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Slavery in Plantation Agriculture
The first plantations in the Americas of sugar cane, cocoa, tobacco, and cotton were maintained and harvested by African slaves controlled by European masters. When African slavery was largely abolished in the mid-1800s, the center of plantation...
Lesson Pack
Mesopotamia: Innovations & Agriculture
This lesson pack on innovations and agriculture in ancient Mesopotamia includes the following content: Two Lesson Plans The Wheel & Advancements in Agriculture Cuneiform, Literature & Libraries Additional Materials...
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Agriculture in the Fertile Crescent and Mesopotamia - Timeline
A visual timeline illustrating the evolution of agriculture in parallel with invention and social development in the region of the Fertile Crescent (a term first used in 1916 by Egyptologist J.H. Breasted), enabling the establishment of cities...
Image
Aztec Agriculture
An illustration from the Florentine Codex depicting Aztecs storing maize.
Definition
Columbian Exchange
The Columbian exchange is a term coined by Alfred Crosby Jr. in 1972 that is traditionally defined as the transfer of plants, animals, and diseases between the Old World of Europe and Africa and the New World of the Americas. The exchange...
Article
Dynamics of the Neolithic Revolution
The Neolithic Revolution began between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago at several widely dispersed locations across the world, when our ancestors first began planting and raising crops. Agricultural communities sprang up almost simultaneously...
Video
Commerce, Agriculture, & Slavery: Crash Course
We've been talking a lot about kings, and queens, and wars, and religious upheaval for most of this series, but let's take a moment to zoom out, and look at the ways that individuals' lives were changing in the time span we've covered so...
Definition
Neolithic Period
The term Neolithic Period refers to the last stage of the Stone Age - a term coined in the late 19th century CE by scholars which covers three different periods: Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic. The Neolithic period is significant...
Article
The Iberian Conquest of the Americas
European explorers began to probe the Western Hemisphere in the early 1500s, and they found to their utter amazement not only a huge landmass but also a world filled with several diverse and populous indigenous cultures. Among their most...
Article
The Debate Between Sheep and Grain
The Debate Between Sheep and Grain (c. 2000 BCE) is one of the best-known Sumerian literary debates in a genre that was popular entertainment by the late 3rd millennium BCE. In this piece, personifications of grain and sheep argue which is...