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BEFORE YOU WATCH: Era 1 Overview

Use the “Three Close Reads” approach as you watch the video below.
Use the “Three Close Reads” approach as you watch the video below (next in the lineup!). If you want to learn more about this strategy, click here.

First read: preview and skimming for gist

Before you watch, you should skim the transcript first. The skim should be very quick and give you the gist (general idea) of what the video is about. You should be looking at the title, thumbnails, pictures, and first few seconds of the video for the gist.

Second read: key ideas and understanding content

Now that you’ve skimmed the video transcript and taken a quick peek at the video, you should preview the questions you will be answering. These questions will help you get a better understanding of the concepts and arguments that are presented in the video. Keep in mind that when you watch the video, it is a good idea to write down any vocab you read or hear that is unfamiliar to you.
By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:
  1. What kinds of narratives about the past might you encounter, according to the video?
  2. Why should we start a course in world history before humans existed?
  3. The video introduces one historian’s account of history, David Christian’s Big History. What does Christian argue were the big transitions, or changes, in his account?
  4. The video also introduces the story of Ardi, who was one of our ancestors but not yet a modern human. Ardi’s life seems very different from ours. What were some of these differences?
  5. Ardi and her species did share at least one attribute with modern humans, however. What was it?

Third read: evaluating and corroborating

Finally, here are some questions that will help you focus on why this video matters and how it connects to other content you’ve studied.
At the end of the third read, you should be able to respond to this question:
  1. One of the goals of this course is that the information you learn becomes usable for you. Can you think of any ways in which you might use the information you learned in this video at some point, despite the fact that this is the most distant history in the whole course?
Now that you know what to look for, it’s time to watch! Remember to return to these questions once you’ve finished watching.

Want to join the conversation?

  • blobby green style avatar for user samuelligolf
    好难
    (4 votes)
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  • hopper cool style avatar for user zhiwenglim
    My answers:
    1. Books, documentaries, movies, monuments, buildings, oral history of older people, politicians

    2. Humans are not the only actors in the story of our past. As We live in a world that shapes who we are and what we can do [geography, weather, plants, animals]

    3.
    Start of Big History: Big Bang Over 13.8 billion years ago
    First stars & galaxies formed: 13.6 billion years ago
    New chemical elements are formed: 12 billion years ago
    Earth & Solar System is formed: 4.5 billion years ago
    Life began on earth: 3.7 billion years ago
    Physically modern humans emerged: 250,000 years ago
    End: Ends by considering the history of the future.

    4. Lack language or physical culture, no societies with houses or tools, forage to nourish their bodies, unable to communicate with each other beyond an extended family, didn’t trade or preserve knowledge beyond their instincts.

    5. They lacked large, sharp canine teeth, a feature that connect with apes or a dominant male in a group. So historians suggest they bonded in pairs or maintained long term monogamous relationships.

    6. I can use the history of the past to make fiction that describe how a new world is created or how the previous extinct generation loses their history due to certain evolutionary factors.
    (4 votes)
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  • leaf green style avatar for user vicky o'connor
    Is there going to be a transcript?
    (2 votes)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user mpascueldiego
    ¿Cuales eran las principales cosas que carecían?
    (2 votes)
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  • duskpin ultimate style avatar for user Dilara
    Huh what abt history
    (1 vote)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user ca'liayah.hayes
    well i like it
    (1 vote)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user Felix Victoriano
    1. Elder’s Reminiscence of the past, and their stories. Monuments and Museums to visually or descriptively represent events and or stories of the past. Documentaries which dive in telling a multitude of stories, either true or false. Movies that distort real events or non-real events for our entertainment. And lastly, we read books that share pasts and a collection of stories.

    2. The history that we are or is or has been taught doesn’t involve any or much content from other subjects or fields of study, so it is in a sense very fixed and one sided. By revisiting and teaching from what science knows so far, as the “Beginning” of the universe, we can set a strong foundation from which to build upon, explaining the science behind it, and then moving forward from that point can really make you see the bigger picture of things. Making considerations considerable, giving you a more thought provoking mind, and just overall giving you a better sense of everything. It becomes like a movie or a video game that progresses as time goes on, in this case it’ll be the events major or minor that we hopefully get to see as we go along and how they shaped what we are and know presently. Now I could write a book on this question because it's a fun one, but I won’t lol.

    3. The Big Bang ⇒ The Stars Light Up ⇒ New Chemical Elements
    About 13.8 billion years ago, About 13.6 billion years ago, 12 billion years ago,

    Earth & The Solar System ⇒ Life ⇒ Biologically Modern Humans
    4.5 billion years ago, 3.7 billion years ago, 250, 000 years ago

    4. Ardi had a smaller brain, but more flexible limbs, her species did not have a language, nor culture. There were no societies nor houses with tools, they didn’t farm or make their own food, but they instead foraged for their own. They ate ripe fruit and insects, they didn’t trade or preserve knowledge.

    5. Ardipithecus lacked large sharp canine teeth, instead they had smaller ones like us modern humans. They were probably the first humans that we know of that engaged in long-term monogamous relationships, as opposed to polyamorous ones.
    (1 vote)
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