Key Concepts for AP World Exam

Period 1:
Technological and Environmental
Transformations, to c. 600 B.C.E.

Key Concept 1.1. Big Geography and the Peopling of
the Earth

* * *

Key Concept 1.2. The Neolithic Revolution and Early
Agricultural Societies

Required examples of improvements in agricultural production, trade,
and transportation:
• Pottery
• Plows
• Woven textiles
• Metallurgy
• Wheels and wheeled vehicles

Key Concept 1.3. The Development and Interactions of
Early Agricultural, Pastoral, and Urban Societies

Students should be able to identify the location of all of the following
required examples of core and foundational civilizations:
• Mesopotamia in the Tigris and Euphrates River Valleys
• Egypt in the Nile River Valley
• Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa in the Indus River Valley
• Shang in the Yellow River or Huang He Valley
• Olmecs in Mesoamerica
• Chavín in Andean South America

New religious beliefs developed in this period continued to have strong
influences in later periods.
Required examples of new religious beliefs:
• The Vedic religion
• Hebrew monotheism
• Zoroastrianism

Required examples of trade expansion from local to regional and
transregional:
• Between Egypt and Nubia
• Between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley

misc:
• Compound bows
• Iron weapons
• Chariots
• Horseback riding
• Ziggurats
• Pyramids
• Temples
• Defensive walls
• Streets and roads
• Sewage and water
systems
• Sculpture
• Painting
• Wall decorations
• Elaborate weaving
• Cuneiform
• Hieroglyphs
• Pictographs
• Alphabets
• Quipu
• The “Epic of Gilgamesh”
• Rig Veda
• Book of the Dead

Period 2:
Organization and Reorganization of Human
Societies, c. 600 B.C.E. to c. 600 C.E.

Key Concept 2.1. The Development and Codification of
Religious and Cultural Traditions

Key Concept 2.2. The Development of States and Empires

Required examples of key states and empires (Student should know the
location and names):
• Southwest Asia: Persian Empires
• East Asia: Qin and Han Empire
• South Asia: Maurya and Gupta Empires
• Mediterranean region: Phoenicia and its colonies, Greek city-states
and colonies, and Hellenistic and Roman Empires
• Mesoamerica: Teotihuacan, Maya city-states
• Andean South America: Moche

Required examples of key states and empires (Student should know the
location and names):
• Southwest Asia: Persian Empires
• East Asia: Qin and Han Empire
• South Asia: Maurya and Gupta Empires
• Mediterranean region: Phoenicia and its colonies, Greek city-states
and colonies, and Hellenistic and Roman Empires
• Mesoamerica: Teotihuacan, Maya city-states
• Andean South America: Moche

Key Concept 2.3. Emergence of Transregional
Networks of Communication and Exchange

Required examples of trade routes:
• Eurasian Silk Roads
• Trans-Saharan caravan routes
• Indian Ocean sea lanes
• Mediterranean sea lanes

Required examples of transformed religious and cultural traditions:
• Christianity
• Hinduism
• Buddhism

misc:
• the influence of
Daoism on Medical theories and
practices
• Poetry
• Metallurgy
• Architecture
• ancestor veneration ,Africa
• The Mediterranean
region
• East Asia
• The Andean areas
• Greek plays
• Indian epics
• India
• Greece
• The Roman Empire
• Achaemenid
• Parthian
• Sassanid
• administrative institutions, China
• Persia
• Rome
• South Asia
• Persepolis
• Chang’an
• Pataliputra
• Athens
• Carthage
• Rome
• Alexandria
• Constantinople
• Teotihuacan
• Corvée
• Slavery
• Rents and tributes
• Peasant communities
• Family and household
production
• Deforestation
• Desertification
• Soil erosion
• Silted rivers
• Between Han China
and the Xiongnu
• Between the Gupta and
the White Huns
• Between the Romans
and their northern and
eastern neighbors.
• Yokes
• Saddles
• Stirrups
• Lateen sail
• Dhow ships
• The qanat system
• The effects of disease on
the Roman Empire
• The effects of disease on
Chinese empires

Period 3:
Regional and Transregional Interactions,
c. 600 C.E. to c. 1450

Key Concept 3.1. Expansion and Intensification of
Communication and Exchange Networks

Required examples of existing trade routes:
• The Silk Roads
• The Mediterranean Sea
• The Trans-Saharan
• The Indian Ocean basins

Key Concept 3.2. Continuity and Innovation of State
Forms and Their Interactions

Required examples of empires:
• China
• The Byzantine Empire
• The Caliphates
• The Mongols

