| Millennia
Spring Generations Seasons Clocks Month Beginning Year Second Epochs Term Old Schedule New year Moon Sunrise Timeline |
Day
Minute Eras Old age Summer Infancy Calendars Death Atomic clocks Date Synchronize Vacation Time table Lifetime Week Harvest Eternity |
Birthday
Holiday History Celebrations Eons Young Infinity Winter Decades Centuries Generation Traditional Birth Beginning Long time Spring planting New moon |
| Destruction of Babylon
Hitler Parthenon Alexander the Great Jesus Christ Alexander Graham Bell Barbarian invasions Oliver Cromwell Napoleon The Hundred Years' War Incas Charles I Thirteen Colonies First known form of writing American Civil War Thomas Edison Invention of the compass The Great Plague Lenin Great Wall of China Henry VIII Mao Zedong William the Conqueror |
Suez Canal
Magna Carta Julius Caesar Gun powder Spartans Neil Armstrong Aztecs Cave paintings at Lascaux/Altamira Augustus Development of railroads Mohammed Vietnam Gutenberg Battle of Waterloo Aboriginal Peoples of the Americas Galileo United Nations Luther Bismark Suffragettes Industrial Revolution |
Pyramids
Moses Marconi Crusades Hiroshima Stonehenge Roman Empire Marco Polo Founding of Rome Joan of Arc Lincoln Beginning of agriculture Columbus Invention of the automobile Hammurabi Pearl Harbour Last ice age Confucius Mayan Empire World War I John A. Macdonald Wright Brothers The Great Depression |
Bonus Figures and Events
The list below contains important figures and events about which little is known. If you can identify information about any of these, collect double your points.
| Invention of the horse collar
Homo erectus Invention of paper Pericles |
First known hunter-gatherer settlement in North
America
Discovery of magnetism Abigail Adams |
Invention of the foot stirrup
Invention of movable print Farming villages established in Egypt |
Using the criteria you have developed in class, decide which are the five most important figures and/or events on Student Handout #2.
You will get points by being able to provide information about the five figures/events that you have selected.
The more distant in the past, the more points you receive.
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You may add historical events or figures to this list provided they meet the criteria you have established for an historic event/person to be considered important.
Playing the Game
Sit in groups in a circle and the teacher will choose a figure/event, then ask the first group whether they have information about the figure/event.
· If that group can correctly place the figure or event in time, the members may place the figure/event on the classroom timeline and earn points.
· If they are incorrect, or have not gathered information, the next group has a chance at dating the figure/event and earning the points.
· This will continue until a group either provides the information or each group has had a chance. The teacher then places the figure/event on the classroom timeline and earns the points.
· When a group correctly dates the figure/event, it continues answering questions and earning points until it is "stumped" and another group, in turn, takes over.
There will be a time limit for the game and for the answers.
Energy and the Environment
The desire for a vast amount of energy, and the search that resulted from this desire, created an environmental problem during the 20th century. The growth of industry and manufacturing in the western world, as well as the electrified house and the private automobile, led to a much greater demand for energy which, in turn, led to the development of nuclear power plants and to the construction of many huge hydroelectric dams.
This was necessary because people in the industrialized world seemed to have an endless appetite for energy. They demanded more and more goods and ever higher living standards. Everyone wanted more and wanted it bigger and better. This worldview helped to push countless technological developments. It is hard to believe that things which are commonplace today (e.g., televisions, computers, jet travel, robots, space missions, antibiotics) were beyond the wildest dreams of people just one hundred years ago or even less. But these things have come about as a direct result of the worldview of industrialized societies.
In the 1950s, some individuals and groups began to suggest that all of this demand for energy was damaging the environment. They argued that nuclear power plants, coal burning and oil burning plants, hydroelectric dams and automobiles were seriously harming the environment. Concern for the environment gradually grew, but it was not until the mid to late 1980s that a large number of people became concerned about the environment. The worldview of industrialized societies appears to be slowly changing. This gradual change is occurring because people have begun to see the consequences of the technology that they demanded. So, just as the worldview of industrialized society affected the technology that has developed, so the technology is now affecting society's worldview.
Cultures differ in the way that they view both the past and the future. For example, many cultures in the Middle East have existed for thousands of years. The people of Iran have a cultural history going back to the days of the Persian Empire, some 2,500 years ago. Contemporary Iranians develop a sense of history that is both deep and proud. Other Middle Eastern people have a similar sense of the past.
