Boxi Learn › History › Stage 2 · Models and Patterns
How long ago is long ago?
HIS-1 Time has lengthHIS-2 How do we know about the past?X-1 Guess, then check
What many people think
‘Ancient’ events all happened around the same time; the past is one undifferentiated ‘long ago’.
The idea
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.
Explain it
Explain to a friend how one ‘ancient’ person can be closer in time to us than to another ‘ancient’ person. Use the numbers from the timeline.
Try at home
Make a timeline from a long strip of paper: 1 cm for every 100 years. Mark your own birth, a grandparent's birth and three events from this page. How long must the strip be to reach the Great Pyramid?