- How do major disease events affect the course of human events? Answer this question by examining and comparing two of the following events: the Athenian Plague (430-427 BCE), the Plague of Justinian (541-42 CE) and the Black Death (1331-1353 CE).
- Choose one technology besides the invention of agriculture in the pre-modern world (before 1500 CE) that you feel was most influential in human society. Explain how its development and use fundamentally changed the way in which human beings lived.
- Compare the Graeco-Roman philosophy of Stoicism to the philosophical tenets of Confucian thought. Do they share common characteristics? In what way do they focus on the role of the individual and human society?
- Was Islam a wholly new and different religion in its inception and growth during the Rashidun and Unayyad Caliphates? Or did it only develop as something new over time, drawing heavily in its origins from earlier religious and social traditions?
- The collapse of Classical Maya world is a contested topic. Why do you think the Mayan world declined ca. 900 CE? Was it the result of environmental factors? Manmade ones? Some combination of elements?
- The Greek Herodotus has been called the “Father of History” being credited with inventing the formal discipline of historical inquiry. More recent scholars have called him the “Father of Lies.” Why? What are the criticisms of Herodotus’ work and do you agree with them?
- Compare the European Renaissance to the cultural renaissance of Ming China. What did they share in common? What about them were different?
- Choose one series of human movements in the pre-modern world, examine it and explain how it impacted both upon the people who moved and the people whose lands were affected by such movements? What can your example tell us more broadly about the movement of human populations in world history?
- It is a truism to say that the status of women amongst most societies in history was subordinate to that of men. Choose three of the societies from the list here and compare their relative place (legal, social, economic, etc.) to each other. What do the variations say about the societies that made these differences? Ancient Egypt, Han China, the Roman Empire, the Umayyad and Abassid Caliphates, the Mongol Empire, Mayan Mesoamerica, the Empires of Ghana and Mali. What do they collectively tell us about the status and agency of women in the pre-modern world?
- What would you argue was the most important impact that came with the establishment of the Silk Road and its development over the centuries? Would you say that was primarily economic or something else? Explain and defend your answer.
- Was the end of the Roman Empire a collapse of a Graeco-Roman civilization centered in the Mediterranean? Or was it a complex transition from one sort of civilization into another? Explain.
- Compare the travels of Ibn Battuta with that of Marco Polo. How do their impressions and descriptions of foreign places compare? What perspectives as world travellers does each man take? How can their accounts help to provide a better understanding for the times and places in which they lived.
- Examine the place and role of the slave and slavery in one of the following societies: New Kingdom Egypt, the Greek city-states, Shang and Zhou China, the Roman Empire, the Aztecs, the Ottoman Empire, Sub-Saharan pre-modern Africa. In your examination, consider whether the institution is essentially one of economic necessity and advantage or one of social and cultural traditions and norms.
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