“The environment shapes human societies, and as populations grow and change, these populations in turn shape their environments.”

AP World History: Modern Course and Exam Description, 2019

The above quote almost seems like a truism, but it obscures an academic sore spot, an ongoing discussion (and sometimes argument) between scholars. There are some who emphasize environment as a causative and even deterministic force in the way human society has developed, while others chafe at the idea that human history can be explained through universal “social” laws, arguing that environmental determinism underestimates contingency and human ingenuity. And while this can sound all very theoretical, this is an academic argument with political consequences.

The AP world history course requires students to be able to identify claims in primary sources (important, of course), but I want to argue that it is just as important for students to be able to identify secondary source claims. Textbooks such as those used in AP classrooms have a way of presenting historical knowledge as if it is mostly settled, which is such a shame, because the idea that historical narratives are not settled is one of the things that makes history so interesting!

The following curriculum fits well within the AP theme, and complicates it. Originally, I ran this curriculum as a sub-unit in a larger unit on cultural encounters, so a lot of the “why is this important” work had come earlier. A note on audience, I ran this with academically well-prepared 8th graders. These are challenging readings that I’d assign to college students, so you’ll see that we did a lot of scaffolding in class. You should adjust as necessary.

Resources:

Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, Intro and Chapter 2, “A Natural Experiment of History.” This is a great resource because chapter 2 is a distillation of his overall argument into one chapter length case study.

Charles C. Mann, “1491”, The Atlantic. Especially from the Buffalo Farms section on.

William Cronon, Changes in the Land. I used some passages from this text, but I cite it mostly because I mined it for primary sources on the pristine myth.

Lesson Plan

• Day 1 and 2: First, we went over the sub-unit’s “Big Questions,” essentially the learning goals of the sub-unit so students know what they’re aiming for.
  • How do geographical differences lead to cultural differences?
  • What are the limits of environmental determinism?
  • How do societies shape their environment?
  • Critique the Pristine Myth. What are its origins? What evidence can you offer to disprove it? Why is it important to offer a critique?
• Before tackling Diamond’s Chapter 2, we did a lot of preparatory work to scaffold this challenging reading. This included:
  • Class brainstorm: If a geographer planned to compare the physical geographies/environments of two islands, what categories or measurements might they be interested in?
  • Building familiarity: Take ten minutes to explore, research, and take notes the geographies and environments of the North Island and the Chatham Islands. Focus on filling out the categories we brainstormed on the board.
    • Some research ideas to get you started: Use Google Earth or Google Maps (especially for Chatham) to see a “street level” view of the islands. View pictures from the New Zealand Geographic online magazine. Look up city websites.
  • Defining challenging vocab: I identified difficult vocab in the text ahead of time and then split up responsibility for definitions among the students who then report out. Students write definitions into the text.
  • This is also a good time to introduce or remind students about how to read a non-fiction secondary source. They should 1) pay most attention to topic sentences, the chapter intro and conclusion 2) text code in the margins 3) identify signposting words 4) identify the main argument and sub-arguments.
• Day 3: By this time, they’ve had two full class periods of preparatory work and two days to read. We think/paired/shared (TPS) through the following discussion questions to check for comprehension.
  • What happened? What are key differences between the Maori and Moriori?
  • I assigned groups to different environmental factors and asked: how did your environmental variable affect the economy, technology, political organization, and conflict management style of the two groups?
  • Sum it up, what is Diamond’s overall argument about what drives the level of complexity of a society?
• Day 4: Then we transitioned into a critical analysis of Diamond’s argument and larger project. I put up a slide with two paragraphs from his intro. The first states his larger research question: “why did human development proceed at such different rates on different continents?” The second states his method: “to establish human history as a historical science, on a par with recognized historical sciences such as evolutionary biology, geology, and climatology.”
  • At this point, we went back to the reading and through TPS, identified 1) the places in his chapter where he applies the scientific method 2) the universal “laws” that he posits.
  • Discussion question: Do you buy it? Can you think of a time/event/society that defies this law? Are there other reasons why these island cultures may have developed the way they did?
  • I put up another slide with the critiques, particularly a quote from Gene Callahan: “The complexity of history defies attempts to deduce universal laws from its complex patterns. It is only be “cherry picking” hist example that Diamond can defend his claim that he has found “ultimate causes” in history.”
  • And only then did I introduce the definition of environmental determinism: The idea that environment determines/predicts how cultures develop, how successful they will be (in economic terms). And we talk about the critiques:
    • Doesn’t take into account accidents, coincidence, human agency
    • Doesn’t take into account culture, human choices, beliefs. •Doesn’t take into account how cultures/societies change environment.

