Taking Sides: Clashing Views in World History, Volume 1: The Ancient World to the Pre-Modern Era , Expanded

by Mitchell, Joseph; Mitchell, Helen Buss

• ISBN13: 9780078127588
• ISBN10: 0078127580
• Edition: 3rd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-03-27
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Dushkin

Summary

Taking Sidesvolumes present current controversial issues in a debate-style format designed to stimulate student interest and develop critical thinking skills. Each issue is thoughtfully framed with an issue summary, an issue introduction, and a postscript or challenge questions.Taking Sidesreaders feature an annotated listing of selected World Wide Web sites. An online Instructor�s Resource Guide with testing material is available for each volume.Using Taking Sides in the Classroomis also an excellent instructor resource. Visit www.mhcls.com for more information..

Table of Contents

Preliminary Table of Contents

Taking Sides: Clashing Views in World History: The Ancient World to the Pre-Modern Era Volume I, Third Edition, ExpandedTable of Contents TAKING SIDES: Clashing Views in World History: The Ancient World to the Pre-Modern Era Volume I Third Edition, Expanded

The Ancient World Issue

DidHomo SapiensOriginate in Africa??

YES:Stephen Oppenheimer,from “The First Exodus,”Geographical(July 2002)

NO:Milford Wolpoff and Rachel Caspari, fromRace and Human Evolution(Simon & Schuster, 1997)

Professor and researcher Stephen Oppenheimer states that genetic, archaeological, and climatic evidence proves that modern humans first developed in Africa and then spread to other parts of the world, referred to as the “out of Africa” theory

Paleoanthropologists Milford Wolpoff and Rachel Caspari claim that scientific evidence proves that humans developed simultaneously in different parts of the world, now called the “multiregional” theory

Was Sumerian Civilization Exclusively Male Dominated?

YES:

A History of the Ancient World(Oxford University Press, 1965)

NO: Samuel Noah Kramer

“Poet and Psalmists: Goddesses and Theologians: Literary, Religious, and Anthropological Aspects of the Legacy of Sumer,” in

The Legacy of Sumer: Invited Lectures on the Middle East at the University of Texas at Austin(Undena Publications, 1976)

Historian

finds Sumerian society to be male dominated, from the gods to human priests and kings, and he barely acknowledges the status of women in either the heavenly or the earthly realm

Museum curator Samuel Noah Kramer relies on much of the same data as Starr, but finds powerful goddesses and earthly women to have played prominent roles in both cosmic and everyday Sumerian life

Was Mesoamerica’s Olmec Civilization Influenced by African Sources?

YES: Ivan Van Sertima

“Van Sertima’s Address to the Smithsonian,” in

African Presence in Early America(Transaction Publishers, 1995) NO:Gabriel Haslip Viera, Bernard

“Robbing Native American Cultures: Van Sertima’s Afrocentricity and the Olmecs,”Current Anthropology(June 1997) History professor

Sertima argues that Mesoamerica’s Olmec civilization was influenced by African sources that date back to both ancient and medieval civilization

Scholars Viera

Montellano, and Barbour counter that Mesoamerica’s Olmec civilization developed on its own, with little, if any, influences from African sources

Does Alexander the Great Deserve His Reputation?

YES:

The Genius of Alexander the Great(University of North Carolina Press, 1997)

NO:

“How ‘Great’ Was Alexander?”The Ancient History Bulletin(April–

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