1. Increased Economic Productive Capacity and Its Consequence
Key Concept
Increased Economic Productive Capacity and Its Consequence

2. Meaning…
Changes in trade networks resulted from and stimulated increasing productive capacity, with important implications for the social and gender structures and environmental processes.
Productivity rose in both agriculture and industry
Rising productivity supported population growth and urbanization and also strained environmental resources and at times caused great swings in demography
Shifts in population and the increased volume of trade also stimulated new labor practices, including the adaptation of existing patterns of free and coerced labor
Changes in social and gender structures evolved in response to these changes in labor organization

3. A. Innovations in Agriculture
Champa rice varieties—originate in Vietnam, ripen more quickly, allow for more than one crop per year—eventually 60 days for a crop
Chinampa field systems in Mesoamerica
Waru, waru system in the Andes
Improved terracing techniques
Horse collars for more efficient plowing in the heavy soils of Northern Europe
And crops were transported from their indigenous homelands to equivalent climates in other regions

4. Chinampas

5. Waru Waru

6. Terracing

7. B. The Fate of Cities
Varied, with some significant decline in some areas during some parts of this time—driven by epidemic disease, invasions and decline in trade economies
And some significant growth buoyed by increased productivity and trade, safer transport, end of invasions, rising populations and more labor
Chinese, Persian and Indian artisans and merchants expanded the production of textiles and porcelains for export
Italian (and Belgian) wool merchants
Chinese steel and iron producers

8. C. Continuity and Change in Labor
Diversification of labor organization—free peasants agriculture, nomadic pastoralists, craft producers, guilds, various forms of coerced and unfree labor, government imposed labor taxes and military obligations
Social structure still largely shaped by class and caste hierarchies
Patriarchy persists, although there are varying amounts of female influence—notably among the Mongols, Japan, SE Asia and West Africa
Important peasant revolts in China, in Byzantium

9. D. Changes to Family Structure and Gender Relationships Brought Through Religions
Buddhism
Christianity
Islam
Neoconfucianism