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Course: World History Project - Origins to the Present > Unit 1
Lesson 3: History Frames | 1.2- BEFORE YOU WATCH: Frame Concept Introduction
- WATCH: Frame Concept Introduction
- BEFORE YOU WATCH: Communities Frame Introduction
- WATCH: Communities Frame Introduction
- BEFORE YOU WATCH: Networks Frame Introduction
- WATCH: Networks Frame Introduction
- BEFORE YOU WATCH: Production and Distribution Frame Introduction
- WATCH: Production and Distribution Frame Introduction
- History Frames
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WATCH: Communities Frame Introduction
One of the things that is distinctive about humans is that we live in communities. Communities provide us with support, assistance, and growth. Examples of communities include families, neighborhoods, states, religions, and even online forums. Throughout history, human communities have generally grown, and frequently changed. By exploring the history of communities, this video clearly reveals the role community plays in the present, and the possibilities for building and strengthening communities in the future.
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Website: https://whp.oerproject.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OERProject/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OERProject. Created by World History Project.
Want to join the conversation?
- Can you explain the difference between virtual and digital communities?(3 votes)
- I believe they're pretty much the same thing; he just said virtual, digital, and international for the nice parallelism ;)
Or it could be that digital communities do only part of their communication online (such as many office jobs), while virtual communities never meet other than online (such as most of us here on Khan Academy).
It's probably just a matter of personal interpretation, but I hope this helped!(5 votes)
- why is family, ethnicity, and class left out?(1 vote)
- what is the differences between history in non history(1 vote)
- 1. How does the quote from Helen Keller relate to the idea of “communities”?
-I think it is saying that when humans work together we can accomplish a lot
2. What were the first human communities like?
-Small groups of 10-100 people
3. What are some major changes and developments in the history of human communities, according to this video?
Differences in nation states and empires coming about, digital communities and airplane travel making it easier for communities to merge and meet.
4. According to this video, globalization has made us all members of a single community, but smaller communities are still relevant. Why?
Small communities like nations are crucial to keeping humanities culture and history alive(1 vote)
Video transcript
(music playing) Nobody really lives alone. We exist together, whether
it's in the same neighborhood or meeting online. We interact in community--
communities, really-- with other people, people with whom we share
experience and identity. Our communities help
define who we are, giving us a sense of us. Living in a community is a universal, shared
characteristic of all humans. But although the need for
community might be a constant, how humans met that need
has changed over the very long sweep
of our history. A few times over the past
hundreds of thousands of years, we've altered or remade the
types, the nature, and the size of the communities
in which we live. We've shaped those changes, and those changes have in turn
shaped us and who we are. The Communities frame
captures the biggest changes in our communities, and it will help you
navigate your journey through world history. In telling this story,
we're going to focus on a few big human communities-- on cities, on states,
on religions. But, remember, we'll be
leaving lots of stuff out, details that support, extend,
or challenge this story. You'll be able fill in details
as you go through the course, learning stuff that you can use
to test the frame's claims, to make it more accurate
and complete, or to make it more meaningful
to you. (music playing) The community frame
begins in Era Two, with the first
human communities. They were bands of foragers, not much larger
than an extended family, somewhere between ten
and 100 people. These small groups
of hunter-gatherers lived and worked together. They likely knew
and were related to everyone
in their small community. Slowly, over
a long period of time, some of our ancestors
settled into lush areas, and the size of their
communities grew. Eventually, they learned how to
domesticate crops and animals and created a second type
of human community, farming villages. Over a few thousand years, in
many regions across the globe, some of these farming villages
grew larger as more people settled into
or were born into them. With this increase
in population and size, new needs emerged, including needs not directly
connected to farming. Our ancestors, for example,
needed to protect the village and exchange goods
with other villages. Many of the farming villages
became large cities, and these cities
and the villages around them began to form the first
complex political communities with power over people--
the state. Now, you'll have the chance to consider the growth
of these large states, and their similarities
and differences, as you travel through time, especially in Era Two
and Era Three, beginning about, oh,
8,000 years ago. Some states conquered
neighboring people to rule very large territories-- territories with many
different communities of people with different languages,
customs, and religions. Historians refer to these states
as empires, a form of human organization that has lasted
for thousands of years. Indeed, most humans
lived in empires well into the 20th century. So, after your first encounter
with empires in Era Three-- about 2,500 years ago-- you'll be meeting up with them in all the later eras
in this course. Even in large empires, people
continued to participate in and identify with smaller,
more local communities-- families, villages and cities. People also created
new communities that moved beyond local areas, often stretching between cities,
complex societies, and empires, uniting people with
shared beliefs, interests, or occupations. Important examples include
universal philosophical systems and portable,
congregational religions, many of which developed
in Era Three. These belief systems--
such as Hinduism, Confucianism, Islam, Judaism,
and Christianity-- connected people
in large communities of faith, belief, or ideas despite vast distances
between them. Early in Era Six,
or about 300 years ago, people began to form a new kind
of community-- the nation-state. In this type of community, political authority was
technically vested in a nation, a population of people
living in a common region, who shared what they believed
was a common identity. Nation-states grew,
but grew slowly, and did not surpass empires
until the past century, as you'll investigate
in Era Seven. People participate
in communities of different types and sizes, and communities of believers
continue today. However, the nation-state
has become a most powerful sort
of community that shapes our identities. Now, in telling this story,
we might have made the transition
between types of communities seem smooth,
but it was not. There were tensions
between and among people living in different types
of communities. For example, our
hunting-gathering ancestors, living in mobile communities, often warred against
our settled ancestors, living in villages or cities. Over the last 200 years or so, the desire for
independent nation-states exerted powerful,
disrupting forces on empires, some of which had survived
for hundreds of years. Importantly, this is
likely not the final state of human communities. (music playing) Innovations like the internet
and jet airlines offer ways for us to create
communities of people who do not live together, and who possibly
never even meet in person. New international communities,
digital communities, and even virtual communities,
appear to be emerging in addition
to traditional community groups like families, cities,
the nation-state, and religion. (music playing) This increasing globalization has not made the local community
less relevant, but more so. In the confusion of the wider
world, our identities-- religions, neighborhoods,
ethnicities, and nations-- often seem like safe,
comforting places to retreat to and find support. The tool that we created
for this course that we call
the Community frame should help you remember
and use this Big Story. You might use this tool
to locate the details of the events you'll study in a larger story. You will see, for example, that we have threaded
this story of communities through the eras we have
used to structure this course. We hope that thinking
about different ways to view the history
of human communities, moving back and forth between our larger communities
and our local ones, will help you see more clearly the role community plays
in the present and might in the future. What will happen next? What kinds of communities
does the future hold? How can we learn from
the communities of the past? These are the questions
that make it valuable for us to study the long history,
the very long history, of human communities. (music playing)