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BLOOM PUBLIC SCHOOL
Vasant Kunj, New Delhi
Lesson plan 2017-18
Subject History
Class XI C
Month April-May
Chapter-2
Writing and City Life
TTT- 5 Prds
Chapter 2
Learning Objectives
Resources
Activities
Class Work Written
No of Periods:9
WT: 4 Prds
Writing and City Life
Mesopotamia and its geography
1. The significance of urbanization
2. Movement of goods into cities
3. The development of Writing
4. The system of writing
5. Literacy
6. The uses of writing
7. Urbanization in the Southern Mesopotamia: Temple and
Kings
8. Life in the city
9. A Trading town in a pastoral zone
10. Cities in Mesopotamian culture
11. Legacy of writing
Familiarise the learner with the nature of early urban
centres.
Discuss whether writing is a significant marker of
civilization.
NCERT Text Book
Extra marks smart class, Mind Map, SLM.
Topic wise question and Answer
Internet research/Videos and images from the internet.
1. What are the different Names used for the Mesopotamian
civilization?
2. What are the features of Mesopotamian civilization?
3. What are the different Sources to understand
Mesopotamian Civilization?
4. What is the significance of Urbanism in Mesopotamia?
5. Explain the Development and system of Writing in
Mesopotamia.
6. How did people construct and maintain temples in
Mesopotamia?
7. “Mari is a good example of an urban centre prospering on
trade.” Explain.
Home Work
Assessment
Period wise plan
Period 1
1. How did a pastoral zone become a Trading Town in the
northern part of Mesopotamia?
2. Explain the Legacy of Writing (Science and Technology)
in Mesopotamia
Class Test
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Period 2-3
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Different Names used for the same civilization
Mesopotamian civilisation - The name Mesopotamia is
derived from the Greek words mesos, meaning middle,
and potamos, meaning river. Mesopotamia means the land
between the (Euphrates and the Tigris) rivers.
Sumerian Civilisation- The first known language of
Mesopotamia was Sumerian. That is why this civilization
is otherwise called as Sumerian Civilisation
Babylonian Civilisation- After 2000 BCE, when Babylon
became an important city of this civilization it is called as
Babylonian Civilisation.
Akkadian Civilisation -Around 2400 BCE when Akkadian
speakers arrived and established their rule in southern part
of Mesopotamia it was called as Akkadian civilisation.
Assyrians Civilisation - when Assyrians speakers arrived
and established their rule in southern part of Mesopotamia
it was called as Assyrians civilisation
Features of Mesopotamian civilisation
Mesopotamian civilisation is known for its prosperity, city
life, voluminous and rich literature, its mathematics and
astronomy.
Mesopotamia’s writing system and literature spread to the
eastern Mediterranean, northern Syria, and Turkey.
Sources to understand Mesopotamian civilization
We study hundreds of Mesopotamian buildings, statues,
ornaments, graves, tools and seals as sources.
There are thousands of written documents as well to study
Mesopotamian Civilisation.
Pg.29-30
Mesopotamia and its Geography
Mesopotamia is a land of diverse environments.
In the north, there is a stretch of upland called a steppe,
where animal herding offers people a better livelihood
than agriculture – after the winter rains, sheep and goats
feed on the grasses and low shrubs that grow here.
In the east, tributaries of the Tigris provide routes of
communication into the mountains of Iran.
The south is a desert – and this is where the first cities and
writing emerged. This desert could support cities because
the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, which rise in the northern
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Period 4
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Period 5
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mountains, carry loads of silt.
The Significance of Urbanism in Mesopotamia
Urban centres involve in various economic activities such
as food production, trade, manufactures and services.
City people, thus, cease to be self-sufficient and depend on
the products or services of other people.
There is continuous interaction among them.
There must be a social organization in Cities.
Thus, organized trade, storage, deliveries of grain and
other food items from the village to the city were
controlled and supervised by the rulers.
Movement of Goods into Cities and communication
Mesopotamians could have traded their abundant textiles
and agricultural produce for wood, copper, tin, silver, gold,
shell and various stones from Turkey and Iran, or across
the Gulf.
Regular exchange was possible only when there was a
social organization to equip foreign expeditions and
exchanges of goods.
The canals and natural channels of ancient Mesopotamia
were in fact routes of goods transport between large and
small settlements.
Pg.30-33
The Development of Writing in Mesopotamia
The first Mesopotamian tablets were written around 3200
BCE, which contained picture-like signs and numbers.
These were about 5,000 lists of oxen, fish, bread loaves,
etc. – lists of goods that were brought into or distributed
from the temples of Uruk.
Mesopotamians wrote on tablets of clay. A scribe would
wet clay and pat it into a size he could hold comfortably in
one hand. He would carefully smoothen its surface. With
the sharp end of a reed, he would press wedge-shaped
(cuneiform) signs on to the smoothened surface while it
was still moist.
Once dried in the sun, the clay tablet would harden and
tablets would be almost as indestructible as pottery.
By 2600 BCE, the letters became cuneiform, and the
language was Sumerian.
