4/3: World History 1

LT: I can explain human innovation impacts our food/food production.

Guiding Question: What's the role of human ingenuity in shaping-- past, present, and future?

DO NOW: Complete the chart below, using what you ALREADY know about innovations in food production.

AG Period	Time Period	Problem/s:	Innovation:
	BEFORE 3000 BCE
	3,000 BCE (ERVC)
	600 BCE (Classics)
	44BCE-? (Empires)
	500 BC- Middle Ages
	1492 AD- _______

Plan of the Day:

TASK 1: AGRICULTURAL PHASES of HISTORY


TASK 2: Feudal Farming Techniques (labeling and tiny reading)

CLICK HERE for IMAGE.

TASK 3: MEETING with FELLOW FEUDAL EXPERTS…

The Structure or Method	What it SOUGHT to Solve:	Problems it Might Generate:

__________________________________________
HW: What PROBLEMS does the system of feudalism CREATE? List at least 4 issues by commenting below:

In the late medieval period, the fiefdom often became hereditary, and the son of a knight or lesser nobleman would inherit the land and the military duties from his father upon the father's death. Feudalism had two enormous effects on medieval society. 

(1) First, feudalism discouraged unified government. Individual lords would divide their lands into smaller and smaller sections to give to lesser rulers and knights. These lesser noblemen in turn would subdivide their own lands into even smaller fiefs to give to even less important nobles and knights. Each knight would swear his oath of fealty (loyalty) to the one who have him the land, which was not necessarily the king or higher noblemen. Feudal government was always an arrangement between individuals, not between nation-states and citizens. It meant that, while individual barons, dukes, and earls might be loyal in theory to the king or centralized noble family, there was no strong legal tradition to prevent them from declaring war on each other. The bonds of loyalty often grew so entangled that a single knight might find himself owing allegiance to two different dukes or barons who were at war with each other. There was no sense of loyalty to a geographic area or a particular race, only a loyalty to a person, which would terminate upon that person's death.

(2) Second, feudalism discouraged trade and economic growth. The land was worked by peasant farmers called serfs, who were tied to individual plots of land and forbidden to move or change occupations without the permission of their lord. The feudal lord might claim one-third to one-half of their produce in taxes and fees, and the serfs owed him a set number of days each year in which they would work the lord's fields in exchange for the right to work their own lands. Often, they were required to grind their grain in the lord's mill, and bake all their bread in the lords' oven, and to use roads and bridges the lord had built. Each time they did this, of course, they would have to pay him a toll or a fee of some sort. They were, however, forbidden to set up their own roads, bridges, mills, and ovens--the lord had a legal monopoly and would milk it for all it was worth. In exchange for other hefty fees, various peasants might set up a commune (a cooperative government amongst themselves), or pay the lord for the right to try their own court cases by juries. Other ambitious communities might pool their resources and purchase a charter, a legal document that gave the inhabitants of a town or village certain economic freedoms to buy and sell their own land or produce. In practice, these occurences were often economic necessities, but in theory, these freedoms were generous gifts given by the lord to his former serfs in exchange for various financial considerations.