TJ PROGRAM OF STUDIES: ANCIENT & CLASSICAL CIVILIZATIONS

Course Description Ancient & Classical Civilizations is an elective course that provides students an opportunity to build a strong foundation in historical knowledge of the ancient world that the HUM I courses do not provide due to time constraints. In this course, students will investigate the human past from c. 100,000 BC/BCE to c. 1300 AD/CE from a global perspective. While some attention will be given to historical developments in the Americas, the course will focus primarily on the major societies of Afro-Eurasia and the ever tightening webs of communication and exchange that increasingly linked them and facilitated accelerated integration. The course will explore the ancient world through a big-picture lens—by zooming out to consider the individual civilizations in a comparative and global context, and then by zooming in for a more in-depth look at selected societies on a case study basis, using a thematic approach as an organizing principle. Intended mostly for 9

th and 10

th graders, the course is a year-long one (1 social studies credit) that emphasizes the

following historical thinking skills (all of which are applicable to—and emphasized in—both HUM I and HUM II courses):

1. Analyzing Historical Sources and Evidence. (A) Primary source analysis: Content and Sourcing Skills (B) Secondary source analysis: Interpretation

2. Making Historical Connections (A) Comparison (B) Contextualization (C) Synthesis

3. Chronological Reasoning (A) Causation (B) Patterns of Continuity and Change Over Time (C) Periodization

4. Crafting and Supporting a Historical Argument: Argumentation The course will emphasize inquiry learning. Students will engage in various instructional activities, including without limitation:

Conducting research individually and/or in collaborative teams

Creating and delivering multimedia presentations

Participating in simulations

Conducting Socratic seminars, formal debates, and mock trials

Using primary and secondary sources to construct claims and counterclaims

Writing comparative and document-based essays

STANDARDS, BENCHMARKS, AND PERFORMANCE INDICATORS Ancient Civilization is a TJ specific elective. All standards, benchmarks, and performance indicators are written

specifically for TJ.

Standard 1: Develop an overarching framework for the study of ancient history from a global perspective.

Benchmark 1.a Recognize that history is an account of the past, and that historians differ on the narratives they construct.

Indicator 1.a.1 Define history and historiography.

Indicator 1.a.2 Identify and distinguish the types of sources historians use to build their narratives.

Benchmark 1.b Recognize that the spatial and temporal constructs historians use to organize their narratives influence the way they frame their questions, interpret, and portray the past.

Indicator 1.b.1 Define time, chronology, and periodization and explain how they intersect with one another. Indicator 1.b.2 Explain the usefulness and limitations of using maps as historical artifacts. Indicator 1.b.3 Recognize that the scale of units of analysis historians choose to investigate the past influences the way they frame questions and construct their historical narratives.

Standard 2: Develop an overarching framework for investigating the interacting relationship between the physical environment and human activities, settlement patterns, exchanges and movement.

Benchmark 2.a Identify patterns in major waterways, landforms, and climate zones, and asses their impact on human movement, settlement, and exchanges.

Indicator 2.a.1 Identify the location of the series of waterways that interconnect Afro-Eurasia, and explain their impact on human settlement patterns and movement. Indicator 2.a.2 Identify the location of the world’s major mountain ranges, deserts, plateaus, and steppes and explain their impact on human settlement patterns and movement. Indicator 2a.3 Explain the impact of latitude zones in facilitating or hindering human movement, and thus the rate of diffusion of goods and ideas.

Benchmark 2.b Identify and apply world culture regions. Indicator 2.b.1 Identify the world’s culture regions and explain the cultural patterns associated with each culture region. Indicator 2.b.2 Explain the connections linking natural, cultural, and political borders.

Standard 3: Analyze and assess the transition from foraging way of life to agricultural societies, and the subsequent emergence of new and more complex economic and social systems after 10,000BCE.

Benchmark 3.a Students will trace patterns in the migration of early humans throughout Afro-Eurasia, Australia, the Pacific, and the Americas.

Indicator 3.a.1 Identify and assess the types of evidence used by historians to interpret pre-literate human societies. Indicator 3.a.2 Explain the development of culture and technology as consequences of early humans’ responses to the environmental challenges they encountered as they moved across the globe. Indicator 3.a.3 Explain the significance of the long Paleolithic era in the larger context of world history.

Benchmark 3.b Explain and assess how agriculture and pastoralism associated with the Neolithic Revolution transformed human societies and led to new and more complex social and economic systems over time.

Indicator 3.b.1 Describe and explain historical patterns in the emergence and diffusion of agriculture and pastoralism. Indicator 3.b.2 Explain the impact of agricultural and pastoral ways of life on the environment and the social and gender systems. Indicator 3.b.3 Explain and assess various historians’ interpretations of the consequences of agriculture.