Sumerian, the earliest known language of Mesopotamia,
was gradually replaced after2400 BCE by the Acadian
language.
Pg.3334
The System of Writing in cuneiform
Cuneiform sign did not represent a single consonant or
vowel but syllable.
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Thus, the signs that a Mesopotamian scribe had to learn
ran into hundreds.
Writing was a skilled craft but, more important, it was an
enormous intellectual achievement, conveying in visual
form the system of sounds of a particular language.
Literacy in Mesopotamia
Very few Mesopotamians could read and write. Not only
there were hundreds of signs to learn but many of these
were complex.
Pg.34-35
Construction and maintenance of temples in
Mesopotamia
As the archaeological record shows, villages were periodically
relocated in Mesopotamian history because of flood in the river
and change in the course of the river.
When there was continuous warfare in a region, those chiefs
who had been successful in war could oblige their followers by
distributing the loot, and could take prisoners from the defeated
groups to employ in the temple for various works.
In time, victorious chiefs began to offer precious booty tothe
gods and thus beautify the community’s temples.
War captives and local people were put to work for the temple,
or directly for the ruler.
With rulers commanding people to fetch stones or metal ores,
to come and make bricks or lay the bricks for a temple, or else
to go to a distant country to fetch suitable materials.
Pg.36-
38
Life in the City of Ur
Period 6
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Period 7
In Mesopotamian society the nuclear family was the norm,
although a married son and his family often resided with his
parents. The father was the head of the family.
Narrow winding streets indicate that wheeled carts could not
have reached many of the houses.
There were no street drains of the kind we find in
contemporary Mohenjodaro. Drains and clay pipes were instead
found in the inner courtyards of the Ur houses and it is thought
that house roofs sloped inwards and rainwater was channeled
via the drainpipes into sumps in the inner courtyards.
There were superstitions about houses, recorded in omen tablets
at Ur.
Pg.39-40
A Trading Town in a Pastoral Zone ( Life in the city of
Mari)
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After 2000 BCE the royal capital of Mari flourished. Mari stands
not on the southern plain with its highly productive
agriculture but much further upstream on the Euphrates.
Such groups would come in as herders, harvest labourersor
hired soldiers, occasionally become prosperous, and settle
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down.
A few gained the power to establish their own rule. These
included.
Located on the Euphrates in a prime position for trade – in
wood, copper, tin, oil, wine, and various other goods that were
carried in boats along the Euphrates – between the south and the
mineral rich uplands of Turkey, Syria and Lebanon.
Boats carrying grinding stones, wood, and wine and oil jars,
would stop at Mari on their wayt o the southern cities.
Officers of this town would go aboard, inspect the cargo and
levy a charge of about one-tenth the value of the goods before
allowing the boat to continue downstream.
Thus, although the kingdom of Mari was not militarily strong,
but it was exceptionally prosperous.
Pg.41-44
Period 8
The Legacy of Writing (Science and Technology) in
Mesopotamia
• The greatest legacy of Mesopotamia to the world is its
scholarly tradition of time reckoning and mathematics.
• Dating around 1800 BCE are tablets with multiplication
and division tables, square- and square-root tables, and
tables of compound interest.
• The division of the year into 12 months according to the
revolution of the moon around the earth, the division of the
month into four weeks, the day into 24 hours, and the hour
into 60 minutes.
• Solar and lunar eclipses were observed.
Pg. 4546
Map Work/ Extra Marks SLM/QA
Period 9
Class Test
Bloom Public School
Vasant Kunj, New Delhi
Lesson plan 2017- 18
Subject History
Class XI C
Month - May
Chapter-3
An Empire Across Three Continents
TTT- 6 Prds
WT: 3 Prds
Chapter 3
Learning Objectives
Resources
Activity
Class Work
No of Periods: 9
An Empire Across Three Continents
1. Early Empire
2. The Third Century Crisis
3. Gender, Literacy, Culture
4. Economic Expansion
5. Controlling Workers
6. Social Hierarchies
7. Late Antiquity
Familiarize the learner with the history of a major world empire.
Discuss whether slavery was a significant element in the economy.
NCERT Text Book
Extra marks smart class, Mind Map, SLM.
Topic wise question and Answer
Internet research/Videos and images from the internet
Map Work
1. Contrast and compare the Iranian Empire with that of the Romans.
(Prd2)
2. Explain the impact of the crisis of the third Century on the Early
Roman Empire.
(Prd2)
3. Who were the three main players in the political history of Roman
Empire?
4. What was the status of women in the Roman Empire?
(Prd3)
5. What economic activities were carried out during the Roman
Empire? (Prd4)
6. How were the workers controlled in the Roman Empire?
(Prd5)
7. Describe the social hierarchy in the Roman Empire.
(Prd6)
8. What were some of the changes in the late Antiquity period?
(Prd7)
Home Work
Assessment
Day wise plan
Period 1&2
Period 3
1. Name two types of containers used in Roman Empire? What were
they used for? Name the places of their origin?
2. Explain how Romans were able to control and administer such a
vast empire?
