Task: read the text and make FIVE open-ended questions of the types given after the text. Make such questions which you can not answer for sure. Questions must begin with "how?" or "why?" (except for those beginning with "what means?" or "what.... mean?").
Also read lecture 1 transcript and lecture 1 transcript (extra), texts for individual work to prepare for the in-class discussions.
TEXT for ANALYSIS
Passage 1
"Archaeologists studying the rise of farming have reconstructed a crucial stage at which we made the worst mistake in human history. Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare and tyranny. Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and longest-lasting lifestyle in human history. In contrast, were struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and is unclear whether we can solve it.
Source: Jared Diamond, The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race, Discover Magazine, 5/1/99.
Passage 2
Paleolithic men could not control their food supply. So long as they relied on foraging, hunting, fishing, and trapping, they were dependent on the natural food supply in a given area to keep from starving. But while Paleolithic men continued their food-gathering pattern of existence in Europe, Africa and Australia, groups of people in the Near East began to cultivate edible plants and to breed animals. Often described as the “first economic revolution in the history of man, this momentous change from a food gathering to a food-producing economy initiated the Neolithic Age. Paleolithic man was a hunter; Neolithic man became a farmer and herdsman.
Source: T. Walker Walbank, et al., Civilization: Past and Present, Scott Foresman and Company.
Type of the open-ended questions which you can use to make your own questions
1. Ask how the topic fits into a larger context (historical, social, cultural, geographic, functional, economic, and so on) Example: What changes have masks caused in other parts of their social or geographic setting?
2. Ask questions about the text itself, as an independent entity (words or sentences or paragraphs or whatever). Example: what does this word mean in this context? How do these parts fit together?
3. Turn positive questions into a negative ones. Example: Why have masks not become a part of Christmas?
4. Ask speculative questions. Example: Why are masks common in African religions but not in Western ones?
5. Ask What if? questions: how would things be different if your topic never existed, disappeared, or were put into a new context?