Standard 4: Analyze and compare the rise, decline, and legacies of the core and foundation civilizations that emerged in Afro-Eurasia and the Americas from c. 4000 to c. 600 B.C.E.

Benchmark 4.a Recognize the concept of civilization as a cultural construct and explain the defining characteristics associated with it.

Indicator 4.a.1 Compare the various historical interpretations on what constitutes civilization and explain the issues in using civilization as a unit of analysis. Indicator 4.a.2 Explain the factors that led to the initial breakthroughs to civilizations.

Indicator 4.a.3 Explain the role of cities in the core and foundational civilizations. Indicator 4.a.4 Compare the characteristics of civilizations, pastoralists, and agricultural communities and assess their perceptions of one another.

Benchmark 4.b Compare and assess the role of environment in shaping the emergence and the development of the Core and Foundational, or First Wave, civilizations.

Indicator 4.b.1 Locate in time and place the Core and Foundational civilizations: Southwest Asia/Middle East: Mesopotamia North Africa/Middle East: Egypt South Asia: Indus Valley East Asia: Huang He Valley Mesoamerica: Olmec Andean America: Norte Chico, Chavin

Indicator 4.b.2 Describe and compare the environmental challenges each Core and Foundational civilization encountered in the process of urbanization and developing related institutions, and assess the extent to which the environment determines economic, social, political, and cultural development.

Benchmark 4.c Explain and assess the historical theories on how control over resources and growing populations influenced state formation in the Core and Foundational civilizations.

Indicator 4.c.1 Define state and compare the various forms it takes: monarchy, city-state, empire. Indicator 4.c.2 Explain why the first state emerged within the Core and Foundational civilizations. Indicator 4.c.3 Compare the political structure of the Core and Foundational civilizations and the methods they used to control the population. Indicator 4.c.4 Explain why some—but not all—Core and Foundational civilizations expanded into empires, with a focus on the Akkadians, Babylonians, Hittites, and New Kingdom Egypt

Benchmark 4.d Compare the social and gender hierarchies in the Core and Foundational civilizations. Indicator 4.d.1 Identify the social classes and hierarchies that arose in the Core and Foundational civilizations Indicator 4.d.2 Explain and compare the emergence of free and unfree labor systems in the Core and Foundational civilizations. Indicator 4.d.3 Explain and assess the causation argument linking the intensification of social and gender hierarchies with state expansion and increasing urbanization. Indicator 4.d.4 Cite evidence of, compare, and evaluate the nature and extent of social and gender inequalities in the Core and Foundational civilizations.

Benchmark 4.e Evaluate the cause-effect relationship linking culture, increasing complexity of civilization, and state formation.

Indicator 4.e.1 Identify and compare the states’ use of law codes, systems of record keeping, and urban planning. Indicator 4.e.2 Identify and compare the emergence of organized belief systems: Polytheism, the Vedic tradition, and Hebrew monotheism. Indicator 4.e.3 Identify and compare the elites’ promotion of the arts, monumental architecture, and artisanship.

Benchmark 4.f Compare and assess the extent to which the Core and Foundational civilizations were influenced by their interactions with near and distant neighbors.

Indicator 4.f.1 Identify, explain, and assess the role pastoral nomadic communities played in pioneering and disseminating military and transportation technology. Indicator 4.f.2 Describe and assess the trade expansion from local to regional and transregional (e.g., Egypt-Nubia, Mesopotamia-Indus Valley, Huang He-Mesopotamia). Indicator 4.f.3 Identify, explain, and assess the causes and consequences of pastoral nomadic movements during this period (e.g., Hebrews, Indo-Europeans).

Benchmark 4.g Analyze and evaluate the legacies of the Core and Foundational civilizations and the reasons for the decline and collapse of some—but not all—of those civilizations.

Indicator 4.g.1 Identify and evaluate the competing historical theories on the role of Aryan migrations in the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization.

Indicator 4.g.2 Describe and compare the extent to which the institutions and traditions that emerged in the Core and Foundational civilizations continued to shape their successor civilizations during the subsequent historical periods.

Standard 5: Analyze and compare the causes and consequences of the rise, codification, and diffusion of the axial age belief systems from c. 900 to 600 CE.

Benchmark 5.a Identify, analyze, and compare the emergence, codification, and consolidation of the Axial Age belief systems.

