History of Civilizations

Course content

For most of human history, humans lived in small groups who hunted and gathered their food, but around 8,000 B.C., things changed. Humans developed agriculture, settled in urban communities and eventually built huge empires, created religious institutions and explored the planet. In many areas of life, civilization brought about striking improvements and innovations. On the other hand, oppression, exploitation, and massive human suffering accompanied civilizations. The goal of this course is to provide you with a foundation for understanding the world in which we live, keeping in mind humanity’s accomplishments as well as failures. Learning about history is not just memorizing a sequence of events, or a bunch of facts and dates; the point is to critically examine continuity and change over time. The large scope of this course will encourage more synthesis of ideas and integration of knowledge than thorough information on particular topics.