Unit Checkpoint

Answer: Silk Road: primarily overland, connected China to Mediterranean, caravans, dangerous but stable routes. Indian Ocean: maritime, monsoon-dependent, connected East Africa to Southeast Asia, larger cargo capacity, less direct control. Both spread religions, technologies, and diseases; both created cosmopolitan trading centers.

Answer: Mongols created the Pax Mongolica, unifying much of Eurasia under one rule. This enabled safer trade, faster communication, and exchange of ideas across the largest land empire in history. They also spread the plague along trade routes.

Answer: The slave trade connected three continents (Africa, Americas, Europe) in a brutal exchange. It brought economic development to some while causing immense suffering to others. It demonstrates that global connections can be deeply exploitative and that benefits/costs are distributed unequally.

Answer: Religions spread along trade routes (Buddhism via Silk Road, Islam via Indian Ocean). They created transnational communities with shared languages, legal systems, and values. Pilgrimages and missionary activities connected distant peoples. Religious institutions preserved and transmitted knowledge.

Answer: Consider: author's purpose and audience, what's emphasized/omitted, language used for other peoples, assumed cultural values, what European interests the source serves. Use it to understand European worldviews while recognizing its limitations for understanding other perspectives.

Answer: Speed: weeks/months vs. seconds/hours. Scale: elite goods vs. mass consumption. Actors: empires and merchants vs. multinational corporations and international organizations. Consciousness: limited awareness vs. global media. Both involve trade, cultural exchange, and unequal power relations.

Sample Thesis: Disease has been as significant as armies in shaping world history, with epidemics repeatedly determining the outcomes of conquests, triggering demographic shifts, and creating conditions for social and political change that purely human actors could not have achieved alone.

Answer: By consulting sources from different cultures involved, recognizing each perspective's biases, looking for corroboration and contradiction, considering power dynamics affecting whose voices survive, and acknowledging gaps in the record.

Answer: Common patterns: local adaptation of foreign elements (syncretism), resistance to change, adoption of useful technologies faster than ideas, preservation of core identity while changing surface practices, tension between elites who benefit and common people who may suffer, long-term blending creating new hybrid cultures.

Sample CER: Claim: The introduction of American crops to Africa and Asia dramatically increased global population by improving food security. Evidence: Crops like maize, potatoes, and cassava were adopted throughout the Eastern Hemisphere after 1500; global population increased from 500 million in 1500 to 900 million by 1800; these crops thrived in conditions where traditional grains failed, including cassava in tropical Africa and potatoes in northern Europe. Reasoning: These New World crops were more calorie-dense and drought-resistant than many Old World staples, allowing populations to grow in regions previously limited by food production. The population explosion created conditions for industrialization, urbanization, and the modern world - demonstrating how ecological changes from global connections transformed human societies in profound and lasting ways.