Course Number:

Credit Hours:

4

Course Title:

Global Environmental History

Course Description:

Examines the impact of four significant human transitions on the environment of the planet Earth. They include the transition from hunter/gathering to settlement and the invention of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. The agricultural or neolithic revolution was followed thousands of years later by the urban revolution and ultimately the Industrial Revolution. These three important developments in world environmental history happened within specific millennia and simultaneously in different parts of the world. In the beginning, they were not the product of physical or cultural diffusion. Urbanization and industrialization, however, promoted worldwide migration that disrupted and changed the world’s ecology and environment in significant ways. Also explores the electronic revolution of the past centuries, which has had its own set of environmental impacts.