The Inca: The Highest Achievements of Andean Civilization

Continue reading “The Inca: The Highest Achievements of Andean Civilization”

Bartolomé de Las Casas and the Atrocities of the Spanish Conquistadors

Continue reading “Bartolomé de Las Casas and the Atrocities of the Spanish Conquistadors”

The Americas: A Free, Open Textbook in Progress

Continue reading “The Americas: A Free, Open Textbook in Progress”

Open Ended Social Studies has the chapters that your world history textbook is missing

What is the root cause of our world’s troubles?  

If you ask me, it’s not a trade imbalance or a terrorist threat.  If we’re talking about the problem that lies at the heart of everything, it’s got to be a severe, devastating lack of empathy – the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Continue reading “Open Ended Social Studies has the chapters that your world history textbook is missing”

Who made your smartphone? Globalization, raw materials, and slave labor from Potosi to Silicon Valley

Globalization is nothing new – the indigenous peoples slaving away in the Potosi mines 500 years ago could tell you all about it, while Europeans cracked the whip in order to buy Asian-made goods at affordable prices. Add in the fact that the mines were supplied with food and coca by African slaves laboring away in the low lands, and you have a template for the modern integrated global economy – exploitation, unequal rewards, and all. Continue reading “Who made your smartphone? Globalization, raw materials, and slave labor from Potosi to Silicon Valley”

Open Ended Social Studies on YouTube: The Inca

Check out the inaugural episode of the Open Ended Social Studies YouTube series on the Inca.  It’s a great supplement to our featured lesson on the Inca.  Continue reading “Open Ended Social Studies on YouTube: The Inca”

Meet my World – a film by Peruvian youth, in their own words.

Meet my World – a film by Peruvian youth, in their own words.

From the filmmakers:

Amantani is an Anglo Peruvian NGO, which works to help children from marginalised Quechua families to access education, stimulating social development for Peru’s most disadvantaged communities. Together with our friends at Andina restaurant in London, we have created Meet My World; a participatory film campaign developed by indigenous children from the Andes of Peru.

Continue reading “Meet my World – a film by Peruvian youth, in their own words.”

Unrecognized Potential: Terra Preta, Ancient Orchards, and Life in the Amazon

Until relatively recently, it was widely believed that the Amazon Rainforest was incapable of sustaining large scale human development.  New findings have challenged this view, and evidence of ancient agriculture suggests that humans once developed this fragile region in ways so subtle that – in the form of carefully managed soils and prehistoric orchards – they have been hiding in plain sight all this time, challenging the basic tenants of “agriculture” as western eyes tend to recognize it. Continue reading “Unrecognized Potential: Terra Preta, Ancient Orchards, and Life in the Amazon”

The Andes, the Inca, the Spanish, and the Making of Modern South America

Continue reading “The Andes, the Inca, the Spanish, and the Making of Modern South America”