This sense of the past is seen in the way that people from the Middle East approach everyday life. History is used as a basis for many modern actions. Decisions made at both the government and the family level are often heavily influenced by historical situations.
In comparison to ancient cultures, North American culture is extremely young. This may be one of the reasons why most North Americans do not have the same sense of the past as do people in the Middle East.
North Americans are oriented almost entirely toward the future. They plan what they are going to do tomorrow, next week and next year. But their view of the future is limited to the foreseeable future-five, ten, or perhaps 20 years ahead. This relatively short view of the future often prevents the development of useful projects such as a 50 or 100-year project to clean up the environment. In contrast, many cultures in Asia have a view of the future that extends thousands of years ahead. They often have goals for their country or family that they do not expect will be accomplished for several generations.
As a rule, North Americans think of time as a road or ribbon stretching into the future. The road has compartments that are kept separate and cannot be changed easily. They allocate one compartment (that is, a certain amount of time) to each activity. Perhaps the best example of this view of time is the high school schedule. The day is divided up into rigidly scheduled periods with one subject assigned to each period. The length of the period is not usually changed even if students finish their work or if the teacher has more material to cover than the time allotted permits.
Other cultures do not have such a rigid, compartmentalized view of time. People in the Middle East may have a schedule, but they can easily shift it if an activity takes less or more time than anticipated. Life is organized according to the rhythm of work and leisure rather than according to fixed compartments of time.
In North America there are unspoken rules concerning appointments. People are expected to be on time. If people want to show respect or if a meeting is very important they usually arrive five or ten minutes early. If they are a few minutes late it usually does not matter. If someone is more than five or ten minutes late an apology is usually expected. If a person is half an hour late, a more lengthy explanation and apology is expected. To be an hour late is insulting and requires a very good reason.
This is not the case in many countries. In much of Latin America, being an hour late is no more serious than being five minutes late in Canada. It is not unusual for people to arrive later in the day for appointments or meetings. This differing perspective often creates problems when North Americans travel in Latin America.
The way that different cultures use time during business transactions also varies. In Japan, business people typically spend a great deal of time getting to know each other before they actually discuss the business at hand. They may have several meetings where business is not discussed at all. Discussion of business matters begins only after the people involved have established a personal relationship.
This is not the case in North America where business transactions are accomplished as quickly as possible. Business people pride themselves on coming to the point in meetings and in not wasting time on what they consider "trivial" conversation.
One day a North American enters the shop and begins to discuss the purchase of a large quantity of paper. The North American immediately begins to talk about delivery dates and discounts for quantity purchases. Mohammed considers this client and sale important so he asks his assistant to make tea and to set out pastries in the office behind the shop. Mohammed invites the client into his office for tea and courteously inquires about the client's health and family.
The client drinks his tea quickly, refuses a pastry and continues to talk about delivery dates, quantities of merchandise and other business concerns. He ignores Mohammed's personal questions. Mohammed concludes that this person is not really a serious customer and responds very vaguely to his questions about the business transaction. What is the problem here?
A few days before the opening of the clinic they invite all of the people who live in the area to visit the clinic. The staff explains the services offered by the clinic and urges everyone to make appointments. Many people do make appointments; however, on the day the clinic opens, nobody shows up. Two hours pass and no patients arrive even though several appointments were booked. The medical staff is very concerned. They do not understand why people are not keeping their appointments. What is the problem here?
Mr. Garcia as soon as possible. In this country it is customary for new diplomats to spend four or five weeks settling in and getting to know people in the community before they begin making official calls, so Mr. Garcia's secretary says that he will be glad to meet with Mrs. Dubois in a few weeks. However, Mrs. Dubois' secretary keeps phoning every day asking for an immediate appointment. Finally, Mr. Garcia agrees to see Mrs. Dubois at 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday of the next week.
On Tuesday, Mrs. Dubois arrives at five minutes to two with an assistant. The assistant tells Mr. Garcia's secretary who they are and then she and Mrs. Dubois sit down in the waiting room. At ten minutes after two the assistant asks the secretary if Mr. Garcia knows they are there. At 2:30 the assistant asks the secretary exactly when Mrs. Dubois will be able to see Mr. Garcia. At 2:45 the assistant tells the secretary that the ambassador has been waiting for 45 minutes and that she is sick and tired of being treated in such an insulting way.
Mrs. Dubois and her assistant then storm out of the office.
When Mr. Garcia's secretary tells him what happened, he says that he cannot believe that people would act in such a rude way. What is the problem here? Why do both Mr. Garcia and Mrs. Dubois believe the other is behaving rudely?
