The Global History of Humanity is an exciting new approach to learning about History!
It is a three-volume online resource for teachers, pupils and students. It provides:
- a comprehensive sweep of world history, from 70,000BCE to the 21st century;
- a set of four lenses (Nature, Migration, Inequality, and Worldviews) with which to view historical events;
- a critical commentary on world events (both contemporary and current);
- supporting tasks and activities, which enhance students’ understanding of History and global citizenship education.
The book is written for high school History, and can be used for independent study and group work, as well as whole class activity. As with any History textbook, it contains historical timelines, extracts and quotations from historical figures or modern historians, and stimulus images and charts. Question sections support discussion and investigation.
It is different through the use of themes, colour coded to help you navigate the book: Humans change Nature, Humans on the Move, Social Organisation and Inequality, and Worldviews.
For example, through the theme of Social organisation and Inequality, the changing roles and gradual exclusion of women is tracked through the book, showing how over millennia women were marginalised from public life on many continents, and how they have struggled to return to a more equal role. Worldviews helps the student understand how social, political and religious perspectives accelerated the impact of events, both positively and negatively; Nature focuses on how human development has impacted on the natural world, presenting History from a non-human standpoint; Humans on the Move enables students to understand migration as part of being human, and how diverse communities worldwide have emerged.
A familiar topic such as ‘Slavery’ is revisited through each of these four themes, and this provides different stories and opens up new perspectives. For example, the slave ship is described as follows: The slave ship was a key invention for the imposition of capitalism. The well-armed slave ship with a wide range was a powerful sailing machine. It was also a vessel, a factory, a prison, a trading station, and a war machine. (Volume 2:2).
Evidence is presented to support the view of the ship as an advanced (for its day) technological and economic machine, pushing frontiers of nature, migration, technology and how humans work. There is also familiar material – for example, reproductions of slave ships and world maps of trade routes, but the section also explores the impact of the Atlantic System of slavery on Africa’s future development and culture. It is History and more.
This book is challenging, as the student realises how local events have global impact. A further strength is examining historical events that may be less familiar, or providing viewpoints that may not have been encountered before. All History curricula in the UK for KS3 and GCSE (National 4 & 5) will find relevant resources in this book, and opportunities to work with Citizenship and Environmental Education, Geography, PSHE or PSE, RE or RME, and English in cross-curricular topics.