Foun 1101 (Unified )Caribbean Civilisation
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(UNIFIED) FOUN 1101:
CARIBBEAN CIVILISATION
Plenary #1
Monday 4th February, 2019
Ms Lynette Sampson
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REVISIONSIM – TO REVISE
• New sources
• To tell the story of those left out of history
• Broader perspectives from different vantage points
• New developments in science and technology – new
information
Why is the past important to us today?
• The past is important to our sense of identity
• The past validates allows us to legally validate our current actions and
understandings
• It provides us with familiarity with the past
• It serves as a form of escapism
The Value of the Past to the Present
“The past is a foreign country” - David Lowenthal
To visit, we need a passport, which consists of:
- intellectual tools
- methodology
used to recover and interpret the past.
Can we consider what was not written down, a part of
history?
Pre-literate vs Pre-historic
• History is considered to be all that has ever happened in the past.
• Pre-literate recognizes
• human civilisations also which do not record their existence in forms of
writing
• history existed long before the art of writing was invented
Primary sources
• A primary source or document is a contemporary source. It has
been generated at the same time of the focus of the study.
• Document
• Artefact
• Other form of evidence
• It may be written or non-written
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Secondary sources
• Secondary sources are created from primary sources;
they are interpretations of the primary sources
• These may be written or non-written
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Methodology
• External criticism is concerned with confirming the
authenticity of a document
• Internal criticism determines the historical value or use
that can be made of the source
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Development of Civilisation
Palaeolithic Era
• Earliest humans- Nomadic - follow food
• Hunting, gathering, fishing
Neolithic Era
• 2500BCE- Settlement
• animal husbandry and plant cultivation established
Neolithic Revolution cont’d
• Population growth
• Increase harvest through irrigation = increase in pop
• Growth of towns, cities etc = infrastructure, industry, commerce
• Specialised occupations and Social division
• Development of expressions of communal identity- writing, religion,
music, art
Consider how we use these words:
•Primitive
•Tribe / Tribal
•Civlised / Civilisation
Civilisation
A collective expression of a group of people expressed through the peculiar
world view they share.
The tangible expression of a communal understanding.
A grouping of societies and their individual cultures, conjoined by their
sharing of deep historical roots.
Culture
• A representation of practices, lifestyles, views and ways of life that vary
between and among different groups of people all over the world.
• A body of beliefs and practices in terms of which a group of people
understand themselves and the world and organize their individual and
collective lives.
• Culture can unite or divide.
• Culture is a subset of civilisation
• Shared practices and values
Civilisations are different
Difference represents diversity not a hierarchy of better or worse
Civilisations are often “ranked” based certain cultural markers, such as
• Literacy
• System of organising society
• Religion
• Art
Each culture and civilisation should be assessed on its own inherent values and
merits
Oral History vs Oral Tradition
• Oral History - the presentation of source material by word of mouth
by one who was witness to the event.
• This person is referred to as an informant.
• Oral Tradition - historical information concerning the cultural norms
of a particular civilisation passed on for generations
• Not necessarily by an informant
Ethnocentrisim
The tendency to judge others based on
one’s one world view, where one
viewpoint is taken as the standard and
usually seen as superior to the other
being perceived.