Unit 8 Study Guide

Question 1

What is one innovation that directly accelerated empire expansion and exploration?

Accepted Answer

Improved sailing technologies

Question 2

What advantages did the Afro-Eurasian world zone have over the other world zones?

Accepted Answer

more land, more food, better animals for transportation, and longer history

Question 3

What role did the outposts and border regions of empires serve?

Accepted Answer

They were centers of commercial and technological innovation.

Question 4

Which of the following was NOT a reason the Afro-Eurasian world zone had an edge over the other world zones?

Accepted Answer

The lack of work animals

Question 5

What portion of indigenous Americans died as a result of European arrival in the Americas?

Accepted Answer

55-95%

Question 6

What two ingredients are vital for collective learning?

Accepted Answer

Size and Diversity

Question 7

Why did some very large empires begin to decline and fall after they had taken over large expanses of land?

Accepted Answer

it was difficult to maintain control over such a large area of land

Question 8

What effect did the Silk Roads have on the development and power of the four world zones?

Accepted Answer

Afro-Eurasia having more interconnection, and power than any other zone.

Question 9

What were the four isolated world zones of human society that existed before 1400 CE and the Age of Exploration?

Accepted Answer

The Americas, Australasia, the Pacific and Afro-Eurasia

Question 10

What was the Columbian Exchange?

Accepted Answer

The movement of goods and people between hemispheres

Question 11

How was the introduction of new animals, like the pig and horse, revolutionary for the Americas?

Accepted Answer

They provided new food sources and modes of transportation.

Question 12

What was “the Great Dying”?

Accepted Answer

The exposure of indigenous Americans leading to widespread death

Question 13

What crop’s cultivation drove this mass enslavement of Africans?

Accepted Answer

sugar

Question 14

What was one benefit of long-distance travel during the “Age of Exploration”?

Accepted Answer

Collective learning increased

Question 15

What important crop traveled from Mesoamerica to Afro-Eurasia in the 1500s, played a role in increasing the population?

Accepted Answer

Potato

Question 16

What makes the European explorations of the 15th through 19th centuries important in the world of Big History?

Accepted Answer

They united all four world zones, creating a global system.

Question 17

Why do states throughout history tend to expand over time?

Accepted Answer

Maintaining a state is expensive and growing populations strain recources.

Question 18

What were the Silk Roads?

Accepted Answer

A network of trading routes that emerged between Rome and China

Question 19

Which of the following best describes how “exchange” occurred during the Columbian Exchange?

Accepted Answer

intentionally and unintentionally

Question 20

The building of roads allowed all of the following except

Accepted Answer

Evolutionary changes (such as mutations in DNA)

Question 21

Besides disease, what two side effects of disease further harmed indigenous American populations?

Accepted Answer

War and starvation

Question 22

What innovations in transportation helped to speed up the process of interconnection during the Age of Exploration?

Accepted Answer

Road systems and courier systems

Question 23

Which single innovation accelerated collective learning by increasing the exchange and speed of knowledge?

Accepted Answer

Printing

Question 24

Why did many leaders in agrarian societies choose conquest to pay their expenses rather than try to raise money ?

Accepted Answer

There are limits on how many resources could be extracted from the land

Question 25

What were some of the FIRST items to be bartered in early agricultural societies?

Accepted Answer

Livestock

Question 26

Why did the Afro-Eurasian zone have more collective learning advantages than other world zones?

Accepted Answer

large population

Question 27

How are caffeine and colonization connected?

Accepted Answer

Europeans colonized the areas of the world where coffee and tea grew.

Question 28

What was the main, immediate reason many indigenous Americans died as a result of European arrival in the Americas?

Accepted Answer

Disease

Question 29

What did most empires collectively illustrate despite reaching their heights during different periods of human history

Accepted Answer

The tendency of empires to expand

Question 30

What impact did the introduction of New World plants have on Eurasia

Accepted Answer

They fed more people and the overall population rose rapidly.

Unit 8 Study Guide

Questions 30

Unit 8 Study Guide

Questions 30