Overview
3 questions
You should not need to spend more than two hours in total on this assessment exercise.
1.What difference did the invention of watermills make to Greek and Roman civilization?
2.Why does the archaeological site at Abu Hureyra matter for the history of energy transitions?
3.What do you think is the biggest single advantage of an agricultural lifestyle as opposed to relying only on foraging, and what is the single biggest disadvantage?
4.How do the changes in energy technology that we have looked at so far seem to have been related to changes in human diseases?
5.Is it important to understand the “fall” of the Roman empire? Why?
6.How does an understanding of the available energy technologies help us with the history of a complex pre-industrial society such as Classical (5th and 4th century BC) Athens?
7.How, and how far, does Hesiod’s Works and Days support Ian Morris’s arguments about the values held in farming societies?
8.What were the most important contributions, in energy terms, that non-human animals made in pre-mechanised agriculture?