Stages 2 · 3 · 4
History
Time has length, and we know the past from evidence.
Seeds
HIS-1
Time has length
HIS-2
How do we know about the past?
HIS-3
Things happen for many reasons
HIS-4
How did people see it then?
Stages
2
Models and Patterns
How far away is the past?
- How long ago is long ago? Time has length: written history is a thin slice, and civilisations overlapped in surprising ways — Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid. Try it
- Meanwhile, somewhere else… Civilisations did not take turns: around 500 BCE Confucius in China, the Buddha in India and the citizens of Athens were alive in the same few generations. Try it
- Why was writing invented? The earliest clay tablets from Mesopotamia mostly record goods, rations and accounts — writing began as a tool for keeping track, not for telling stories. Try it
- Dig down, go back in time Layers of soil pile up over time, so deeper usually means older — but a pit dug from above can carry newer things down, and a layer can be no older than the newest object in it. Try it
- Whose year is it? A year number is only a count from a chosen starting point: BCE/CE counts from one fixed year with no year 0, the 干支 cycle repeats every 60 years, and regnal years restart with each ruler — to convert you need an anchor that links them. Try it
3
Structure and Evidence
Why should we believe this happened?
- How old is it? Tree rings and radiocarbon Carbon-14 in once-living things halves about every 5,730 years, so what is left works like a clock; tree rings, counted year by year, check and calibrate that clock. Try it
- Which source would you trust? Every source was made by someone, at some time, for some purpose; asking who, when and why tells you what the source can and cannot show. Try it
- What travelled the Silk Roads? The Silk Roads were a web of routes; goods, ideas, religions and inventions passed hand to hand through chains of traders, and few people travelled the whole way. Try it
- Where did your dinner come from? Many ‘traditional’ foods depend on crops that crossed the oceans between the Americas and the rest of the world only after 1492: chilli, potato, tomato, maize and sweet potato came from the Americas, while wheat, rice, sugar cane, cattle and horses went the other way. Try it
- Two people saw it — and told it differently Each eyewitness saw from one place, at one moment, with their own concerns, so honest witnesses can disagree; the parts that independent accounts share are the firmest evidence. Try it
4
Systems and Argument
Why did it happen this way, and how else could it have gone?
- Why did printing spread so fast? Big changes rarely have one cause: long-term conditions, a trigger and people's choices work together, and taking one away changes the outcome. Try it
- What changed, and what stayed the same? Different parts of life change at different speeds: how fast people could travel or how they lit their homes changed within a few generations, while staple foods, languages and family customs often lasted for centuries. Try it
Ideas we expect to meet
- Everything ‘ancient’ happened at about the same time — the past is one big ‘long ago’.
- If an old book or inscription says it, it must be true.
- Every event has one single cause.
- People in the past were less clever than us.