World History Series 1

Week 1: Early Man
This week of the course covers the most time out of any week in the class. We will learn about how modern man developed and see what life was like before the onset of civilization and history as we know it.

Week 2: Early Civilizations
As prehistoric man developed agriculture, complex tools, and civilizations, cities and kingdoms arose. In this week’s lesson, we will study the earliest civilizations and discuss how they laid the foundation for history to build upon.

Week 3: The Kingdoms of Europe and North Africa
After attaining preliminary information on the beginnings of history, we begin focusing on different factions and factors for human development in the ancient world. This week’s lesson revolves around the early kingdoms and empires built up around the Mediterranean Sea.

Week 4: Culture and Religion in Europe and North Africa
Government is only a small part of history, even if it is often deemed one of the most important. In week 4, we will be looking at the culture of the peoples who inhabit the regions around the Mediterranean Sea. We will be learning what their lives, beliefs, and customs looked like.

Week 5: Society in Europe and North Africa
Society and culture are often closely related, but the final week of the ancient Mediterranean Unit focuses solely on societal pressures and the ways early civilizations interacted with each other and within themselves.

Week 6: Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific Island Cultures
In the sixth week of the course, we move from the Mediterranean to the Southern Hemisphere. We will be learning what these civilizations were doing from approximately 500 CE to 1500 CE, when they were all connected to each other by trade and culture.

Week 7:Connecting the World
Week 7 picks up where week 6 ends. In this lesson, we will learn about the forces and factors that linked the Americas to Europe, Asia, and Africa and how they developed enough to begin the globalization of the planet.

Week 8: China and the World
This week’s lesson is dedicated to studying East Asia and the Chinese Empire at the heart of it all. As the world starts to become “smaller” leading up to the fifteenth century, we will study how connections between East and West were made and what those connections meant for the wider world history.

Week 9: The Islamic World
One of the most important factors in the connection between East and West was a capable middle ground to form those connections through. That is where the Islamic world comes into play. Week 9 focuses on the development, spread, and rule of the Islamic caliphates.

Week 10: Christianity in Europe
As Islam spread through the Middle East and North Africa, European Christianity found a new rival to butt up against. The tenth week of the course focuses on the development of a Christian Europe and the struggles it faced with Islam and with itself.

Week 11: The Mongols
While connections between East and West can be built, they can also be torn down and replaced. The Mongol Empire became one of the major forces behind the decline of connections between Europe and Asia, and this week’s lesson focuses on them and the repercussions of building one of the largest empires the world has ever seen.

Week 12: The Fifteenth Century
The second half of this course leads directly into the 1400s CE, a time in which the world dramatically changed with the proliferation of many new inventions and ideas along with the “discovery” of the Americas by European sailors. This century includes many important events that defined modern history, so the class will end with an overview of the fifteenth century before we move into the next section of the series.