Our legacy to the world

Dear 7B,

Sometimes I have dreams of how people will remember me. These dreams are usually positive but occasionally – well, a little embarrassing.

♥”She was a very good knitter. Look, she made me this scarf.”

♥”She was funny. Well, peculiar, actually.”

♥”She helped me on my first day of school when I got hopelessly lost and ended up in the cleaner’s broom cupboard.”

Hmm, well. I know they’re not the most wonderful things to be remembered for, but they’re possibilities.

What would you like to be remembered for?

♥”That boy made a gadget that caused the i-Pad 3 (whoops, I mean the new i-Pad) to stop selling. Apple had to give him a job before he put the company out of business.”

♥”That girl became a great scientist and found a cure for breast cancer.”

♥”That boy figured out how to power Melbourne with recycled garbage from two high schools, four office blocks and an alpaca farm.”

♥”She was such a warm, kind person.”

♥”He was a wonderful father. Every night he told his children stories and they hung on his words.”

Everyone leaves some kind of legacy – and I don’t mean money. I mean an attitude of mind, a skill, an action or an achievement, hopefully one that is memorable and worthwhile, that lasts for many years and influences others.

 

In the context of a civilisation, a legacy means a special contribution that a civilisation leaves behind. It might include:

♦a memorable idea such as a special way of organising a society or dealing with a problem;

♦some kind of scientific knowledge;

♦an invention;

♦a monument;

♦a skill;

♦an impressive achievement in art, government, literature, etc;

♦something that later societies have admired and sought to emulate.

For instance, the ancient Sumerians are believed to have been the first to create a writing system. They pressed wedge-shaped marks into clay tablets. Many historians believe that this is what gave the Egyptians the idea of developing hieroglyphs.

The ancient Egyptians had many achievements over the course of their long history. Their beautiful tomb paintings, for example, show us all about their lives on the Nile River. They drew figures in a way that changed little over the years. Can you think of other great and inspiring achievements that others might have built upon?

 

Egyptian peasants during harvest – note the side-on presentation of the bodies in classic Egyptian style

Image in public domain from wikimedia.commons

See what you can find out about the legacies of the ancient Egyptians at these sites.

♦Mathematics:

http://www.suite101.com/content/the-mathematics-of-ancient-egypt-a49376

♦Ancient Egyptian ideas about pi:

http://ualr.edu/lasmoller/pi.html

♦Ancient Egyptian art:

http://www.aldokkan.com/art/art.htm

Ancient Egyptian water engineering and inventions:

http://www.waterhistory.org/histories/nile/t1.html

(You’ll need to scroll down to read the vital information.)

Managing time – calendars and clocks:

http://library.thinkquest.org/J002046F/technology.htm

Ancient Egyptian writing:

http://www.ancientscripts.com/egyptian.html

Write a comment in answer to this question: What legacy would you as an individual like to leave behind? Another way to put this could be: How do you intend to leave the world a better place than you found it?