Social Studies Projects Guidelines

• One  full page of text, typed, double-spaced (5 points off for violation)
• No more than 2 pages total – one page text and one page of images/references (5 points off for violation)
• Size 12 font, Ariel only, for the text and the title (3 points off for violation)
• At least 3 images, with captions and relevant to and revealing about the topic of your paper (5 points off per violation)
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• No title page, no big, fancy titles (3 points off)
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• Grammar, spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and sentence structure edited (1 point off for each violation)
• Ten separate facts (2 points for each violation = 20 points total), no repetitions or restating of the same fact(s)
• All ten facts numbered and clearly stated (no vague generalities, no contradictory or logically opposite statements) (5 points off for violation)
• No more than 3 facts from the textbook (or repeating something in the textbook)
• All ten facts explained (their meaning and/or importance described) in short paragraphs (2 points for each violation = 20 points total)
• At least six of the ten facts must be significant (made a difference, have or had impact) in some way (2 points for each violation)
• No quotations longer than 1 sentence or 2 lines (3 points off for each violation) 
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• No using terms, words, names, or phrases that you don’t understand or don’t know the meaning of or can’t explain (3 points for each violation)

                      Final Exam Study Guide

     Chapter 13.1, “The Aegean World,” pages 358-362

1. Define: peninsula, mainland, isthmus.

2. Geography of Greece.

-       Greece is bordered by the Aegean Sea to the east, Ionian Sea to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south

3. Minoan civilization.

-       It developed on the island of Crete

-       It is the first European civilization

-       Minoans did not speak Greek but they influenced the culture and legends of ancient Greece

Chapter 13.2, “The Rise of City-States,” pages 363-368

1. Define or identify: monarchy, Agamemnon, Homer, politics, acropolis, aristocrat.

2. Early history of Greece.

-       Greek speaking peoples migrated into the Greek peninsula about 2000 BC

3. Mycenaeans.

-       Mycenaean civilization began around 1600 BC

-       One of their legendary kings was Agamemnon

-       Invaders from the north known as the Dorians destroyed the Mycenaean civilization around 1100 BC

4. The Dark Age.

-       Under the Dorian,  Greece entered a period known as the Dark Age

-       During this time, knowledge of writing disappeared and Greece was without a strong government

5. Trojan War.

-       Legend about this war came from the Mycenaeans

-       The legend is about a prince (Paris) from the Ionian city of Troy who kidnaps a beautiful queen from Sparta (Helen of Troy) and the Mycenaean king Agamemnon leads a ten-year war against Troy to free her

6. Homer

-       Legend of the Trojan War was kept alive by Homer, a blind poet who lived in Ionia around  750BC

-       Homer’s poems abut the Trojan horse tell about a huge wooden horse the Greeks built and gave as a gift to the Trojans but in which Greek soldiers hid and caused the defeat of the Trojans

-       Homer’s Iliad tells the story of Achilles, a Greek hero who almost caused Greek defeat when he refused to fight because he was mistreated

7. Rise of city-states.

-       City-states began in Ionia with Greeks who had lost their kings and formed independent cities that were run by ordinary citizens

-       Participation by citizens made the Greek city-states unique (unlike the city-states of Mesopotamia)

-       Greek city-states were called the polis

8. Features of the polis (city-states).

-       They consisted of a main city and the surrounding villages and countryside

-       They were built on two levels: acropolis on a hill that included public buildings and the ordinary part of the city on flatter ground beneath the hill

-       Government of the polis was based on laws that ordinary citizens themselves made

-       Women, slaves, and foreigners were excluded from decision making

Chapter 14.1, “Political Changes in Greece,” pages 388-392

1. Define or identify: oligarchy, phalanx, citizen, tyranny, democracy, Solon, Pericles. 

2. Rule by the few (oligarchies).

-       In the early city-states, small groups of powerful aristocrats controlled the government

-       Laws under oligarchies often benefited wealthy Greeks and gave harsh punishments for the poor