Required examples of technological and cultural transfers:
• Between Tang China and the Abbasids
• Across the Mongol empires
• During the Crusades

Key Concept 3.3. Increased Economic Productive
Capacity and Its Consequences

II. The fate of cities varied greatly, with periods of significant
decline, and with periods of increased urbanization buoyed by rising
productivity and expanding trade networks.
A. Multiple factors contributed to the declines of urban areas in this
period.
Required examples of these factors:
• Invasions
• Disease
• The decline of agricultural productivity
• The Little Ice Age
B. Multiple factors contributed to urban revival.
Required examples of these factors:
• The end of invasions
• The availability of safe and reliable transport
• The rise of commerce and the warmer temperatures between 800
and 1300
• Increased agricultural productivity and subsequent rising
population
• Greater availability of labor also contributed to urban growth

Required examples of forms of labor organization:
• Free peasant agriculture
• Nomadic pastoralism
• Craft production and guild organization
• Various forms of coerced and unfree labor
• Government-imposed labor taxes
• Military obligations

Teach one illustrative example of regions where free peasants revolted,
either from the list below or an example of your choice:
• China
• The Byzantine Empire
misc:
• Novgorod
• Timbuktu
• The Swahili city-states
• Hangzhou
• Calicut
• Baghdad
• Melaka
• Venice
• Tenochtitlan
• Cahokia
• Silk and cotton textiles
• Porcelain
• Spices
• Precious metals and
gems
• Slaves
• Caravanserai
• Camel saddles
• Bills of exchange
• Credit
• Checks
• Banking houses
• Minting of coins
• Use of paper money
• Hanseatic League
• The way Scandinavian
Vikings used their
longships to travel in
coastal and open waters
as well as in rivers and
estuaries
• The way the Arabs and
Berbers adapted camels
to travel across and
around the Sahara
• The way Central Asian
pastoral groups used
horses to travel in the
steppes
• The spread of Bantu
languages including
Swahili
• The spread of Turkic
and Arabic languages
• Muslim merchant
communities in the
Indian Ocean region
• Chinese merchant
communities in
Southeast Asia
• Sogdian merchant
communities
throughout Central
Asia
• Jewish communities
in the Mediterranean,
Indian Ocean basin, or
along the Silk Roads
• Ibn Battuta
• Marco Polo
• Xuanzang
• The influence of
Neoconfucianism and
Buddhism in East Asia
• Hinduism and
Buddhism in Southeast
Asia
• Islam in Sub-Saharan
Africa and Southeast
Asia
• Toltec/Mexica and
Inca traditions in
Mesoamerica and
Andean America
• The influence of Greek
and Indian mathematics
on Muslim scholars
• The return of Greek
science and philosophy
to Western Europe via
Muslim al-Andalus in
Iberia
• The spread of printing
and gunpowder
technologies from East
Asia into the Islamic
empires and Western
Europe
• Bananas in Africa
• New rice varieties in
East Asia
• The spread of cotton,
sugar, and citrus
throughout Dar
al-Islam and the
Mediterranean basin
• Patriarchy
• Religion
• Land-owning elites
• New methods of
taxation
• Tributary systems
• Adaptation of religious
institutions.
• Abbasids
• Muslim Iberia
• Delhi Sultanates
• city-states , in the Italian peninsula
• In East Africa
• In Southeast Asia
• In the Americas
• Persian traditions that
influenced Islamic states
• Chinese traditions that
influenced states in
Japan
• Champa rice varieties
• The chinampa field
systems
• Waru waru agricultural
techniques in the
Andean areas
• Improved terracing
techniques
• The horse collar

Period 4: Global Interactions, c. 1450 to c. 1750

Key Concept 4.1. Globalizing Networks of
Communication and Exchange

Key Concept 4.2. New Forms of Social Organization
and Modes of Production

Key Concept 4.3. State Consolidation and Imperial
Expansion

Land empires expanded dramatically in size.
Required examples of land empires:
• Manchus
• Mughals
• Ottomans
• Russians

Required examples of maritime empires:
• Portuguese
• Spanish
• Dutch
• French
• British

misc:

• Astrolabe
• Revised maps

• Caravels

Potatoes

• Maize
• Manioc

• Sugar
• Tobacco/Okra

• Vodun in the Caribbean
• The cults of saints in
Latin America
• Sikhism in South Asia

• Renaissance art in
Europe
• Miniature paintings in
the Middle East and
South Asia
• Wood-block prints in
Japan
• Post-conquest codices
in Mesoamerica

