Lesson · Grade 7 · Social Studies
How Ideas Spread Between Civilizations
- Grade 7
- Social Studies
- 1 min 6 s
- British Columbia
- BC7-SS-20
On one map of the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East, the video shows that ideas often spread when people met through trade, travel and conquest. It follows two examples: Sumerian cuneiform borrowed by the Assyrians and Hittites for their own languages, and Roman gods matched with Greek gods, ending on how each people changed what it borrowed.
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In one sentence
The question this lesson answers
How did ideas travel from one civilization to another?
Ideas often spread when people met through trade, travel and conquest.
Transcript
What the lesson says
How did ideas travel from one civilization to another?
Ideas often spread when people met through trade, travel and conquest.
The Sumerians made some of the earliest writing, about 3200 BCE.
They pressed wedge-shaped signs into clay, and this writing is called cuneiform.
Later, other peoples, like the Assyrians and the Hittites, borrowed cuneiform.
They used its wedge signs to write their own languages.
Much later, the Romans met the Greeks through trade and conquest.
The Romans matched their own gods with Greek gods.
Jupiter was matched with Zeus, Mars with Ares, and Venus with Aphrodite.
The Romans also borrowed many Greek stories about these gods.
In both examples, people changed what they borrowed to fit their own culture.
When civilizations meet, ideas can spread, and people change them to fit their own culture.
Curriculum
Where this fits
- British Columbia, Grade 7
Social Studies, Ancient world to the 7th century: interactions and exchanges between past civilizations and culturesBC7-SS-20
Previous: The Silk Road: How Goods and Ideas TravelledNext: The Code of Hammurabi: Laws Carved in Stone
The outcomes and strands follow the British Columbia curriculum.
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