A Stu dent’s
Gui de to
Snaps hots of
Anci ent H istory
2nd Edition
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Map
Activities
Mandate of Heaven 2
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You have the Mandate of Heaven. 1 4
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You can now play Mandate of Heaven t
only cards.
Games
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Puzzles
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ing Page
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Colo and more!
by Vivian Meyers, M.A.
A Student’s Guide to
Snapshots of Ancient History
2nd Edition
by Vivian Meyers, M.A.
illustrated by Miguel Santos
Curiosity Chronicles
Curiosity Chronicles, an imprint of Drop Dead Studios LLC
Marysville, OH 43040
© 2024 Vivian Meyers
Contents
Chapter 1: History is Cool_________________________________________ 6
Chapter 2: Humans Start Hunting and Gathering_____________________ 10
Chapter 3: Mesopotamia Starts Farming_____________________________ 14
Fortune Teller Instructions______________________________________ 18
Fortune Teller Review 1-3_______________________________________ 19
Chapter 4: Egypt Gets United______________________________________ 21
Chapter 5: Sumer Starts Inventing__________________________________ 25
Chapter 6: The Indus valley Builds Cities____________________________ 30
Timeline Review 1-6___________________________________________ 34
Fortune Teller Review 4-6_______________________________________ 35
Chapter 7: Caral Plays Music_______________________________________ 37
Chapter 8: Egypt Prepares for the Afterlife___________________________ 41
Mummify an Apple Experiment__________________________________ 44
Hieroglyph Alphabet___________________________________________ 45
Chapter 9: Egypt Builds Pyramids__________________________________ 46
Fortune Teller Review 7-9_______________________________________ 49
Topic Review Chapter 1–9______________________________________ 51
Chapter 10: Britain Builds Megaliths________________________________ 52
Chapter 11: Yu Fights the River_____________________________________ 56
Evolution of Chinese Characters__________________________________ 60
Chapter 12: Austronesia sets Sail____________________________________ 61
Fortune Teller Review 10-12_____________________________________ 65
Chapter 13: Aboriginals Fish in Australia_____________________________ 67
Chapter 14: Babylon Makes Laws___________________________________ 71
Chapter 15: Hatshepsut Builds Wonders_____________________________ 75
Tracking Time with An Obelisk__________________________________ 79
Fortune Teller Review 13-15_____________________________________ 81
Timeline Review 1-15__________________________________________ 83
Chapter 16: King Tut Leaves a Mystery______________________________ 84
Chapter 17: India Writes the Vedas__________________________________ 89
Chapter 18: The Zhou Make a Mandate______________________________ 92
Topic Review Chapter 10-18_____________________________________ 96
Chinese Dragon Puppet Template_________________________________ 97
Fortune Teller Review 16-18_____________________________________ 125
Chapter 19: Assyria Makes War_____________________________________ 127
Cuneiform Counting___________________________________________ 131
Chapter 20: West Africans Forge Iron_______________________________ 132
Chapter 21: The Nok Make Pottery_________________________________ 136
Fortune Teller Review 19-21_____________________________________ 141
Chapter 22: The Greeks Sing of Heroes______________________________ 143
Chapter 23: The Olmec Play Ball____________________________________ 147
Chapter 24: Persia Builds an Empire________________________________ 151
Fortune Teller Review 22-24_____________________________________ 157
Timeline Review 1-24__________________________________________ 159
Chapter 25: Buddha Becomes Enlightened___________________________ 160
Chapter 26: China Debates Ideas___________________________________ 164
Chapter 27: The Greeks Fight Persia________________________________ 175
Fortune Teller Review 25-27_____________________________________ 179
Topic Review Chapter 19–27_____________________________________ 181
Chapter 28: Athens Invents Democracy______________________________ 182
Chapter 29: The Greeks Get Inventing______________________________ 185
The Greek Alphabet___________________________________________ 188
Archimedes Principle Simple Experiment __________________________ 189
Archimedes Principle Advanced Experiment________________________ 190
Chapter 30: Alexander Goes Conquering____________________________ 192
Fortune Teller Review 28-30_____________________________________ 197
Chapter 31: Ashoka Has A Change of Heart__________________________ 199
Chapter 32: Rome Starts With Blood________________________________ 203
Chapter 33: China is United________________________________________ 207
Fortune Teller Review 31-33_____________________________________ 211
Timeline Review 1-33__________________________________________ 213
Chapter 34: The Han Build An Empire______________________________ 214
Travel the Silk Road Game______________________________________ 219
