Test whether one document can establish a turning point
Three steps, the way the exam actually works: work through the lab, write down your own observations, then answer a 8-point free response. What you recorded goes to the grader with your writing, so a conclusion that does not follow from your own evidence will cost you the point — exactly as it would with a real reader.
Predict before you look
- A turning point claim asserts that conditions after an event differed systematically from conditions before it. State in one sentence what evidence such a claim requires.
- Before reading, decide what a single document written by one participant could and could not establish about a change affecting two hemispheres.
Nothing to submit here — these are to think through, so the prediction below is an informed one rather than a guess.
Commit to an answer now. It is not graded and being wrong costs nothing — the point is to have something specific to reconcile against once you have the data.
Answer every prediction to unlock the lab. A sentence is enough.
Run the investigation
Predictions first
The procedure and the simulation unlock once you have committed above. Observing before predicting is how a wrong intuition survives a lab intact.
Record what you found
This is your reading of the source, not ours. The grader sees them, so your conclusions have to follow from what you actually recorded.
| Year of the journal entry | |
|---|---|
| A phrase describing what the Taíno possess | |
| A phrase describing what the Taíno lack | |
| Purpose of the document, in a phrase | |
| One Columbian Exchange effect this document DOES evidence | |
| One major effect it does NOT evidence at all |
Answer the free response
Using the journal entry: (a) Quote one phrase about what the Taíno possess and one about what they lack, and explain what each contributes to Columbus's case to his patrons. (b) Identify ONE effect of the Columbian Exchange for which this document is genuinely useful evidence, and explain why. (c) Identify ONE major effect of the Columbian Exchange for which it provides no evidence whatever, and name the kind of source a historian would need instead. (d) Historians commonly treat 1492 as a turning point in world history. Using your own data, evaluate whether this document by itself could support that claim, and explain what makes a turning-point argument require more than a single source.
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