Basic outline for your GGS Mini-Essay:
I will provide a basic outline and fragments of ideas that will help you to write out the full essay. You need to make the thesis statement and topic sentences into complete statements from the idea I have provided. You need to make your essay whole from this fragmented outline.
Thesis: Subject-Eurasia Point-area put people at an advantage for development Point-helped them to gain ideas, guns, germs, and steel.
Each paragraphs should have around 7 to 11 sentences at a minimum. You need to have the paragraph structure we talked about in class and you need to demonstrate a knowledge of the GGS theory. Make sure your topic sentences relate to your thesis.
Topic sentences:
1. E-W Axis Development-Advancement of society
2. Farming and development - Technology
3. Combination of a large E-W and Farming = disease which is advancement
Your paragraphs should follow the basic fact - insight format. Proving facts can follow insights when used. Remember that the bulk of your paragraphs should be statements from you showing how your facts prove your points.
Para 1
1 similar climate makes e-w travel more likely
2 people, animals and plants are more likely to travel e-w
3 this means that any given area along this axis is likely to have a wider variety of plants, animals or ideas from people because all of this is likely to travel to them
4 go through each one of these and explain or prove (useful plants/animals, inventions/ideas, armies)
5 plants and animals should come last so as to lead into the next paragraph on farms
Para 2
1 Farming leads to a lower percentage of people spending their lives attaining food for the society
2 This turns into people having differing jobs which creates social stratification
3 people work full-time on their crafts which leads them to hone their skills and to develop their fields
4 examples of this
5 farming develops even further
6 sedentary and dense populations because of farming lead to disease.
Para 3
Disease
1. Diseases - want to get them first so that your society develops a resistance/immunity to the diseases.
2. Future generations will be resistant
3. When the Europeans met up with outside societies, they gave them diseases, inadvertently, that they were resistant to
4. The people of south America got the diseases and were wiped out
5. The area of Mexico went down from 25 to 1 million in 50 years