Class Test
Two powerful empires ruled over most of Europe, North Africa and
the Middle East in the period between the birth of Christ and the early
part of the seventh century, say, down to the 630s. The two empires
were those of Rome and Iran. The Romans and Iranians were rivals
and fought against each other for much of their history.
The Early Empire
• The whole period down to the main part of the third century can be
called the ‘early empire’, and the period after that the ‘late empire’.
• The regime established by Augustus, the first emperor, in 27 BCE
was called the ‘Principate’.
• The emperor, the aristocracy and the army were the three main
players in the political history of the empire.
• In the late first, second and early third centuries the army and
administration were increasingly drawn from the provinces.
Pg.58-64
The Third-Century Crisis
• From the 230s, the empire was fighting on several fronts
simultaneously. In Iran a new and more aggressive dynasty
emerged in 225 called the ‘Sasanians’
• Germanic tribes (most notably, the Alamanni, the Franks and the
Goths began to move against the Rhine and Danube frontiers.
Gender, Literacy, Culture
• Adult sons did not live with their families, and it was exceptional
for adult brothers to share a common household. On the other
hand, slaves were included in the family.
• Roman women enjoyed considerable legal rights in owning and
managing property. In other words, in law the married couple was
not one financial entity but two, and the wife enjoyed complete
legal independence.
• Divorce was relatively easy and needed no more than a notice of
intent to dissolve the marriage by either husband or wife.
• On the other hand, whereas males married in their late twenties or
early thirties, women were married off in the late teens or early
twenties, so there was an age gap between husband and wife and
this would have encouraged a certain inequality.
• Marriages were generally arranged, and there is no doubt that
women were often subject to domination by their husbands.
Period 4
Period 5
Pg.64-66
Economic Expansion
• The empire had a substantial economic infrastructure of harbours,
mines, quarries, brickyards, olive oil factories, etc. Wheat, wine
and olive-oil were traded and consumed in huge quantities.
• Spanish olive oil, to take just one example, was a vast commercial
enterprise that reached its peak in the years 140-160.The Spanish
olive oil of this period was mainly carried in a container called
‘Dressel 20.
• The success of the Spanish olive growers was then repeated by
North African producers – olive estates in this part of the empire
dominated production through most of the third and fourth
centuries.
• Later, after 425, North African dominance was broken by the East:
in the later fifth and sixth centuries the Aegean, southern Asia
Minor (Turkey), Syria and Palestine became major exporters of
wine and olive oil.
Pg.66-67
Controlling Workers
• The Roman agricultural writers paid a great deal of attention to the
management of labour.
• Columella, a first-century writer who came from the south of
Spain, recommended that landowners should keep a reserve stock
of implements and tools, twice as many as they needed, so that
production could be continuous, ‘for the loss in slave labour-time
exceeds the cost of such items.
• To make supervision easier, workers were sometimes grouped into
gangs or smaller teams. Columella recommended squads of ten,
claiming it was easier to tell who was putting in effort and who
was not in work groups of this size.
• A law of 398 referred to workers being branded so they could be
recognised if and when they run away and try to hide.
• Many private employers cast their agreements with workers in the
form of debt contracts to be able to claim that their employees
were in debt to them and thus ensure tighter control over them.
Pg.68-70
Period 6
Social Hierarchies
• Tacitus described the leading social groups of the early empire as
follows: senators; leading members of the equestrian class; the
respectable section of the people, those attached to the great
houses; the unkempt lower class who, he tells us, were addicted to
the circus and theatrical displays; and finally the slaves.
• By the late empire, which starts with the reign of Constantine I in
the early part of the fourth century, the first two groups mentioned
by Tacitus had merged into a unified and expanded aristocracy,
and at least half of all families were of African or eastern origin.
• The ‘middle’ class now consisted of the considerable mass of
persons connected with imperial service in the bureaucracy and
army but also the more prosperous merchants and farmers of
whom there were many in the eastern provinces.
• Below them were the vast mass of the lower classes known
collectively as humiliores
Pg.7071
Period 7
Late Antiquity
• Late antiquity is the final, fascinating period in the evolution and
break-up of the Roman Empire.
• At the cultural level, the period saw momentous developments in
religious life, with the emperor Constantine deciding to make
Christianity the official religion, and the rise of Islam in the
seventh century.
• Important changes in the structure of the state that began with the
emperor Diocletian (284-305)
• Overexpansion had led Diocletian to ‘cut back’ by abandoning
territories with little strategic or economic value.
• Diocletian also fortified the frontiers, reorganized provincial
boundaries, and separated civilian from military functions,
granting greater autonomy to the military commanders (duces),
who now became a more powerful group
• Constantine consolidated some of these changes and added others
of his own. His chief innovations were in the monetary sphere,
where he introduced a new denomination, the solidus, a coin of 4½
gm of pure gold that would in fact outlast the Roman Empire itself.
• The other area of innovation was the creation of a second capital at
Constantinople
Period 8
Period 9
Pg.71-74
Map Work/ Extra Marks SLM
Class Test