3. Rise of the phalanx.

-       Around 670 BC a new military formation called the phalanx began to change Greek wars

-       In the phalanx, heavily armed soldiers (a) moved together as a unit

-       Because of the importance of ordinary people in the phalanx, leaders now had to consider the interests of lower classes à helped the rise of a new types of government called democracy

4. Rule by many.

-       Athens was among the first to experiment with rule by the many

-       An Athenian leader by the name Solon (appointed by aristocrats) made several changes there that set Athens on the path to democracy (reduced punishments for crimes, ended the practice of selling into slavery poor people who could not pay their debts, granted all male citizens the right to vote for government officials)

-       The idea that people were citizens with rights and responsibilities set Greece apart from other parts of the world (e.g., in Egypt, China, India people lived as subjects of a ruler, expected to obey without question)

Chapter 14.2, “Democracy in Athens,” pages 393-398

1. Define or identify:  assembly, jury, Aristotle, direct democracy, representative democracy.

2. Path to democracy.

-       Solon took the first steps toward democracy

-       Pericles (450s BC) reforms included paying citizens for jury service or other civic duties (= helped the poor to take part in government) and recognized women as citizens (given legal rights  but not the right to vote)

3. How the Athenian Assembly worked.

-       The Assembly was the main political body

-       All free (non-slave) adult male citizens could attend and had the right to speak

4. How the Council worked.

-       The 500 person Council decided which issues should come before the Assembly

-       Members of the Council were chosen by lot, or at random, which means that every male citizen had an equal chance of being appointed to the Council

Chapter 14.3, “Oligarchy in Sparta,” pages 400-405

1. Define or identify: ephor, military state, barracks, Thucydides.

2. Spartan history.

-       Unlike some Greek city-states that followed Athens to develop democracy, Sparta developed an oligarchy with a strong military foundation

-       Sparta was a city-state on the Peloponnesian Peninsula

3. Spartan government.

-       At the top of the government sat two kings who headed a council of elders

-       Council of elders included men over the age of 60 who were elected for life

-       Like Athens, Sparta did have an assembly but it was much smaller and had far less power

-       Spartan assembly elected five officials (ephors) who worked as government watchdogs (could even remove a king)

4. Helot revolts.

-       Helots were Sparta’s agricultural slaves

-       Helots had no legal rights and were owned by the community as a whole

-       Eventually, the helots rose up against the Spartans in the early 600s BC

Chapter 16.1, “”The Persian Empire,” pages 442-448

4. Define or identify: Cyrus the Great, Herodotus, reign, Croesus, Darius the Great.

5. Rise of the Persian Empire.

-       Persians shared the high plateau of Iran with Medes

-       Persians and Medes were both Aryan peoples

6. Cyrus the Great.

-       He is the founder of the Persian Empire

-       Cyrus was generous and kind to defeated peoples (a policy of tolerance), a pattern that was followed in the future in the Persian Empire

7. Persia’s conquest of Lydia.

-       Cyrus’s first target for expanding outside of Persia was Lydia, near the city-states of Ionia

-       Croesus, famous for his immense wealth, was the king of Lydia, also wanted to create an empire

8. Expansion of the Persian Empire.

-       After Lydia, Cyrus moved to Ionia and the Greek city-states fell to him one by one

-       Persia’s rapid expansion was made possible by its huge standing army (a permanent army of professional soldiers)

9. Persian conquest of Babylonia.

-       Because the Persians treated Babylonians well, they won the loyalty of defeated Babylonian leaders

-       Persians were also kind to Jews (who had been exiled to Babylonia by Nebuchadnezzar): he allowed them to return back to Jerusalem with all the treasure that had been looted from their temple in Jerusalem

10.      Organization of the Persian Empire.

-       Persia was a vast multicultural (made of different people and cultures) empire

-       Darius divided his empire into provinces (called satrapies) who were usually governed by a Persian noble

-       Darius created a common currency (gold coins stamped with his image)

-       Darius built roads across his empire (the most famous of them was the Great Royal Road) along which were postal stations located at a day’s ride apart = the fastest postal system in the ancient world

Chapter 16.2, “The Persian Wars,” pages 449-453

1. Identify: Pheidippides, Xerxes, King Leonidas, Themistocles (leader of Athenian forces in the Second Persian War), Pericles.