A note here, this may seem like an overly complex and time-consuming way to get to the definition of environmental determinism, but this is what inquiry-based learning looks like. My job is not to tell them what environmental determinism is, but to show it to them, unfurl it, let them arrive at it. They now know the definition, and along the way, they’ve also practiced reading a complex text both at the level of comprehension and at a more critical and analytical level. My students didn’t always arrive to where I wanted them to (though I was floored by how often they did), and that’s my cue to step in with guidance.

At this point, we’ve looked at how environments shape societies, but Diamond does a fairly terrible job of thinking about how societies shape environments, the other half of the AP theme’s equation. Because I’m a Latin Americanist by training, and because I consider it as an ethical requirement to bring subaltern stories into the classroom, I chose to make the second part of this unit a rebuttal of the Pristine Myth, exploring with students the ways in which indigenous Amerindian societies have shaped their environment.

• Day 5: Today is about building foundations and motivation to engage with more tricky secondary and primary texts. I start by pointing out my students’ knowledge gap, which is one of my favorite ways to build intrinsic motivation and curiosity into a lesson plan.
  • Brainstorm: Even middle school U.S. students have already been exposed to stereotypical ideas about Native Americans. So before introducing the definition of the Pristine Myth, I ask them to brainstorm what they already think they know about how Native Americans relate to nature. (If your students have a different set of cultural references, watch “The Colors of the Wind” from the movie Pocahontas and have them deconstruct the message.) Inevitably, they will vocalize something along the lines of the Pristine Myth, the misconception that before Europeans came to the Americas, the environment was perfectly “pristine,” a natural wilderness untouched and unchanged by Native American peoples.
  • Defining challenging vocab: Same model as above, students define and report out difficult vocab in Mann’s article, which they will read for homework.
• Day 6: Today is a discussion day with some short lecture materials sprinkled in. As always, we think/pair/share our way through discussion.
  • How did the people of Marajó change the Amazon’s ecology? in turn, how did this change to the ecology impact the human population? Describe the ecological consequences of North America’s indigenous population decline. (Here, I also drew on Cronon to give a short lecture on the effects of burning on an ecosystem. For college students, I’d assign sections of Changes to the Land for reading.)
  • Then we transition to the root of the matter, how did the Pristine Myth come about? I assign three primary source readings from the Early Americas, two of which describe Native Americans as having no impact on the land, and one which describes controlled burns.
    • A note: These are tough readings. To help, I gave students the discussion questions ahead of time, and I defined some of the more difficult vocab. I didn’t translate them into modern language, but I would if I were to run this for 8th graders again.

• Day 7: Another discussion day, this time on the primary sources. This is a great set of readings to reinforce the idea that 1) context is important for understanding primary sources, and 2) we need to read primary sources “skeptically,” or in my preferred term, “critically.” That is, how might the author’s purpose skew their perception?
  • How did the writer understand property and ownership? What did they consider to be proof of ownership? How did the writer describe indigenous people’s ecological impact? What was the writer’s purpose in describing the indigenous people’s ecological impact this way?
  • What kinds of actions did the Pristine Myth support, and how did it serve the purposes of the settlers?

• Day 8: We wrapped up with a discussion of how all of this has political and social consequences in the present. You can take this in many directions, but remind them of the Pocahontas video and ask: Why do we think the Pristine Myth still has force today?
  • What harm does the Pristine Myth do in the present? Popular U.S. history continues to leave unacknowledged the complexity and sophistication of Native American knowledge systems.
  • You might talk about the ways in which the Pristine Myth serves a purpose today. I took my 8th graders back to the last two paragraphs of Mann’s article to discuss how environmentalists use the myth. After, we asked: if the Amazon is not a wilderness, does it still deserve protection from developers?
  • While we didn’t go in this direction, with students who already have some background in indigenous studies, you might introduce them to the ways in which Native American tribes use the Pristine Myth to strategically self-essentialize in order to fight environmental injustices. This would be a natural place to talk about Standing Rock, for example.

The last day of a sub-unit, I also always bring students back to the Big Questions for a final understanding check (the questions hang on the wall as a reference during the sub-unit). A note on assessments: the assessments in this unit were informal and discussion based. I checked for understanding as I walked around the classroom during T/P/S. But the Big Questions could serve as the basis for a more formal, short-essay answer summative assessment as well.