World History I

• It is the dynamic interplay of environmental factors and human activities that accounts for the terrestrial process known as HISTORY.
• Six needs are common to people at all times and in all places, form the basis of a “universal culture pattern” and deserve to be enumerated.
• • The need to make a living.
  • The need for law and order.
  • The need for social organization.
  • The need for knowledge and learning.
  • The need for self-expression.
  • The need for religious expression.
• When people in a group behave similarly and share the same institutions and ways of life, they can be said to have a common culture.
• Civilization is a kind of culture which includes the use of writing, the presence of cities and of wide political organization and the development of occupational specialization.
• • Invention is another important source of culture change, although it is not clear to what extent external physical contact is required in the process of invention.
• • When different parts of the society fail to mesh harmoniously, the condition is often called culture lag.
• • History is the record of the past actions of humankind, based on surviving evidence.
• • History shows that all patterns and problems in human affairs are the products of a complex process of growth.
• History provides a means for profiting from human experience.
• • External Criticism test the genuineness of the source.
• • Internal Criticism the historian evaluates the source to ascertain the author’s meaning and the accuracy of the work.
• Periodization is to simplify the task and to manage materials more easily, the historian divides time into periods.
• • Thomas Carlyle, who contended that major figures chiefly determined the course of human events.
• • Karl Marx irresistible economic forces governed human beings and determined the trend of events.
• Oswald Spengler, maintained the civilizations were like organisms; each grew with "superb aimlessness" of a flower and passed through a cycle of spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
• • The historian may describe its events in narrative form.
• • The historian has to pay special attention to the uniqueness of data, because each event takes place at a particular time and in a particular place.
• We are of the same species and we share a fundamental commonality that connects present with past: the human-environment nexus.
• Through this contracts occurs the process of culture diffusion
• Changes in the physical and social environments will probably accelerate as a result of continued technological innovation
• History provides a means for profiting from human experience.
• The comparative approach permits us to seek relationships between historical phenomena and to group them into movements or patterns or civilizations
• • To learn about the past
  • To understand the present.
  • To appreciate your heritage
  • To broaden your perspective.
  • To acquire background for critical thinking.