HIS-117 World Civilizations: Prehistory-1500 provides a genuinely global survey of major world civilizations from prehistory through the year 1500, forming the first half of a deliberate two-course sequence completed by HIS-118 (World Civilizations: 1500-Present). Together the sequence gives students a comprehensive global historical foundation spanning from prehistory to the modern era.
A genuinely global scope, not a regional survey
Unlike HIS-109's Western-civilization focus, HIS-117 deliberately surveys civilizations across the globe, giving students a comparative historical foundation that includes non-Western societies and their development through 1500.
The first half of a deliberate two-part sequence
HIS-117's chronological boundary at 1500 is not arbitrary — it marks the point where SNHU's sequence hands off to HIS-118, allowing each course to cover its half of world history in appropriate depth rather than compressing all of global history into a single course.
Key topics in HIS117
- Major world civilizations through 1500
- Global historical patterns and comparisons
- Non-Western historical development
- Prehistoric through medieval world history
- Foundational chronology for the world civilizations sequence
- Comparative civilizational analysis
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Worked example: comparative civilizational analysis
- Regional-only approach: Studying only Western civilization's development through 1500
- HIS-117's global approach: Comparing how multiple, geographically distinct civilizations developed in the same broad time period
- Lesson: HIS-117 teaches that a genuinely global comparative view reveals historical patterns and contrasts that a single-region study cannot
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Frequently asked questions
The scope of genuinely global history from prehistory to the present is vast enough that compressing it into a single course would sacrifice meaningful depth, while 1500 represents a real historical inflection point — the beginning of sustained global contact through European exploration — that provides a natural, coherent dividing line. Splitting the sequence at this point lets each course treat its portion of world history with appropriate depth rather than rushing through thousands of years of civilization in one term.
Understanding any single civilization in isolation misses the historical patterns, contrasts, and interactions that become visible only when civilizations are studied comparatively across different regions in the same time period. HIS-117 adopts this global comparative approach because it produces a more complete and analytically richer understanding of world historical development than a narrower regional focus would provide alone.