2. How the First Persian War started.

-       In 499 BC Ionians rebelled against Persia and asked Athens for help

-       Athens sent soldiers to Ionia who burnt the Persian city of Sardis there

-       Persian troops soon recaptured Ionian cities and Darius decided to conquer all of Greece in revenge

3. Main events of the First Greek-Persian War.

-       It started in 490 BC when a Persian fleet sailed for Greece

-       Persians landed near the flat plain of Marathon on the Greek mainland

-       In Athens, citizens debated whether to wait for the Persians and defend the city or to march out immediately and meet the Persians at Marathon and decided on the second option

4. The Battle of Marathon.

-       Athenians were greatly disadvantaged: they were outnumbered two to one and had no archers or cavalry (like the Persians)

-       At dawn, Greek phalanxes charged the Persians from all sides and the Persians fled

-       Victorious Greek soldiers wanting the city of Athens to hear the news quickly sent the runner Pheidippides (who had just returned from Sparta) and he died upon reaching the city and shouting the good news

5. The Second Greek-Persian War.

-       Ten years after the defeat in Marathon (480 BC), Darius’s son, Xerxes, assembled a huge land invasion force

-       At the Battle of Thermopylae, a small Spartan force of about 300 soldiers(led by Spartan king Leonidas)  stopped the Persians at a narrow mountain pass for a few days but were overrun and massacred

-       At the Battle of Salamis, Persian and Greek ships met at the strait between Athens and the island of Salamis

-       Persians were again defeated

6. Facts about a “Golden Age” for Athens.

-       Athenians celebrated their victory by introducing a “golden age” of art and learning

-       Athenian leader Pericles led the way with a program to rebuild the city and create fantastic marvels of art, architecture, philosophy, science, and literature in the years after the Persian Wars

Chapter 16.3, “The Peloponnesian Wars,” pages 456-460

1. Define: rival, rivalry, ally, truce.

2. After the Persian Wars.

-       End of the Persian Wars did not bring peace to Greece

-       After the Persian defeat Athens was the strongest sea power in Greece while Sparta had the strongest land army

3. After the Greek-Persian Wars.

-       After the Greek-Persian Wars, Athens formed an alliance with other Greek city-states called the Delian League (after the island of Delos where they met) that supported democratic government

-       Although members of the Delian League were supposed to be equal,  soon Athens ran it like an empire

-       Sparta in returned formed an alliance called the Peloponnesian League that supported oligarchic government

4. Peloponnesian Wars.

-       Sparta, Athens and their allies fought each other on and off for 27 years

-       The war began when an army led by Sparta marched into Athenian territory

-       Spartans settled around the city of Athens for a long siege but Athenians built two high walls along a road to the port by which they supplied their city

-       Spartans left after a plague broke out and both sides agreed to a truce

-       Athens was defeated, forced to give up its empire, its democratic government was replaced by an oligarchy, and the golden age of Athens was over

-       Peloponnesian Wars hurt all Greek city-states by causing them to weaken and decline

Chapter 16.4, “The Empire of Alexander the Great,” pages 461-465

1. Define or identify: Philip, Alexander the Great, cultural diffusion, Archimedes.

2. Alexander’s conquests.

-       He started the invasion of Asia (by crossing the Hellespont) in 334 BC

-       He conquered Egypt: he was welcomed by Egyptians and founded the city of Alexandria

-       He next captured all of Persia

-       He led his army into India

3. Spread of Greek culture.

-       After his death, Alexander’s generals divided the empire into three large Greek kingdoms

-       Alexander’s greatest legacy: a new culture called Hellenistic that was a mixture of Greek and the cultures of the civilizations he had conquered