• Shakespeare
• Cervantes
• Sundiata
• Journey to the West
• Kabuki

• The development of
frontier settlements in
Russian Siberia
• Cotton textile
production in India
• Silk textile production
in China

• Chattel slavery
• Indentured servitude
• Encomienda and
hacienda systems
• The Spanish adaptation
of the Inca mit’a

• The Manchus in China
• Creole elites in Spanish
America
• European gentry
• Urban commercial
entrepreneurs in all
major port cities in the
world

• The zamindars in the
Mughal Empire
• The nobility in Europe
• The daimyo in Japan

• Mestizo
• Mulatto
• Creole

• Monumental
architecture
• Urban design
• Courtly literature
• The visual arts

• European notions of
divine right
• Safavid use of Shiism
• Mexica or Aztec
practice of human
sacrifice
• Songhay promotion of
Islam
• Chinese emperors’
public performance of
Confucian rituals

• Ottoman treatment of
non-Muslim subjects
• Manchu policies toward
Chinese
• Spanish creation of a
separate “República de
Indios”

• Ottoman devshirme
• Chinese examination
system
• Salaried samurai

• Omani-European
rivalry in the Indian
Ocean
• Piracy in the Caribbean

• Thirty Years War
• Ottoman-Safavid
conflict

• Food riots
• Samurai revolts
• Peasant uprisings

Period 5: Industrialization and Global Integration,
c. 1750 to c. 1900

Key Concept 5.1. Industrialization and Global
Capitalism

Required examples of factors leading to the rise of industrial production:
• Europe’s location on the Atlantic Ocean
• The geographical distribution of coal, iron and timber
• European demographic changes
• Urbanization
• Improved agricultural productivity
• Legal protection of private property
• An abundance of rivers and canals
• Access to foreign resources
• The accumulation of capital

Required examples of developments in transportation and
communication:
• Railroads
• Steamships
• Telegraphs
• Canals

Key Concept 5.2. Imperialism and Nation-State
Formation

Key Concept 5.3. Nationalism, Revolution, and Reform

Required examples of revolutionary documents:
• The American Declaration of Independence
• The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
• Bolivar’s Jamaica Letter

uired examples of rebellions:
• American Revolution
• French Revolution
• Haitian Revolution
• Latin American independence movements

Key Concept 5.4. Global Migration

Required examples of coerced and semicoerced labor migration:
• Slavery
• Chinese and Indian indentured servitude
• Convict labor
misc:

• export of single natural
resources ,Cotton
• Rubber
• Palm oil
• Sugar
• Wheat
• Meat
• Guano
• Metals and minerals
• Textile production in
India
• British and French
attempts to “open up”
the Chinese market
during the nineteenth
century
• Copper mines in
Mexico
• Gold and diamond
mines in South Africa
• Stock markets
• Insurance
• Gold standard
• Limited liability
corporations
• The United Fruit
Company
• The HSBC — Hong
Kong and Shanghai
Banking Corporation
• Utopian socialism
• Marxism
• Anarchism
• The economic reforms
of Meiji Japan
• The development of
factories and railroads
in Tsarist Russia
• China’s Self-
Strengthening
Movement
• Muhammad Ali’s
development of a cotton
textile industry in Egypt
• State pensions and
public health in
Germany
• Expansion of suffrage in
Britain
• Public education in
many states
• British in India
• Dutch in Indonesia
• British empire
• Dutch empire
• French empire
• German empire
• Russian empire
• Britain in West Africa
• Belgium in the Congo
• The British in southern
Africa, Australia, and
New Zealand
• The French in Algeria
• The British and French
expanding their
influence in China
through the Opium
Wars
• The British and the
United States investing
heavily in Latin
America
• The establishment of
independent states in
the Balkans
• Semi-independence
in Egypt, French and
Italian colonies in
North Africa
• Later British influence
in Egypt
• The Cherokee Nation
• Siam
• Hawai’i
• The Zulu Kingdom
• The German nation
• Filipino nationalism
• Liberian nationalism
• Voltaire
• Rousseau
• Locke
• Montesquieu
• The challenge of the
Marathas to the Mughal
Sultans
• The establishment of
Maroon societies.
• The Indian Revolt of
1857
• The Boxer Rebellion
• The Taiping Rebellion
• The Ghost Dance
• The Xhosa Cattle-
Killing Movement
• The Tanzimat
movement
• The Self-Strengthening
Movement
• Mary Wollstonecraft’s A
Vindication of the Rights
of Woman
• Olympe de Gouges’s
“Declaration of the
Rights of Women and
the Female Citizen”
• The resolutions passed
at the Seneca Falls
Conference in 1848
• Manual laborers
• Specialized
professionals
• Japanese agricultural
workers in the Pacific
• Lebanese merchants in
the Americas
• Italians in Argentina
• Chinese in Southeast
Asia, the Caribbean,
South America, and
North America
• Indians in East and
southern Africa,
the Caribbean, and
Southeast Asia
• The Chinese Exclusion
Acts
• The White Australia
Policy

