1. Theme 1 Lori Healy HIST 140 Section 71258 September 1, 2010

2. General Introduction: What is History? Theme: You can change the way history is told but you cannot change the past. History is story, it is a collection of events, interpreted and explained in many different ways. The facts of history are verifiable due to records, witnesses, and logic. History cannot be repeated. Historical facts can be based on at least two kinds of sources: primary and secondary.

3. Source 1: The Journey of Man Theme: Everyone alive today is related. Spencer Wells has concluded that all humans alive today descended from a single man who lived in Africa around 60,000 years ago. He analyzed DNA from people in all regions of the world to learn about our most distant ancestors. He is trying to build a family tree for the whole world.

4. Source 2: Catastrophe Theme: Altering the course of world history. The extreme weather events of 535-536 were the most severe and protracted short-term episodes of cooling in the Northern Hemisphere in the last 2,000 years. Its affects were widespread causing unseasonal weather, crop failures, and famines world wide. The mid 6th century catastrophe wiped out whole cities, and caused civilizations to crumble. The catastrophe affected the entire world and may have changed the course of human history. It laid the foundations of the world we live in today.

5. Source 3: Changing Interpretation of America’s Past Theme: The Western Hemisphere was more populated and sophisticated than people thought. Erickson's belief that the entire landscape of 30,000 square was constructed by a complex, populous society more than 2,000 years ago. James Mooney concluded in 1910 that in 1491 North America had 1.15 million inhabitants. In 1966 Henry F. Dobyns calculated, the Western Hemisphere held 90to 112 million people. In 1491 more people lived in the Americas than in Europe. Fewer people may be living in the Western Hemisphere now than in 1491. The first whites to explore many parts of the Americas may have encountered places that were already depopulated by smallpox, typhus, influenza measles, and diphtheria. Dobyns estimated that in the first 130 years of contact about 95 percent of the people in the Americas died In 1539 Hernando de Soto came to Florida bringing 200 horses, 600 soldiers, and 300 pigs, the whole Southeast became infected by the disease transmitted by the pigs. . The Indians were so successful at imposing their will on the landscape that in 1492 Columbus set foot in a hemisphere thoroughly dominated by humankind.

6. Source 4: The World and Trade: The World in 1492 & Columbus’s World. Theme: Columbus's voyages unified the globe. When Columbus set sail in 1492, people in the Eastern Hemisphere knew only the three-way division of Europe, Asia, and Africa. By the fifteenth century, after the Norse voyages, all contact with the far west had faded The fact that the Norse rather than Columbus could claim to be the first European in the Western Hemisphere meant very little. Columbus’s voyage is the lasting contact, the one that forever changed human awareness. Columbus's voyages showed that the globe was not just a single ecumene surrounded by a massive sea. By 1492 expanded food resources were beginning to strain under the weight of multiplying populations. Due to the intensive cultivation of the three basic staple foods(wheat, corn, and rice) at the end of the fifteenth century, China, the Mediterranean community, and the Americas accounted for three-quarters of the globe's population. The Eastern and Western Hemispheres suddenly came into contact with each other in 1492. Thus began a drastic shift in the relationship between populations, with both beneficial and fatal results. European crops and livestock were carried across the ocean, providing new sources of food. The introduction of Western Hemisphere crops to the rest of the globe encouraged explosive population growth and long-range improvement in human diet. Tomatoes, white potatoes, paprika, sweet potatoes, peanuts, tapioca, hot peppers, chocolate, and tobacco spread throughout the world as a result of Columbus voyages.

7. Source 4: The World and Trade:The European Voyages and How the World Changes Theme: Drugs must be recognized as a foundation of the world economy, not as a abnormality. Drugs have been vital to exchange and consumption. In the seventeenth century wealthy people all over the world began to drink, smoke, and eat exotic plants that came from long distances. Coffee, tea, cocoa, tobacco, and sugar all became popular at roughly the same time. Both European and Asian consumers became addicted to these American, Asian, and African products. For three centuries they constituted the most valuable agricultural goods in world trade. Today the word "drugs" refers to criminal commodities, socially harmful and criminal goods that reside in the underworld of the black market. The nineteenth century would promote these goods so much that they lost their innovative appeal and their sense of social distinction. In the consuming countries of the north, drugs created culture. Rather than symbolizing identities drugs became a way to make money.