Cultural Consequences of Connectivity
Introduced| English | Meaning |
|---|---|
| gunpowder/ˈɡʌnpaʊdə/ | gunpowder |
| paper/ˈpeɪpə/ | paper |
Contact diffuses more than goods
- Increased cross-cultural interactions resulted in the diffusion of literary, artistic and cultural traditions, as well as scientific and technological innovations.
- Four categories in one sentence — literary, artistic, cultural, and scientific-technological.
- So a cultural consequences answer can draw on any of the four, and the strongest use two.
Select all the categories the CED says cross-cultural interaction diffused.
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Taxation is not on the CED's list here.
Religions travelled the trade routes
- The CED's cultural examples are all religious diffusion: Buddhism in East Asia, Hinduism and Buddhism into Southeast Asia, and Islam in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
- Each follows a network you have already studied: the Silk Roads, the Indian Ocean, the Sahara.
- So religion is the clearest evidence that a route carried people and ideas, not only cargo.
Select all the innovations the CED says diffused from China.
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Both change what other societies can do, not just what they own.
Two technologies out of China
- The CED names gunpowder 火药 and paper 纸 as innovations diffusing from China.
- Both change what other societies can do, not just what they own.
- Paper reaches administration and scholarship; gunpowder reaches warfare and, eventually, state-building.
Which kind of diffusion is this?
Sort each example by the CED's categories.
Select all the travellers the CED names.
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Zheng He led state expeditions and belongs to subtopic 2.3.
Urbanisation went both ways in this period. The CED describes periods of significant decline and periods of increased urbanisation — so an answer claiming cities simply grew as trade grew contradicts the sentence it is meant to be using.
In this period cities grew steadily as trade grew.
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The CED describes significant decline as well as increased urbanisation.
Cities rose and fell
- The fate of cities varied greatly, with periods of significant decline and periods of increased urbanisation, buoyed by rising productivity and expanding trade networks.
- So urbanisation is not a one-way trend in this period — the CED insists on both directions.
- A city on a route that shifts, or hit by plague, can decline while another grows.
Travel accounts are simultaneously an effect of connectivity and ____ of it.
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He could go, and he describes the same institutions in a dozen places.
Travellers wrote it down
- As exchange networks intensified, an increasing number of travellers within Afro-Eurasia wrote about their travels.
- The CED names Ibn Battuta, Margery Kempe and Marco Polo.
- Their accounts are the period's own evidence of connectivity — and a source type the exam likes to hand you.
Ibn Battuta travels from Morocco to China across networks built by merchants, and writes it down. His account is simultaneously an effect of connectivity (he could go) and evidence of it (he describes the same institutions in a dozen places) — which is why travel writing is the CED's chosen proof that the networks were real.
Cross-cultural interaction diffused literary, artistic and cultural traditions and scientific and technological innovations. Religions travelled the routes; gunpowder and paper spread from China. City fates varied — decline as well as urbanisation. Travellers wrote about their travels — Ibn Battuta, Margery Kempe, Marco Polo.
Write from paper-making leaving China
- Paper-making was a Chinese technology.
- It later appeared in cities farther west along the trade routes.
What kind of consequence of connectivity is this?
Connectivity carried techniques, not only merchandise.
What happened to paper-making?
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The technique travelled with the network.