Introduction to Ancient Cultures
Essential Questions: What is history? How and why is it important? How
do ancient cultures influence our world today? How did the land
influence how the people of ancient cultures lived?
Day 1: What is ancient? How old is old?
Connection: Today we are beginning our Social Studies unit on Ancient
Civilizations. We are going to be studying the cultures of ancient Egypt,
China and Greece. Today we are going to begin by exploring what the
word ancient means.
Teaching Point: The word ancient means having occurred a very long
time ago. The cultures we are going to be studying were in existence over
3,500 years ago. To better understand how long ago that was I have an
demonstration to show you.
Active Engagement: [Time demonstration]
Materials Needed: 2 metal pans, 100 beads (medium sized, plastic or
wood) in a plastic cup that is large enough to hold all of the beads at one
time.
Classroom Demonstration:
1. Drop 1 bead into the metal pan. As you drop the bead tell students that
the time it takes to drop the bead into the pan represents the amount of
time that they have been alive. [For computational purposes, each bead
equals approximately 10 years].
2. Drop 4 more beads (drop so that students hear/see each bead hit the
pan) into the metal pan. As you drop these beads, tell students that the
time it takes to drop the beads into the pan represents the amount of time
that has passed since Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the moon. [First
moon walk – 1969]
3. Drop 20 more beads (pour from the palm of your hand) into the metal
pan. As the beads fall, tell students that when the last bead falls, the
United States has just become a nation. [Independence
Declared/Revolutionary War – 1776].
4. Tell students that this year they will study the ancient civilizations of
China, Greece and Egypt. The earliest civilizations from China and
Greece got their start around 1500 BCE. That’s approximately 3500 years
ago. Taking the cup filled with beads, pour slowly into the metal pan (1000
years just went by). Then pour the beads from one metal pan into the 2nd
metal pan (another 1000 went by). Repeat 1 time more to get to the
grand total of 3500 years.
5. Tell students that the ancient Egyptian civilization started in 3000 BCE,
1500 years earlier than the Greek or Chinese civilizations. (To make your
point, pour the other. of the beads into the pan, and then pour all of the
beads into the empty pan.)
6. Ask students how long since human beings have walked upright on the
planet. (The answer is approximately 200,000 years). To simulate the
amount of time that has past since the first human being walked the
planet, you would need to pour the cup of beads back and forth
between the two metal pans a total of 1300 times.
Link: Today we began to understand the long period of time between
today and ancient Egypt, China and Greece. Tomorrow when we have
class, we are going to look at how timelines are used to organize periods
of time like we discussed today.