Chapter 35: Caesar Takes Over______________________________________ 239
Number Like a Roman_________________________________________ 241
Chapter 36: Augustus Rules the Empire______________________________ 245
Write Like a Roman___________________________________________ 247
Fortune Teller Review 34-36_____________________________________ 251
Topic Review Chapter 28–36____________________________________ 253
Chapter 37: Rome Becomes Christian_______________________________ 254
Chapter 38: India Starts an Empire__________________________________ 258
Why Do We Even Need Place Value? ______________________________ 262
Chapter 39: The Hopewell Build Mounds____________________________ 263
Fortune Teller Review 37-39_____________________________________ 267
Chapter 40: The Nazca Draw Lines_________________________________ 269
Chapter 41: The Maya Chart the Sky________________________________ 273
Maya Math__________________________________________________ 277
Maya Calendar Day Signs______________________________________ 279
Maya Calendar Tones__________________________________________ 281
Chapter 42: Rome Falls Apart______________________________________ 283
Fortune Teller Review 40-42_____________________________________ 287
Topic Review Chapter 37–42____________________________________ 289
Timeline Review 1-42__________________________________________ 290
Chapter 1: History is Cool
Vocabulary
Match the following vocabulary words on the left to the correct definition on the right.
1. History A. A visual representation of time. Things that happened a
very long time ago are on the left-hand side, more recent
events are on the right-hand side.
2. Prehistory B. Anno Domini, means “Year of our Lord” in Latin. Used
to label dates for things that happened after the birth of
Jesus Christ in the Christian calendar system. AD dates
3. Timeline are the same as CE dates.
C. A person who studies history and prehistory by
excavating and examining artifacts and other physical
4. C.E.
remains of human life.
D. History that occurred before the invention of writing.
5. A.D. E. The study of events from the past; the study of human
events after the invention of writing.
F. Common Era. Used to label dates for things that have
6. B.C.E.
happened after our calendar system began.
G. Before Common Era. Used to label dates for things that
7. B.C. happened before our calendar system began. BCE dates
count backward from the beginning of our calendar
system.
8. Archaeologist H. A person who studies human history by studying written
sources and physical objects.
I. Before Christ. Used to label dates for things that
9. Historian
happened before the birth of Jesus Christ in the
Christian calendar system. BC dates are the same as
BCE dates.
Comprehension Questions
Answer the following questions either out loud with a partner or by writing your answers
here.
1. What is history?
6
2. What is prehistory?
3. How do dates on a timeline work?
What Do You Think Questions
Discuss the following questions with a partner. There are no right or wrong answers.
1. What are you most interested in learning about in history?
Timeline
• Mark today’s year on your timeline.
• Mark the year you were born.
• Mark the years your parents, grandparents, and siblings were born.
• Pick a few other events in history you know about to add to your timeline, like the
first man on the moon or when the light bulb was invented.
Map work
1. On your world map, label all seven continents.
2. Mark where you live in the world.
3. Locate and label the seven major areas of the world we will be studying this year:
Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Greece, Rome, Mesoamerica, and Andes.
Unscramble The Word
See if you can unscramble the letters below to reveal the hidden vocabulary words.
t i p s r r e h y o
m i e l i n t e
y t i s h o r
7
Archaeologist Dig
In the box below, draw where you discover different objects during your archaeology dig. At
the bottom of the page you can make notes about what you’ve found and what it means.
What did you find?
9
Chapter 2: Humans Start
Hunting and Gathering
Vocabulary
Match the following vocabulary words on the left to the correct definition on the right.
1. Dogs A. Mountain-sized pieces of ice that formed when
the earth’s temperature dropped during ice ages.
B. Paintings early humans made in caves showing
2. Hunters and gatherers
their creative skills and the beginnings of human
culture.
3. Glaciers C. A useful hunting companion for early humans.
D. Humans who find food by hunting animals
4. Cave paintings and gathering edible plants; they move around
depending on the season and available food.
E. An era of human history where the most
5. Stone Age advanced technology was stone tools.
Comprehension Questions
Answer the following questions either out loud with a partner or by writing your answers
here.
1. About how long have modern humans existed? A few hundred years? A few thousand?
Hundreds of thousands of years?
2. What was life like for early humans?
3. How did early humans get food?
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4. What continent did the first modern humans live on?
