Virtual Museum: Early River Valley Civilizations

Note to Students

These Virtual Museum Project webpages have all the instructions and information you will need to complete this Product Assignment to mastery level.  Please read each page carefully, and refer back to them as often as needed as you progress through each phase of the project.  I think you will enjoy the project and will be proud of your end product.

This page has information about your task (what it is you have been assigned to do), a brief introduction to the project, and some background information that will be helpful to set the stage for the early river valley civilizations that are the topic of this project.

Task

The Ann Arbor community knows all about the technology and history and geography skills of Skyline students, and they need your services.  You have been hired by the Ann Arbor History Museum to design a virtual museum exhibit.  They want to educate their visitors about the history of civilization, and more specifically about the development and organization of early river valley civilizations.

Introduction

During this Research and PowerPoint Project, you will answer questions that will require you to research and explain the basic features and differences between hunter-gatherer societies, pastoral nomads, civilizations, and empires, focusing upon the differences in their political, economic and social systems, and their changing interactions with the environment.  You will report specific factual information, compare and contrast civilizations, recognize effects of historical events, synthesize information from different civilizations, form and support opinions about the achievements of the civilizations, and draw conclusions based on historical evidence.

Background Information

Between 10,000 BCE and 1000 BCE an abrupt change occurred in the way many humans solved their most basic needs. No longer did all humans hunt and gather to support themselves. As a result of collective learning and generations of humans passing on knowledge, changes in the way people lived resulted in the advent of farming, and the period we know as the Neolithic Revolution, or the Agricultural Revolution.

In 10,000 BCE there were no agrarian communities, no crop surpluses, no cities, no governments, no law codes, no monumental buildings, no written languages, no job specializations. By 1,000 BCE, all of these things existed on all of the continents except for Australia and Antarctica. In addition, population increased dramatically during those 9,000 years, resulting in the spread of humans to new areas of the world and also in a rise in density of population in certain areas. Ultimately, this growth led to increasingly complex levels of human social organization and the appearance of what we call civilizations.

In 1000 BCE, only a minority of humans lived in cities. However, the spread of urban culture and the networks of exchange they spawned affected humans over wide areas. The world in 1000 BCE was a very different place from the world of 10,000 BCE.

*If you do not have Internet access outside of school, please download and print the PDF version of this project.