World History and Geography: Ancient Civilizations
Students in grade six expand their understanding
of history by studying the people and events that ushered in the dawn
of the major Western and non-Western ancient civilizations. Geography
is of special significance in the development of the human story.
Continued emphasis is placed on the everyday lives, problems, and
accomplishments of people, their role in developing social, economic,
and political structures, as well as in establishing and spreading
ideas that helped transform the world forever. Students develop higher
levels of critical thinking by considering why civilizations developed
where and when they did, why they became dominant, and why they
declined. Students analyze the interactions among the various cultures,
emphasizing their enduring contributions and the link, despite time,
between the contemporary and ancient worlds.
 6.1
Students describe what is known through archaeological studies of the
early physical and cultural development of humankind from the
Paleolithic era to the agricultural revolution.
1. Describe the hunter-gatherer societies,
including the development of tools and the use of fire.
2. Identify the locations of human communities that populated the major
regions of the world and describe how humans adapted to a variety of
environments.
3. Discuss the climatic changes and human
modifications of the physical environment that gave rise to the
domestication of plants and animals and new sources of clothing and
shelter.
Links
Smithsonian: http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/a_tree.html
Archaeology Info: http://www.archaeologyinfo.com/species.htm
 6.2 Students
analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social
structures of the early civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Kush.
- Locate and describe the major river
systems and discuss the physical settings that supported permanent
settlement and early civilizations.
- Trace the development of agricultural
techniques that permitted the production of economic surplus and the
emergence of cities as centers of culture and power.
- Understand the relationship between
religion and the social and political order in Mesopotamia and Egypt.
- Know the significance of Hammurabi's
Code.
- Discuss the main features of Egyptian
art and architecture.
- Describe the role of Egyptian trade in
the eastern Mediterranean and Nile valley.
- Understand the significance of Queen
Hatshepsut and Ramses the Great.
- Identify the location of the Kush
civilization and describe its political, commercial, and cultural
relations with Egypt.
- Trace the evolution of language and its
written forms.
 6.3
Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and
social structures of the Ancient Hebrews.
- Describe the origins and significance of
Judaism as the first monotheistic religion based on the concept of one
God who sets down moral laws for humanity.
- Identify the sources of the ethical
teachings and central beliefs of Judaism (the Hebrew Bible, the
Commentaries): belief in God, observance of law, practice of the
concepts of righteousness and justice, and importance of study; and
describe how the ideas of the Hebrew traditions are reflected in the
moral and ethical traditions of Western civilization.
- Explain the significance of Abraham,
Moses, Naomi, Ruth, David, and Yohanan ben Zaccai in the development of
the Jewish religion.
- Discuss the locations of the settlements
and movements of Hebrew peoples, including the Exodus and their
movement to and from Egypt, and outline the significance of the Exodus
to the Jewish and other people.
- Discuss how Judaism survived and
developed despite the continuing dispersion of much of the Jewish
population from Jerusalem and the rest of Israel after the destruction
of the second Temple in A.D. 70.
6.4 Students analyze the geographic,
political, economic, religious, and social structures of the early
civilizations of Ancient Greece.
- Discuss the connections between
geography and the development of city-states in the region of the
Aegean Sea, including patterns of trade and commerce among Greek
city-states and within the wider Mediterranean region.
- Trace the transition from tyranny and
oligarchy to early democratic forms of government and back to
dictatorship in ancient Greece, including the significance of the
invention of the idea of citizenship (e.g., from Pericles' Funeral
Oration).
- State the key differences between
Athenian, or direct, democracy and representative democracy.
- Explain the significance of Greek
mythology to the everyday life of people in the region and how Greek
literature continues to permeate our literature and language today,
drawing from Greek mythology and epics, such as Homer's Iliad and
Odyssey, and from Aesop's Fables.
- Outline the founding, expansion, and
political organization of the Persian Empire.
- Compare and contrast life in Athens and
Sparta, with emphasis on their roles in the Persian and Peloponnesian
Wars.
- Trace the rise of Alexander the Great
and the spread of Greek culture eastward and into Egypt.
- Describe the enduring contributions of
important Greek figures in the arts and sciences (e.g., Hypatia,
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Thucydides).
 6.5
Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and
social structures of the early civilizations of India.
- Locate and describe the major river
system and discuss the physical setting that sup-ported the rise of
this civilization.
- Discuss the significance of the Aryan
invasions.
- Explain the major beliefs and practices
of Brahmanism in India and how they evolved into early Hinduism.
- Outline the social structure of the
caste system.
- Know the life and moral teachings of
Buddha and how Buddhism spread in India, Ceylon, and Central Asia.
- Describe the growth of the Maurya empire
and the political and moral achievements of the emperor Asoka.
- Discuss important aesthetic and
intellectual traditions (e.g., Sanskrit literature, including the Bhagavad
Gita; medicine; metallurgy; and mathematics, including
Hindu-Arabic numerals and the zero).
 6.6 Students
analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social
structures of the early civilizations of China.
- Locate and describe the origins of
Chinese civilization in the Huang-He Valley during the Shang Dynasty.
- Explain the geographic features of China
that made governance and the spread of ideas and goods difficult and
served to isolate the country from the rest of the world.
- Know about the life of Confucius and the
fundamental teachings of Confucianism and Taoism.
- Identify the political and cultural
problems prevalent in the time of Confucius and how he sought to solve
them.
- List the policies and achievements of
the emperor Shi Huangdi in unifying northern China under the Qin
Dynasty.
- Detail the political contributions of
the Han Dynasty to the development of the imperial bureaucratic state
and the expansion of the empire.
- Cite the significance of the
trans-Eurasian "silk roads" in the period of the Han Dynasty and Roman
Empire and their locations.
- Describe the diffusion of Buddhism
northward to China during the Han Dynasty.
 6.7
Students analyze the geographic, political,
economic, religious, and social structures during the development of
Rome.
- Identify the location and describe the
rise of the Roman Republic, including the importance of such mythical
and historical figures as Aeneas, Romulus and Remus, Cincinnatus,
Julius Caesar, and Cicero.
- Describe the government of the Roman
Republic and its significance (e.g., written constitution and
tripartite government, checks and balances, civic duty).
- Identify the location of and the
political and geographic reasons for the growth of Roman territories
and expansion of the empire, including how the empire fostered economic
growth through the use of currency and trade routes.
- Discuss the influence of Julius Caesar
and Augustus in Rome's transition from republic to empire.
- Trace the migration of Jews around the
Mediterranean region and the effects of their conflict with the Romans,
including the Romans' restrictions on their right to live in Jerusalem.
- Note the origins of Christianity in the
Jewish Messianic prophecies, the life and teachings of Jesus of
Nazareth as described in the New Testament, and the contribution of St.
Paul the Apostle to the definition and spread of Christian beliefs
(e.g., belief in the Trinity, resurrection, salvation).
- Describe the circumstances that led to
the spread of Christianity in Europe and other Roman territories.
- Discuss the legacies of Roman art and
architecture, technology and science, literature, language, and law.
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