# ✅ Checkpoint: Turning Points and Their Drivers

By Better Wise



## Quiz

1. In the lesson on the Agricultural Revolution, what does the lesson say matters more than raw abundance when explaining what a surplus can do?
   - The total volume of food produced each year
   - The number of domesticated animal species available
   - The size of the population before farming began
   - Storability, because stored grain can be counted, taxed, moved, and controlled
2. According to the lesson on empires and trade networks, what is the first question to ask when reading a trade network as a map of power?
   - Which goods were the most expensive?
   - Who collects the toll?
   - How long was the route end to end?
   - Which language did the merchants speak?
3. Why could pre-industrial organic economies not sustain growth in output per person?
   - Almost all energy came from recently grown plants or muscle, so fuel competed with food for land
   - They had no knowledge of tools or metalworking
   - They lacked markets and long-distance trade entirely
   - Their populations were too small to support specialization
4. Which of the following are costs of the shift to farming that the lesson names? Select all that apply.
   - Greater fragility, because dependence on a few crops made a failed harvest a famine
   - Worse nutrition and more infectious disease
   - Durable inequality, since stored wealth could be inherited and monopolized
   - The complete disappearance of long-distance exchange
5. Which statements about the Industrial Revolution match the lesson? Select all that apply.
   - Pomeranz argues Britain's advantage over the Yangzi delta came partly from coal lying near its industrial centers
   - The Luddites were skilled textile workers whose bargaining position collapsed, not anti-technology romantics
   - The productivity break is best measured by total national output rather than output per person
   - Watt's separate condenser cut fuel use per stroke compared with earlier engines
6. Wrigley's term for the farmland that would have been needed to grow the energy that coal replaced is ____.
7. The decades around 1800 to 1840, when output per worker rose while real wages stagnated, are known as ____.
8. Payment in goods, labor, or soldiers assessed by a powerful center on the regions it controls is called ____.
9. In your own words, explain how a storable agricultural surplus turns into social hierarchy, using Uruk and Çatalhöyük as your comparison. Aim for four to six sentences.
10. Explain why the Industrial Revolution produced a genuine productivity break, while empire-scale trade did not. Use at least two pieces of evidence from the lesson (for example coal output, cotton yarn prices, or Maddison's estimates).


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## Contents

Part of [🧭 History and Big-Picture Thinking](https://everwise.study/courses/history-and-big-picture-thinking.md)

- **🌾 Turning Points: Agriculture, Empires, Industry**
  - [🌱 The Agricultural Revolution: Surplus, Cities, and Hierarchy](https://everwise.study/courses/history-and-big-picture-thinking/agricultural-revolution-surplus-cities-hierarchy.md)
  - [🏛️ Empires and Trade Networks: Tribute, Roads, and Ideas in Motion](https://everwise.study/courses/history-and-big-picture-thinking/empires-trade-networks-tribute-roads-ideas.md) (sign-in required)
  - [⚙️ Industrialization: Coal, Steam, and the Productivity Break](https://everwise.study/courses/history-and-big-picture-thinking/industrialization-coal-steam-productivity-break.md)
  - [✅ Checkpoint: Turning Points and Their Drivers](https://everwise.study/courses/history-and-big-picture-thinking/checkpoint-turning-points-drivers.md) — this lesson
- **🌍 Ideas, Technology, and Globalization**
  - [💡 Ideas in Motion: Print, Enlightenment, and Nationalism](https://everwise.study/courses/history-and-big-picture-thinking/ideas-in-motion-print-enlightenment-nationalism.md)
  - [🚂 Technology as a Force: Ships, Rails, and Containers](https://everwise.study/courses/history-and-big-picture-thinking/technology-as-force-ships-rails-containers.md)
  - [🔗 Three Waves of Globalization: 1492, 1870, 1990](https://everwise.study/courses/history-and-big-picture-thinking/three-waves-globalization-1492-1870-1990.md)
  - [✅ Checkpoint: Ideas, Technology, and Globalization](https://everwise.study/courses/history-and-big-picture-thinking/checkpoint-ideas-technology-globalization.md)
- **🔍 Thinking Like a Historian: Sources, Bias, Causation**
  - [📜 Reading Primary Sources: Author, Audience, Context](https://everwise.study/courses/history-and-big-picture-thinking/reading-primary-sources-author-audience-context.md)
  - [🎭 Spotting Bias and Framing in a Source](https://everwise.study/courses/history-and-big-picture-thinking/spotting-bias-framing-in-a-source.md)
  - [🧩 Causal Patterns: Contingency, Conjuncture, and Comparison Today](https://everwise.study/courses/history-and-big-picture-thinking/causal-patterns-contingency-conjuncture-comparison.md) (premium content)
  - [✅ Checkpoint: Sources, Bias, and Causal Patterns](https://everwise.study/courses/history-and-big-picture-thinking/checkpoint-sources-bias-causal-patterns.md) (premium content)
- [Course cheatsheet](https://everwise.study/courses/history-and-big-picture-thinking/cheatsheet.md) (premium content)