HISTORICAL THINKING AND RESOURCES

6th grade

Types of Resources

You can use many different sources when you do any type of research. Your sources can be divided into…. Primary Resources Secondary Resources

Primary Resources

Primary sources are original materials. They are from the time period you are researching and have not been changed from their first form. Some examples are:

diaries letters paintings, sculptures poems, writings from the time period artifacts

Secondary Sources Secondary sources are written after the time

period.  They can be written about primary sources, but

they may contain the opinion of the writer.  Secondary sources comment on primary sources.

biographies encyclopedias textbooks journal articles Encyclopedia Set The Social studies books in our classroom

Encyclopedia Set

Studying Primary Sources

When studying a primary source… You are trying to discover the reason that a person wrote

down the information that you are reading.  Written laws from the ancient world were created by

those in power. They describe the rights and duties that ordinary people

had.  Letters and diaries can describe the life of a person

from the time. A letter written to a king or queen was usually meant

to gain the monarch's favor.  For example, European explorers in the age of exploration

would often send information to the monarchs who sponsored their journeys.

Two fields contribute to our understanding of societies:

Anthropology: Anthropology is the study of human beings and how they interact with one another. 

It also studies how different cultures interact as well as how humans interact with their environment.

Two fields contribute to our understanding of societies…CON’T

Archeology: Archeology is the study of historical cultures.  Many archeologists study ancient

societies.  To do this, archeologists try to discover

ruins and other evidence of these cultures. 

Archeologists study artifacts, sites where cities once stood, even human remains such as

mummies or other kinds of preserved bodies

Chronological Order

Placing events in chronological order means putting them in the order in which they happened.  For example: an event that happened in

1802 would come before an event that happened in 1902.

EX. Reading the surah/ayat in order

Timelines One common way of putting events in chronological

order is by creating a timeline. Timelines are read from left to right or from top to bottom and are marked by years, decades, or centuries.

Two or more timelines put together to compare different events in the same era is called a "multi-tier timeline." (photo below)

Measuring Time & Time Concepts

There are different ways that time is measured.  Time can be measured by minutes, hours, days,

years, decades, and centuries. Year — There are 365 days in one year. This is the

amount of time it takes the Earth to orbit the sun. Decade — There are 10 years in a decade. 

For example, the 1990s represent one decade, or the years of 1990 to 1999.

Century — There are 100 years in a century.  For example, the years 1901 to 2000 are one

century, called "the twentieth century."

Measuring Time & Time Concepts CON’T….

Millennium — There are 1,000 years in a millennium.  For example, the years 1001 to 2000.

Era — An era is a period of time marked by a special event or leader. An era is not a set number of years.  Examples include the Victorian Era (marked by

Queen Victoria's rule over Great Britain) and the Civil War Era (the time of the American Civil War during the 1860s).

 Another word for "era" is "age" or "period."

Measuring Time & Time Concepts

B.C. or B.C.E. — B.C. means "Before Christ," and B.C.E. means "Before the Common Era." These are the years before 1 A.D. It is important to remember that the year 500

B.C. and 500 B.C.E. mean the same thing.  It is also important to know that, for the years

prior to 1 A.D., we count backwards.  This means that 400 B.C. occurred before 200

B.C.

Measuring Time & Time Concepts

A.D. or C.E. — A.D. means "Anno Domini" (in the year of our Lord), and C.E. means the "Common Era.“ Having a year marked as either A.D. or C.E. refers to

years starting with 1 A.D. to the present-day.  For the A.D. or C.E. years, we count forwards. This

means that 1997 occurred after 1392.

Videos for recap….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqXHO7bTPnw

Some historical events….

Historical events usually have many causes and many far reaching effects.

 A historical event can be a war, a famine, or even the decline of a civilization.

 Historians attempt to study all of the causes and effects of historical events, but disagreements can occur. 

Usually, disagreements occur regarding the importance of particular causes as well as importance of particular effects. 

The First Democratic Government

Ancient Greece had a great impact on many later developments in history.

One important city-state was Athens. 

Historians believe that Ancient Athens had the world's first democracy.

 Known as a direct democracy, people voted directly on every issue or law. 

This is different from a representative democracy, in which voters choose people to act in their interest. 

The word democracy itself comes from the Greek words demos, which means "people," and kratos, which means "rule."

The idea of citizenship also comes from Athenian democracy. 

The Rise of the Roman Empire

     People do not often remember that Ancient Rome was a republic before it was an empire. The Roman Republic was formed in 509 B.C. and lasted for hundreds of years before becoming an empire. 

According to legend, the city of Rome was founded around the year 753 B.C. and had been ruled by kings since that time. The last king of Rome was cruel, and people were unhappy with his rule. 

The people decided to overthrow the king and start a new government called a republic. 

Under this new government, officials were elected once a year to rule the city. Another type of leader, called a dictator, was elected to rule in times of war. Dictators ruled for six months at a time with almost unlimited power.

One of the most well-known dictators of Ancient Rome was Julius Caesar. After becoming dictator, many of Rome's other leaders were worried that

Caesar would abuse his power. Rather than risk Caesar taking their power away, they decided to have him killed. The Roman Republic fell apart soon after Caesar died because of a weakened political structure. This paved the way for the rise of the Roman Empire, which began in approximately 27 B.C. In the Roman Empire, one person, called an emperor, had complete control over the government.

The Crusades

     The Crusades were a series of religiously driven military campaigns undertaken by European Christians from the 11th to the 13th centuries.

They were originally Roman Catholic holy wars to recapture Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslims. 

These locations can be found in present-day Palestine, a country with sites of religious importance to three major world religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. 

The Crusades eventually resulted in a transfer of knowledge between eastern and western cultures, which helped advances in fields such as science and medicine.

The Black Death

   The Black Death AKA bubonic plague swept through Europe in the mid-1300s.

Killed almost half the population in only a few years.

The plague was caused by a disease carried by fleas that were found on rats. 

Sanitation was not as important to people during this time period, and many diseases spread as a result.

The map below shows the path of the Black Death, which began in 1347 in coastal areas of Italy and France before spreading to much of the rest of Europe.

The Age of Exploration

     The period from 1000 to 1500 CE included the end of the Middle Ages, the beginning of the Renaissance, and the beginning of the Age of Exploration.

The Age of Exploration can be defined as a period of time when Europeans began to search for a sea trade route between Europe and Asia. 

The Age of Exploration…

One important cause of this desire to find a new route was the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire.

The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, had been in control of the city for approximately 1,000 years.  Under Byzantine control, the city was a major stop on the

trade route between Europe and the Far East. In 1453, as a result of expansion by the Turkish Ottoman Empire, Constantinople was surrounded and eventually conquered. 

European feelings of hostility toward the Muslim Turks, this event was one of many that caused European traders to look for new routes to Asia. 

Explorers began to search down the length of Africa and even ventured across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a new trade route to Asia.