Period 6: Accelerating Global Change and
Realignments, c. 1900 to the Present

Key Concept 6.1 Science and the Environment

Key Concept 6.2 Global Conflicts and Their
Consequences

Required examples of the sources of global conflict:
• Imperialist expansion by European powers and Japan
• Competition for resources
• Ethnic conflict
• Great power rivalries between Great Britain and Germany
• Nationalist ideologies
• The economic crisis engendered by the Great Depression.

Key Concept 6.3 New Conceptualizations of Global
Economy, Society, and Culture

Misc:

• The theory of relativity
• Quantum mechanics
• The Big Bang theory
• Psychology
• The polio vaccine
• Antibiotics
• The artificial heart
• Malaria
• Tuberculosis
• Cholera
• The 1918 influenza
pandemic
• Ebola
• HIV/AIDS
• Diabetes
• Heart disease
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Tanks
• Airplanes
• The atomic bomb
• Nanjing
• Dresden
• Hiroshima
• Economic hardship
• Political and social
discontent
• Technological
stagnation
• Military defeat
• India from the British
Empire
• The Gold Coast from
the British Empire
• Algeria and Vietnam
from the French empire
• Angola from the
Portuguese empire
• Mohandas Gandhi
• Ho Chi Minh
• Kwame Nkrumah
• Muhammad Ali Jinnah
• The Québécois
separatist movement
• The Biafra secessionist
movement
• Communism
• Pan-Arabism
• Pan-Africanism
• The India/Pakistan
partition
• The Zionist Jewish
settlement of Palestine
• The division of the
Middle East into
mandatory states
• South Asians to Britain
• Algerians to France
• Filipinos to the United
States
• Armenia
• The Holocaust
• Cambodia
• Rwanda
• Palestinians
• Darfurians
• The Gurkha soldiers in
India
• The ANZAC troops in
Australia
• Military conscription
• Picasso in his Guernica
• The antinuclear
movement during the
Cold War
• Thich Quang Duc by
self-immolation
• Gandhi
• Martin Luther King
• Communist leaders
such as Vladimir Lenin
and Mao Zedong
• The Non-Aligned
Movement, which
presented an alternative
political bloc to the
Cold War
• The Anti-Apartheid
Movement in South
Africa
• Participants in the
global uprisings of 1968
• The Tiananmen Square
protesters that promoted
democracy in China
• The promotion of
military dictatorship
in Chile, Spain, and
Uganda
• The United States’
promotion of a New
World Order after the
Cold War
• The buildup of the
“military-industrial
complex” and arms
trading
• IRA
• ETA
• Al-Qaeda
• Dada
• James Bond
• Socialist Realism
• Video games
• The Five-Year Plans
• The Great Leap
Forward
• The New Deal
• The Fascist corporatist
economy
• Nasser’s promotion of
economic development
in Egypt
• The encouragement
of export-oriented
economies in East Asia
• The United States
beginning with Ronald
Reagan
• Britain under Margaret
Thatcher
• China under Deng
Xiaoping
• Chile under Pinochet
• The League of Nations
• The United Nations
• The International
Criminal Court
• The International
Monetary Fund (IMF)
• World Bank
• UNICEF
• The Red Cross
• Amnesty International
• Doctors Without
Borders
• World Health
Organization (WHO)
• The European Union
• NAFTA
• ASEAN
• Mercosur
• Royal Dutch Shell
• Coca-Cola
• Sony
• Greenpeace
• Green Belt in Kenya
• Earth Day
• The U.N. Universal
Declaration of Human
Rights
• Women’s rights
• The end of the White
Australia Policy
• Negritude
• Xenophobia
• Race riots
• Citizenship restrictions
• New Age Religions
• Hare Krishna
• Falun Gong
• Fundamentalist
movements
• Liberation Theology
• World Cup Soccer
• The Olympics
• Cricket
• Reggae
• Bollywood