The Age of Global Connections
Like Duolingo, but for The Age of Global Connections. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
For the part of you with thirty open tabs that never became anything.
170 levels across 8 sections, about 340 minutes end to end, roughly 68 days at five minutes a day. It moves through The First Global Shopping Trip; When Worlds Collided; New Ways of Thinking; The Rise of Super-Empires; The Birth of Modern Science; Kings, Queens, and Revolution; Daily Life in the 1700s; and How We Got to Today. It starts from scratch.
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Key ideas in The Age of Global Connections
- Spices were expensive imports used to flaunt wealth
- Pepper plants require tropical climates
- Visible consumption of rare goods signaled high social rank
- Agricultural limitations forced Europeans to look toward the Indian Ocean
- Spices as status symbols
- Climate and trade
- Trade goods needed to survive months at sea without rotting
- Spices passed through many middlemen before reaching Europe
- Why luxury goods couldn't be produced locally in Europe
- High value-to-weight ratios made the dangerous journey profitable
- Each hand-off increased the final price significantly
- Physical traits that made certain goods ideal for long-distance trade
- Silk signaled membership in the elite class
- Finding direct sea routes to spice-growing regions
- Certain laws (sumptuary laws) often restricted silk to the wealthy
- The social impact of owning silk in the early modern period
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives The Age of Global Connections the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
In a 15th-century European banquet, why would a host serve a dish that was heavily over-spiced?
Get it right to open this lesson and 169 more in the app.
Where The Age of Global Connections takes you
Discover how the modern world was born through daring voyages, revolutionary ideas, and the first global trade networks. Learn how different cultures collided and changed each other forever.
- 1
The First Global Shopping Trip
- Why everyone wanted pepper and silk
- The high cost of the Silk Road
- New ships that could cross oceans
- Finding a way around Africa
- 2
When Worlds Collided
- The mistake that found a continent
- The first time the whole world met
- Plants and animals that moved homes
- The invisible enemy: germs and disease
- How silver changed the global economy
- The dark history of the slave trade
- 3
New Ways of Thinking
- The art of being human again
- Questioning the power of the church
- The invention that spread ideas fast
- 4
The Rise of Super-Empires
- Gunpowder and the new way to fight
- The splendor of the Ottoman Empire
- Building the Taj Mahal in Mughal India
- The forbidden city of Ming China
- Japan's era of the Samurai
- 5
The Birth of Modern Science
- Looking at the stars with new eyes
- The secret language of math
- Testing things to see if they are true
- Gravity and the laws of the universe
- 6
Kings, Queens, and Revolution
- The rulers who wanted total power
- Life in the palace of Versailles
- The people start to talk back
- Writing the rules for new governments
- The fight for independence
- 7
Daily Life in the 1700s
- What people ate before supermarkets
- The first coffee houses and news
- Fashion as a sign of power
- 8
How We Got to Today
- The move from farms to factories
- Why we speak the languages we do
- The roots of modern global problems
- Tracing your favorite foods back in time
8 sections · 34 units · 170 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
You pick the voice
The Age of Global Connections is taught in the The Professor style: clear, structured, thorough. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start The Age of Global Connections today.
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