BHP Lesson 33: Age of Exploration

More people, more connections, and more exchange lead to innovation. Today Alphonse the camel is back to co-host our discussion on the ways that new networks of trade and migration increased our ability to learn collectively.

Driving Question: How did new networks of exchange accelerate collective learning?

  • Have you ever heard the saying that “the smartest person in the room is the room”? What does that mean? Have you ever been part of a group project, where it required the input of everyone to come up with a solution? As we learned last week, the larger our networks are, the greater potential we have for innovation and the exchange of new ideas to advance society. 

Word of the Day: Network

  • Definition: An interconnected system of things or people. 
  • The first contacts among the world zones created new networks of change. We were linked by an interconnected system of trade and migration. People, goods, ideas, plants, animals, and diseases all traveled along these networks. The exchanges along these networks sped up the pace of collective learning. 

Lesson

  • Go to Khan Academy and watch the Crash Course Big History video, Why Early Globalization Matters.
  • In this video, Emily Graslie presents the story of globalization and collective through the three P’s: printing, potatoes, and plagues. Each of the P’s offers important evidence about the two most important ingredients required for collective learning to occur: population and connectivity. How did the first human connections through globalization contribute to our ability to learn collectively?

Historian’s Journal Prompt

  • How did networks of exchange contribute to the global spread of the coronavirus?
  • We know that COVID-19 began in Wuhan, China. How did it spread globally in the matter of a few months? Think about how networks of exchange contributed to this.
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