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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.
- Describe the hunter-gatherer societies, including the development
of tools and the use of fire.
- Identify the locations of human communities that populated
the major regions of the world and describe how humans adapted
to a variety of environments.
- 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.
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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