and people could now move around the globe, but they did so quite slowly. However, in the past 200 years--
as you'll see in Era Six-- new technologies, such as
newspapers, telegraphs, and then telephones,
helped spread ideas rapidly. Steamships and trains
moved people and goods faster and further
than ever before. These innovations and inventions tightened up
the loose global networks, connecting more and more people,
more and more communities. Now, this has continued
into the present. Now, the new global internet helps us share ideas,
plans, and news with millions of people
almost instantaneously. New innovations
in transportation move people and goods
anywhere in the world within days, if not hours. It appears as if we're living
in one vast global network of interconnection today-- an issue you'll consider
in Era Seven. For the first time, historians speak of humans
living in a network-- singular-- rather than networks plural. (music playing) We have created a tool
that we call the Network frame to help you remember
and use this Big Story. Use this frame to help you think
about changes in the human past and to situate events
in the present. Use it to think about how or if these increasingly rapid
and complex networks changed who we are. Does our global network
give us meaning? Does being connected elevate us? Has it allowed us to create
a shared sense of who we are? Or are we, in some ways, adrift in the vastness
of our worldwide web? Answering these questions
requires us to understand how networks
have shaped and been shaped by people
across the global past. Understanding the history
of networks, in turn, can help us to make sense of
the world that we live in today. (music playing)