MMW 11 Pre-history and Ancient Foundations is the first course in Eleanor Roosevelt College’s five-course general education Making of the Modern World requirement.

This course explores human origins, the development of early forms of social and political organization, the strategies that early societies used to negotiate their physical and social environments, and the appearance of influential cultural traditions across the ancient world (to ca. 100 BCE).  Topics include the emergence of agriculture, the relationship between nomad and settled, the birth of the city and the expanding human ‘footprint,’ the development of writing, foundational religious and cosmological ideas and narratives, influential models of visual and material culture, and changing forms of social stratification and inequality. MMW11 is taught in Fall term.