World History and Geography: Ancient Civilizations
The rise and fall of the major Western and non-Western ancient civilizations
- The hunter-gatherer societies, including the development of tools and the use of fire
- The locations of human communities that populateed the major regions of the world and how humans adapted to a variety of environments
- 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
6.2 THE GEOGRAPHIC, POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL STRUCTURES OF MESOPOTAMIA, EGYPT AND KUSH
- The major rivers systems and the physical settings that supported permanent settlement and early civilizations
- The development of agricultural techniques that permitted the production of economic surplus and the emergence of cities as centers of culture and power
- The relationship between religion and the social and political order in Mesopotamia and Egypt
- The signicance of Hammurabi's Code
- The main features of Egyptian art and architecture
- The role of Egyptian trade in eastern Mediterranean and Nile valley
- The significance of Queen Hatshepsut and Ramses the Great
- The location of the Kush civilization and its political, commercial and cultural relations with Egypt
- The evolution of language and its written forms
6.3 THE GEOGRAPHIC, POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL STRUCTURES OF THE ANCIENT HEBREWS
- 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
- 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; how the ideas of the Hebrew traditions are reflected in the moral and ethical traditions of Western civilization
- The significance of Abraham, Moses, Naomi, Ruth, David and Yohanan ben Zaccai in the development of the Jewish religion
- The locations of the settlements and movements of Hebrew peoples, including the Exodus and their movement to and from Egypt and the significance of the Exodus to the Jews and others
- 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 THE GEOGRAPHIC, POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL STRUCTURES OF ANCIENT GREECE
- 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
- The transition from tyrrany 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)
- The key differences between Athenian, or direct, democracy and representative democracy
- 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
- The founding, expansion and political organization of the Persian Empire
- A comparison of life in Athens and Sparta, with emphasis on their roles in the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars
- The rise of Alexander the Great and the spread of Greek culture eastward and into Egypt
- The enduring contributions of improtant Greek figures in the arts and sciences (e.e., Hypatia, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Thucydides)
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