7C Research Task

Click on the snippet from your research task in order to download it.

Dear 7C,

Do you lose your handouts in the dark recesses of your bedroom, only to discover them two months later, mashed between an old apple core and your football or netball jumper? If so, this is just what you need: a link so that you can download your work at home or at school.

Year 7C History Research Task 2012

DUE DATE: Thursday 23 August

Here is a link to the British Museum site, which will provide a wealth of possibilities for the task on finding a primary source on ancient Egypt. Look on the left-hand side of the page at the “highlight objects”.

British Museum – thousands of artefacts from all around the world

This website will also help you to appreciate the life of an Egyptian peasant farmer:

PBS Website – A day in the life of a peasant farmer

Kind regards,

Ms Green.

 

From the Fertile Crescent to Ancient Egypt

The “Natufians” were hunter-gatherers whose descendants eventually became the first farmers and herders in the Fertile Crescent. Ultimately a great civilisation developed in that region. The people of that civilisation were called the Sumerians and they are generally credited with inventing the wheel and developing the first alphabet. These were remarkable achievements for people with hardly any wood, whose best material for a writing surface and for building houses was mud.

Photo kindly provided by Mrs McQueen

The ancient Egyptians built the Great Pyramid of Giza without the wheel. In addition, they developed their own system of writing, probably influenced by the Sumerians. The ancient Egyptians usually get the credit, among other things, for domesticating cats, embalming bodies with great skill and living successfully in a land that, except for a thin fertile strip near its river, was basically desert. It was an improbable place for such a major and successful civilisation, made possible only by the existence of that river, the Nile, and by the talents of the people. Every year the Nile delivered its fertile silt to the inhabitants of the Nile Valley, its floodwaters sweeping down from the Ethiopian mountains in the south to the plains of the north. Every year the Egyptian peasant farmers used that silt and water to crop their land and grow the food that supported the whole population.

Some of my students think it would have been much easier for human beings once they started to farm. My students point out that people would no longer have encountered as much danger from hunting and would have felt more confidence about having food when they needed it. While these are fair points, farming in ancient Egypt was labour-intensive, to say the least. A peasant farmer was also at the bottom of the social hierarchy. This was no easy life. Hunter-gatherers six or seven thousand years before in a fertile area like the Fertile Crescent might well have had more leisure time and fewer people telling them what to do – and no one to tax them as well.

Find out about ancient Egypt at these links, ensuring that you make notes on topics that could help with assignment research:

Mummy Maker Game at the BBC Website

The importance of the Nile – BBC Website

The importance of the Nile – an easier website

Questions and answers about the Nile – an easy website

A day in the life of various ancient Egyptians – PBS Website

A fascinating account of archaeological evidence on who actually built the Pyramids – PBS website

Our legacy to the world

thoughtDear 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?

lab_pouring_test_tube pd wpclipartcom

♥”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.

Leonardo da Vinci - a great legacy
Leonardo da Vinci - a great legacy (photo kindly provided by Dee McQueen)

 

The Colosseum - a legacy of great architecture and blood sports (photo kindly provided by Dee McQueen)
The Colosseum - a legacy of great architecture and, less admirably, blood sports (photo kindly provided by Dee McQueen) Can you think of other arenas based on this concept?

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;hieroglyph river wpclipart pd

♦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.

Cuneiform – clipart kindly provided by www.phillipmartin.info (I always think that it would be wonderful if the first writing was created to write love poems or great literature. But no – someone wanted a receipt. Sigh. This is a material world.)

Here’s a quotation from an article about the 20-year history of the internet, by Guy Rundle in The Age on Sunday 15 March, 2009:

“Five thousand years ago, the invention of writing in Mesopotamia [Sumer] separated information from presence – a few strokes of cuneiform on a clay tablet established that meaning, intent, communication could be separated and transmitted without a person there to present it.

“From this event flows every modern institution of the state…”

That’s some legacy!

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.

Pharaoh by Ros

♦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

water_drop wpclipartcom pdAncient 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?