Practice question · Sort into groups
Sort each statement: supported, or an instance of technological determinism?
Groups: Supported · Technological determinism
- A cheap alphabet lowered the barrier to literacy
- The alphabet automatically dissolved every scribal elite
- Iron inevitably produced democracy wherever it spread
- Assyria used iron to build a formidable war machine
- Iron made a wider distribution of arms possible
Hints
- Supported claims say a technology made something possible.
- Determinist claims say it inevitably produced an outcome.
Show the answer
Supported: Iron made a wider distribution of arms possible, Assyria used iron to build a formidable war machine, A cheap alphabet lowered the barrier to literacy
Technological determinism: Iron inevitably produced democracy wherever it spread, The alphabet automatically dissolved every scribal elite
Why
The pattern is the same each time: the supported claims say "made possible," the determinist claims say "inevitably produced." Technologies open doors; the direction people walk is not in the metal.
Practise The Iron Age and the End of Prehistory
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
More questions on The Iron Age and the End of Prehistory
- Complete the statement about the threshold.
- Why is calling prehistory "the prologue to human history" a mistake about proportion?
- Why is "iron caused the fall of aristocracies" a claim to handle carefully?
- Why was the Phoenician alphabet as consequential as iron?
- The boundary between prehistory and history marks a real change in how people lived.
- The Phoenician alphabet had about 22 signs where cuneiform had hundreds. What did that reduction actually…
- What follows from an alphabet that ordinary people can learn?