Indicator 5.a.1 Locate the belief systems in place and time of their origins: Vedic Religions, Abrahamic Religions, Zoroastrianism, Chinese philosophies, Hellenism. Indicator 5.a.2 Define, explain, and distinguish among commonly used terms: religion, philosophy, monism, dualism, monotheism, polytheism, animism, universal religion, perennial religion, salvationist religion, henotheism, pantheism, panentheism. Indicator 5.a.3 Describe and assess the Karl Jaspers’ “Axial Age” thesis. Indicator 5.a.4 Identify and compare the belief systems’ core beliefs, rituals, sacred spaces, requirements for “the good life,” religious institutions and hierarchies, and prescriptions for an orderly society.

Benchmark 5.b identify, analyze, and compare the diffusion of the belief systems beyond the societies of their respective origins, and describe and assess the changes they precipitated in the societies in which they emerged and to which they diffused.

Indicator 5.b.1 Trace and explain the routes of the diffusion of the belief systems. Indicator 5.b.2 Identify, compare, and evaluate the extent to which the belief systems justified, reinforced, and/or challenged political legitimacy, economic ties, social and gender inequalities, literary and artistic traditions, and cultural bonds and identities.

Benchmark 5.c Identify and explain how the belief systems themselves were transformed as they consolidated and diffused beyond the places of their origins.

Indicator 5.c.1 Define, distinguish, and compare diffusion and syncretism and give examples from this period. Indicator 5.c.2 Identify, explain, and compare doctrinal changes in the belief systems. Indicator 5.c.3 Identify, explain, and compare the changes in the religious institutions and hierarchies over time.

Standard 6: Identify, Explain, and Compare the rise, decline, and legacies of the classical, or the second wave, civilizations from 600 B.C.E. to 600 C.E.

Benchmark 6.a Analyze and compare the rise of states and empires during the Classical period. Indicator 6.a.1 Locate in place and time key states and empires of the Classical period: Achemenid Persia, Maurya and Gupta India, Qin and Han China, Phoenician trading empire, Greek poleis and colonies, Hellenistic Empires, Roman Empire, Teotihuacan, Mayan city-states, and Moche. Indicator 6.a.2 Identify and explain the relationships between the Core and Foundational Civilizations and the Classical Era states and empires.

Benchmark 6.b Analyze and compare the methods of imperial administration used by the Classical empires to integrate diverse peoples and maintain control over their territories.

Indicator 6.b.1 Identify, explain, and compare diverse interpretations on what constitute and empire. Indicator 6.b.2 Identify, explain, and compare the Classical era empires’ administrative institutions and diplomatic and military policies. Indicator 6.b.3 Identify, explain, and compare the Classical era empires’ policies on integrating conquered peoples and religious and ethnic minority groups. Indicator 6.b.4 Identify, explain, and compare the Classical era empires’ use of belief systems and culture to legitimize and consolidate their power.

Benchmark 6.c Analyze and compare the Classical era economic and social dimensions.

Indicator 6.c.1 Explain and compare the role of cities as centers of political administration and economic and cultural exchanges. Indicator 6.c.2 Identify, explain, and compare the free and unfree labor systems of the period. Indicator 6.c.3 Analyze and compare the continuities and changes over time in social and gender hierarchies.

Benchmark 6.d Analyze and compare the causes and consequences of imperial decline and collapse during this period.

Indicator 6.d.1 Identify, explain, and compare the extent to which internal problems caused the imperial decline and collapse. Indicator 6.d.2 Identify, explain, and compare the extent to which external problems caused the imperial decline and collapse. Indicator 6.d.3 Identify, explain, and compare the short-term and long-term consequences of imperial collapse on Europe, South Asia, and East Asia. Indicator 6.d.4 Analyze, compare, and assess competing historical arguments on the causes and consequences of the imperial decline and collapse during this period.

Standard 7: Analyze and compare the causes and consequences of the expansion and intensification in the existing overland and maritime trade and exchange networks from c. 600 B.C.E. to c. 1300 C.E.

Benchmark 7.a Explain the causes and consequences of the emergence of transregional overland and maritime trade and exchange networks from c. 600 BCE to c. 600 CE.

Indicator 7.a.1 Locate in place and time the major trade and exchange networks that existed during this period: Silk Roads, Trans-Saharan Caravan routes, Indian Ocean sea lanes, Mediterranean sea lanes. Indicator 7.a.2 Identify and explain environmental factors and technological innovations that shaped the distinctive features of each network. Indicator 7.a.3 Identify and explain the goods, people, ideas, and diseases that diffused through the trade and exchange networks and their impact on the local societies involved in the exchanges. Indicator 7.a.4 Analyze and assess David Christian’s historical argument on the role of pastoral nomads in facilitating exchanges on the Silk Roads.