What Do You Think Questions
Discuss the following questions with a partner. There are no right or wrong answers.
1. Take a look at Ted’s Timeline. The red section is how long humans have been living in
cities. The red section is pretty short compared to the gray section. Before you saw
Ted’s Timeline how long would you have guessed humans had been living in cities?
Are you surprised by how short the red section is?
2. What do you think it would be like to be a nomad? Would you like living in a tent or
cave and traveling around a lot? Do you think it would be interesting to have to find
your own food?
Timeline
• Today’s history is so far back we can’t include it on our timeline without making it
SUPER long. Take a minute to study Ted’s Timeline and notice how long it took be-
fore humans left Africa or started building cities. That’s most of human history right
there!
Map work
1. Take a look at the map on page 14 of Snapshots of Ancient History. On your map, draw
arrows beginning in Africa to trace humankind’s movement around the world.
Word Search
s g s r o e f r e u
Fishing h x f l x i u g l d
Hunt u u e d n c a e h c
Ice Age h e n x r e l n d l
Stone Age n s i t n a w v u l
Africa l n y o n g p i t i
p y t x i e a x d g
g s b x s s h k i p
i w e f i s h i n g
j h e r a f r i c a
11
Chapter 3: Mesopotamia
Starts Farming
Vocabulary
Match the following vocabulary words on the left to the correct definition on the right.
1. Agriculture A. Different humans have different jobs and specialties such
as farming, fishing, herding, pottery making, or weaving.
2. Drought B. When an animal is tamed so that it can live peacefully
with humans.
3. Civilization C. Farming; Humans intentionally planting, tending, and
harvesting plants for food.
4. Surplus of food D. The process of humans controlling how river water
reaches their crops, such as by building ditches.
5. Division of labor E. A lack of rainfall for an extended period of time. Led to
decreased food supply in the ancient Middle East.
6. Domesticated F. An organized society that has 1) a surplus of food and 2)
a division of labor.
7. Fertile Crescent
G. A community has more food than is necessary to survive.
H. The food grown through agriculture.
8. Crops
I. The place where many early humans first found success
9. Silt in farming because the ground here was particularly
fertile and good for farming.
10. Irrigation J. Fine, rocky soil rich in minerals left behind by flooding
rivers.
Comprehension Questions
Answer the following questions either out loud with a partner or by writing your answers
here.
1. Why did humans invent agriculture?
2. What two things does it take to form a civilization?
3. What was the alternative to hunting that early city-dwellers developed?
14
What Do You Think Questions
Discuss the following questions with a partner. There are no right or wrong answers.
1. If you lived in ancient Mesopotamia, would you rather be a farmer or a herder? Why?
2. One of the things necessary for a civilization to form is a division of labor, that
means people had different jobs. What kinds of jobs do you think were the first to
develop? Why do you think those jobs were so important?
Timeline
• There’s no timeline events to add today because the development of agriculture hap-
pened really slowly across a long period of time.
Map work
1. On your map, color the area of the fertile crescent green.
2. Color the surrounding land yellow.
3. Color the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers blue and label them.
4. Draw an arrow pointing to Mesopotamia.
Note: The Fertile Crescent includes Mesopotamia and also stretches to into Africa
to include the area around the Nile. Mesopotamia refers specifically to the land
between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
Crossword Puzzle
Down 2
1. The food grown through agriculture.
4 3
2. A lack of rainfall for an extended period T
of time.
3. Fine, rocky soil rich in minerals left
o
behind by flooding rivers. 1
Across
4. The northeastern river that creates
Mesopotamia
r
5. The southwestern river that creates
Mesopotamia
5
E t
15
Map of the Fertile Crescent
Fortune Teller Instructions
1. Cut out the outside lines to make a 2. Fold so corners 1 and 4 touch and create a
square. 1 triangle.
2
3
1
4
3. Open. Fold so corners 2 and 3 touch 4. Open. Flip the Fortune Teller print side
and create a triangle. down.
5. Fold each corner into the center to 6. Flip over and fold each corner into the cen-
create a diamond. ter again to create a square.
1
2
7. Fold in half in both directions. 8. Open the four corners to create tabs.
1 1 3
2
18
Fortune Teller Review 1-3
1. To make your Fortune Teller, see 3. Open and close the Fortune Teller the
instruction on page 18. chosen number of time.
2. To use your Fortune Teller, choose a 4. Select one of the four exposed options.
number between 1 and 10. 5. Answer revealed question.
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19