Unit Two Plans: From Hunting and Gathering to Agriculture

Learning Objectives

Oregon's Common Curriculum Goals:

History

• World History
1. Understand and interpret events, issues and developments in four spheres of human activity (i.e., economic, social, political, cultural) within and across eras of world history:
• Era 1: The Beginnings of Human Society
• Era 2: Early Civilizations and the Emergence of Pastoral Peoples (4000 BC - 1000 BC)

• Historical Relationships
1. Analyze cause and effect relationships, including multiple causations.
2. Interpret and reconstruct chronological relationships.
3. Recognize and interpret change and continuity within four broad content themes: interaction of people, cultures, and ideas; economic and technological developments and their impact on society; American politics and political thought; role of the United States in the world.
4. Understand relationships among events, issues and developments that cross spheres of human activity (i.e., economic, social, political, cultural).

Geography

• Maps, Charts, Graphs and Other Geographic Tools as Sources of Information
1. Locate major physical and human (cultural) features of the Earth.
2. Use maps to organize information about people, places and environments in a spatial context.
• Physical and Cultural Characteristics of Places and Regions
1. Understand the social, cultural and economic processes that change the characteristics of places and regions over time.
2. Compare physical and human characteristics of places and regions.
• Distribution and Migration of People, Ideas and Products
1. Analyze the causes of human migration and its effects.
2. Compare and contrast one area of settlement to another.
• Interaction Between Physical and Human Systems
1. Describe the consequences of humans changing the physical environment and how human changes in one place affect other places.
2. Describe how physical charcteristics of places and regions affect human activities.
3. Understand the geographic results of resource use and management programs and policies.

Social Science Analysis

• Analysis
1. Define and clarify an issue so that its dimensions are well understood.
2. Explain various perspectives on an event or issue and the reasoning behind them.
3. Identify, analyze and select a course of action to resolve an issue.

Content Goals:

• Students will be able to compare, contrast and explain hunting/gathering, pastoralism, and settled agriculture as ways of life.
• Students will be able to identify the forces which shifted people from hunting and gathering to pastoralism and settled agriculture.
• Students will be able to identify the relative advantages and disadvantages of each way of life.
• Students will identify the effects on the environment from each way of living (salinisation, erosion,deforestation, flooding, etc.).
• Students will apply knowledge of modes of production to case studies on the Mayas and Easter Islanders.
• Students will analyze the case of the modern Nauru Islanders and compare and contrast its situation to those of the Mayans and Easter Islanders.

Content Resources

Readings:

• Chapters 3-4 (pp.18-67) in Clive Ponting's A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations
• Small group activity - (Linguistic, Interpersonal) Discuss these questions:

1. What was life like for hunting and gathering groups of people? Describe how these people met their basic needs and used their environment to satisfy them.

2. How and why did the transition to sedentary agriculture occur? What were the driving forces behind the change and what was the process of transition to agriculture?

3. What were (are) the advantages to settled agriculture over the hunting and gathering way of life?

4. What were (are) the disadvantages of settled agriculture when compared to hunting and gathering as a way of life?

• Large Group Board Share (Linguistic, Mathematical - Logical, Visual - Spatial) -

Have a recorder from each group write the main ideas from your group on the white boards around the room. Have another person in the group draw a symbol, which represents each idea, next to the written idea. Make sure you place your group's ideas and symbols under the appropriate heading.

• Individual Assignment (Linguistic) -

On your own, write a short four paragraph essay in which each of the topics discussed in your small group and shared in the large group is addressed. The logical format would be to write a separate paragraph for each topic.

• Individual Assignment (Intrapersonal, Linguistic, Musical, Spatial)-

Write a diary entry, create a piece of art, choreograph a dance routine, or compose a song in which you pretend to be a person living through the change from hunting and gathering to pastoralism or settled agriculture. Your work should reflect the feelings and personal stake these changes will entail as your group changes its way of life.

• Small Group Activity (Linguistic, Interpersonal, Kinesthetic) -

Present your work in small groups. Change groups three times so you will have presented your work four times in all. Group members may ask questions and provide feedback.

• Individual Assignment (Linguistic, Intrapersonal) -

Write a short reflection paper which evaluates your own work. Try to identify three specific things you did well and three specific things you could do to improve your work

• Simulation (Bodily - Kinesthetic, Intrapersonal, Interpersonal)

Hunting and gathering group simulation (From Early Humans, a resource book for teachers by Michelle Breyer, Teacher Created Materials, Inc., Huntington Beach, CA, 1995).

• Chapter 5 in Ponting's A Green History (pp. 68-87)
• Large Group Discussion (Linguistic, Interpersonal) -

Discuss problems of erosion, deforestation, flooding, and hunger caused by environmental change. How did these changes lead to the Mayan Kingdoms' destruction?

• Small Group Activity (Mathematical - Logical, Linguistic, Interpersonal) -

Make a T chart of the similarities and differences between events on Easter Island and in the Mayan Kingdoms.

• Large Group Board Share (Linguistic, Kinesthetic) -

Have each student write at least one idea on a class T chart.

• Individual Assignment (Linguistic, Interpersonal) -

Write a narrative essay in which you tell the story of the settlement, development, and collapse of the Easter Island and Mayan civilizations. Be sure to tell how their stories were similar and how they were different. You may wish to tell this as a personal story of members of each group. To help focus your essay, try to answer these questions as you tell their stories:

1. How did the people adapt to survive in their environment?

2. How did they change their environment?

3. How did changes in their environment effect the people?

• "Paradise Squandered" by Dale Van Atta ( Reader's Digest, May 1997, pp. 87-91)
• The Large Group Assignment (Interpersonal, Linguistic, Mathematical - Logical)

Discuss the ideas written about in the essays and try to find lessons which apply to today. Think about these ideas:

1. What are the lessons of the Easter Islanders and Mayans for today's civilizations?
2. Why did the Easter island and Maya Civilizations collapse?
3. What might the Easter Islanders and Mayas have done to prevent the collapse of their societies?
4. Are we headed in the same direction today as the Easter Islanders and Mayas?
5. Are there practices which we must change or alter to ensure our survival as a civilization? If so, which practices and how?
• Reflective Writing (Linguistic, Intrapersonal) -

Write a two paragraph reflective short essay. The first paragraph should review and summarize our class discussion about Easter Island and the Mayas. Make sure to include a summary of the lessons that might be learned from their civilizations. The second paragraph should relate how the article about Nauru either supports or does not support the lessons you drew from the Easter Islanders and Mayas.

Videos:

• Lost Kingdoms of the Maya, a National Geographic documentary.
• Individual Assignment (Linguistic, Spatial, Interpersonal) -

Take film notes by creating a mind map of the film as it is shown. You may go back and complete the mind map using help from other people in the class.

Links:

• The Agricultural Revolution Page at WSU
• Mayan Studies Resources from Chico High School Library