What is 'The Ancient World'?
Enquiry: Where would you have PREFERRED to have lives in the Ancient World?
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Key HISTORICAL Concepts
This unit of study will help you practice a number of key historical concepts and will enhance your critical thinking skills through a series of tasks. The Ancient World unit of study will focus specifically on;
- Change and Continuity
- Perspectives
Change and continuity
Students sometimes misunderstand history as a list of events. Once they start to understand history as a complex mix of continuity and change, they reach a fundamentally different sense of the past.
There were lots of things going on at any one time in the past. Some changed rapidly while others remained relatively continuous.
One of the keys to continuity and change is looking for change where common sense suggests that there has been none and looking for continuities where we assumed that there was change. Judgments of continuity and change can be made on the basis of comparisons between some point in the past and the present, or between two points in the past. We evaluate change over time using the ideas of progress and decline.
There were lots of things going on at any one time in the past. Some changed rapidly while others remained relatively continuous.
One of the keys to continuity and change is looking for change where common sense suggests that there has been none and looking for continuities where we assumed that there was change. Judgments of continuity and change can be made on the basis of comparisons between some point in the past and the present, or between two points in the past. We evaluate change over time using the ideas of progress and decline.
Assessing change and continuity
perspectives
Students should be aware of how history is sometimes used or abused to retell and promote a grand narrative of history, a narrowly focused national mythology that ignores other perspectives, or to elevate a single perspective to a position of predominance. Students are encouraged to challenge and critique multiple perspectives of the past, and to compare them and corroborate them with historical evidence. Students should recognize that for every event recorded in the past, there may be multiple contrasting or differing perspectives. Using primary-source accounts and historians’ interpretations, students may also investigate and compare how people, including specific groups such as minorities or women, may have experienced events differently in the past. In this way, there are particularly strong links between exploring multiple perspectives and the development of international-mindedness.
The Ancient world - change and continuity
CHange and continuity task - seek and discover
Study the image of an Iron Age Village in England (AD40) below.
Using the key factor icons (above) discuss what you can see and what you can learn about life in an Iron Age Village. Record your ideas on this activity sheet.
Using the key factor icons (above) discuss what you can see and what you can learn about life in an Iron Age Village. Record your ideas on this activity sheet.
Now look at a different image of a Roman Village in England from AD250.
Spend time looking for change and continuity and record your observations on your activity sheet.
Spend time looking for change and continuity and record your observations on your activity sheet.
Measuring change and continuity
As historians we must seek to identify and explain Change and Continuity.
We should look to analyse;
We should look to analyse;
- The speed, pace and rate of change
- The nature or type of change
- The degree or extent of change – is there more change than continuity?
Challenge Time
Using your notes and the literacy support sheet below select one factor and explain the change and continuity that occurred between AD40 and AD250.
There was very little change in XXX(FACTOR)XXX between AD40 and AD250.
How far is this statement true?
How far is this statement true?
Learning outcomes
•Change is a process that never ends
•Continuity and change pervades all aspects of life
•Change can occur at different rates
•Change can be both positive and negative
•Times at which significant and dramatic changes occur are considered turning points
•Judging the importance of changes and constants helps us to understand our place in history
•The old expression, “the more things change, the more they remain the same,” is only partly true; while things have changed in certain respects, they have also remained constant. When considering continuity and change, we ask, How are lives and conditions alike over time and how have they changed?
•Continuity and change pervades all aspects of life
•Change can occur at different rates
•Change can be both positive and negative
•Times at which significant and dramatic changes occur are considered turning points
•Judging the importance of changes and constants helps us to understand our place in history
•The old expression, “the more things change, the more they remain the same,” is only partly true; while things have changed in certain respects, they have also remained constant. When considering continuity and change, we ask, How are lives and conditions alike over time and how have they changed?