AP World History Unit 1 Practice Test: The Global Tapestry

“At the time, there happened great disturbances among the lower ranks of people, by which England was nearly ruined. Never was a country in such jeopardy, and all because some commoners sought to claim liberties to which they were not entitled. It is customary in England, as in other countries, for the nobility to have great privileges over the commoners, who are bound by law and custom to plow the lands of nobles, to harvest the grain, to carry it home to the barn, and to perform various other services for their lords.

The evil-disposed in these districts began to rise, saying they were too severely oppressed; that at the beginning of the world there were no slaves, and that no one ought to be treated as such… This they would not longer bear, but had determined to be free, and if they labored for their lords, they wanted to be paid for it. A crazy priest in the country of Kent, called John Ball, who for his absurd preaching, had been thrice confined in prison, inflamed those ideas. He would say: ‘Are we not all descended from the same parents, Adam and Eve? And what can the lords show, or what reasons give, why they should be more the masters than ourselves?’”

Jean Froissart, French chronicler, late 1300s

“At the time, there happened great disturbances among the lower ranks of people, by which England was nearly ruined. Never was a country in such jeopardy, and all because some commoners sought to claim liberties to which they were not entitled. It is customary in England, as in other countries, for the nobility to have great privileges over the commoners, who are bound by law and custom to plow the lands of nobles, to harvest the grain, to carry it home to the barn, and to perform various other services for their lords.

The evil-disposed in these districts began to rise, saying they were too severely oppressed; that at the beginning of the world there were no slaves, and that no one ought to be treated as such… This they would not longer bear, but had determined to be free, and if they labored for their lords, they wanted to be paid for it. A crazy priest in the country of Kent, called John Ball, who for his absurd preaching, had been thrice confined in prison, inflamed those ideas. He would say: ‘Are we not all descended from the same parents, Adam and Eve? And what can the lords show, or what reasons give, why they should be more the masters than ourselves?’”

Jean Froissart, French chronicler, late 1300s

“At the time, there happened great disturbances among the lower ranks of people, by which England was nearly ruined. Never was a country in such jeopardy, and all because some commoners sought to claim liberties to which they were not entitled. It is customary in England, as in other countries, for the nobility to have great privileges over the commoners, who are bound by law and custom to plow the lands of nobles, to harvest the grain, to carry it home to the barn, and to perform various other services for their lords.

The evil-disposed in these districts began to rise, saying they were too severely oppressed; that at the beginning of the world there were no slaves, and that no one ought to be treated as such… This they would not longer bear, but had determined to be free, and if they labored for their lords, they wanted to be paid for it. A crazy priest in the country of Kent, called John Ball, who for his absurd preaching, had been thrice confined in prison, inflamed those ideas. He would say: ‘Are we not all descended from the same parents, Adam and Eve? And what can the lords show, or what reasons give, why they should be more the masters than ourselves?’”

Jean Froissart, French chronicler, late 1300s

“At the time, there happened great disturbances among the lower ranks of people, by which England was nearly ruined. Never was a country in such jeopardy, and all because some commoners sought to claim liberties to which they were not entitled. It is customary in England, as in other countries, for the nobility to have great privileges over the commoners, who are bound by law and custom to plow the lands of nobles, to harvest the grain, to carry it home to the barn, and to perform various other services for their lords.

The evil-disposed in these districts began to rise, saying they were too severely oppressed; that at the beginning of the world there were no slaves, and that no one ought to be treated as such… This they would not longer bear, but had determined to be free, and if they labored for their lords, they wanted to be paid for it. A crazy priest in the country of Kent, called John Ball, who for his absurd preaching, had been thrice confined in prison, inflamed those ideas. He would say: ‘Are we not all descended from the same parents, Adam and Eve? And what can the lords show, or what reasons give, why they should be more the masters than ourselves?’”

Jean Froissart, French chronicler, late 1300s

“Scholars have been mesmerized by the huge extent of the present distribution of Bantu languages and could think of only a single process, an equally huge human migration, ‘the Bantu expansion,’ to explain it… [This] scenario is fatally flawed, however, for two reasons. First it fell prey to the illusion that only a migration could fit the evidence… [But] a language can spread without involving the migration of any communities. The second fatal error was to collapse a history that encompassed the developments of one to several millennia into a single migration event. The evidence shows that many different dispersals of single languages succeeded each other at different times, not continuously.”

Jan Vansina, historian, “New Linguistic Evidence and ‘the Bantu Expansion,” scholarly article, 1995

“Emperor Zhengzong, being deeply concerned with agriculture, came to know that the Champa rice was drought resistant and that the green lentils of India were famous for their heavy yield and large seeds. Special envoys, bringing precious things, were dispatched with a view to securing these varieties… When the first harvests were reaped in the autumn, the emperor called his closest ministers to taste them and compose poems for Champa rice and Indian green lentils.”

Shu Wenying, Buddhist monk, China, eleventh century C.E.

“Emperor Zhengzong, being deeply concerned with agriculture, came to know that the Champa rice was drought resistant and that the green lentils of India were famous for their heavy yield and large seeds. Special envoys, bringing precious things, were dispatched with a view to securing these varieties… When the first harvests were reaped in the autumn, the emperor called his closest ministers to taste them and compose poems for Champa rice and Indian green lentils.”

Shu Wenying, Buddhist monk, China, eleventh century C.E.

I am imperishable time;
The Creator whose face is everywhere;
Death that devours all things;
The source of all things to come

The god Krishna, Bhagavad Gita, Vedic sacred text, circa fifth century to second century B.C.E.

“What they [the Franks] learned from the Arabs was indispensable in their subsequent expansion. The heritage of Greek civilization was transmitted through Arab intermediaries. In medicine, astronomy, chemistry, geography, mathematics, and architecture, the [Franks] drew their knowledge from Arabic books, which they assimilated, imitated, and then surpassed… In the realm of industry, the Europeans first learned and then improved upon the processes used by the Arabs in papermaking, leather-working, textiles, and the distillation of alcohol and sugar.”

Amin Maalouf, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, 1984

“Women leave their families to marry, and the husband is the master of the household they marry into… The husband is to be firm, the wife soft; conjugal affections follow from this. While at home, the two of you should treat each other with the formality and reserve of a guest. Listen carefully to and obey whatever your husband tells you. If he does something wrong, gently correct him. Don’t be like those women who not only do not correct their husbands but actually lead them into indecent ways.”

Wife of a Tang dynasty official