Social Studies



    Social Studies in Grade 7 is the study of early peoples and ancient civilizations. The way that we live today - our technologies, our architecture and art, our international laws and conflicts - was decided by the decisions and discoveries of those people who lived long ago. By learning about the past we may come to understand our present and possibly our future.

Term 1:
EARLY PEOPLE

This is a cave bear.  He is big and mean and ugly.
He weighs 1000 pounds and can run as fast as a race horse.
You may have to fight him to survive.
You've got your sharp rock, you've got your pointy stick...

We start the year learning about early people.  These are the people who lived between 2 million and 10,000 years ago.  We study these people in order to understand how human beings have slowly come to develop organized societies and civilizations. When every other hunter on the planet can run faster, jump higher, see better, and hear better than you, life can be tough. Especially when they have claws and fangs and you don't.


Term 2:
ANCIENT EGYPT



The Great Pyramid at Giza is made of over two million hand-cut stone blocks, each weighing more than two tonnes. This was accomplished without the use of iron tools, wheels, or levers. Its sides run exactly north-south and east-west, and is the largest stone building in the world. It was the tallest man-made structure on the planet until the Eifel Tower was constructed in 1889.


When we studied Ancient Egypt, we learned how nomadic peoples slowly came together to form villages, towns, cities, and eventually an empire that challenged every notion of what human beings were capable of achieving. The Egyptians developed complex systems of government and religion, and established a society in which art and science worked hand in hand.


Term 3:
ANCIENT ROME


Julius Caesar (100 - 44 BC) was both a military genius and dictator. His command of the battlefield gave Rome control of all of modern Europe, the Middle East, and northern Africa, making the Roman Empire the most powerful the world had ever seen. Caesar was assasinated on March 15, when he was stabbed 23 times by a group of his closest advisors.

At its height, the Roman Empire occupied an area slightly larger that of the United States and was home to almost 100 million people. The city of Rome itself had a population of over a million, and was the site of some of the most advanced engineering projects ever attempted. Aquaducts supplied the city with fresh water, while the Circus Maximus allowed 200,000 people to attend chariot races. The mighty Colosseum seated about 50,000 people, and on its opening days in 80 AD they witnessed the deaths of over 5000 animals. The Empire was knit together by 30,000 km of roads. The Romans' milia ("thousands") has come down to us as "mile". A milia was the distance covered by 1,000 paces of a marching legionnaire.
Both civilizing and barbaric, the stories of the Roman Empire continue to impress us today.