Mayan EmpireKenny Stott

Content Area: Social Studies

Grade Level: 6

Summary: The purpose of this power point is to have the students understand what took place in the empire of the Mayan people and the impact that they still have on central American society.

Learning Objective: Given websites that contain facts about the Mayan civilization students will need to interpret the material within the websites to answer the questions within the power point with 100 percent accuracy.

Content Standard: 5.0: History involves people, events, and issues. Students will evaluate evidence to develop comparative and causal analyses, and to interpret primary sources. They will construct sound historical arguments and perspectives on which informed decisions in contemporary life can be based.

Accomplishment: World History Standards Era 4: Expanding Zones of Exchange and Encounter (300AD-1000 AD) - 6.5.12 Understand the place of historical events in the context of past, present and future. a. Understand the significant features of Mayan and Andean civilization as in their location of cities, road systems, sea routes, status of elite women and men, art, and architecture.

6.5.spi.12. recognize the possible causes of change in civilizations (i.e., environmental change, political collapse, new ideas, warfare, overpopulation, unreliable food sources, diseases).

Facts:

Go to this website to explore the history of the Mayan Empire http://www.mayankids.com/timeline2.htm

Mayan empire started in 1800 B.C. to 1200 AD when citizens started to abandoned the cities in the Yucatan peninsula.

Three periods that are covered from 300 AD to 1000 AD are the Early Classic Maya 250-600 A.D./Late Classic Maya 600-900 A.D. /Post Classic Maya 900-1500 A.D.

869 A.D. capital city Tikal begins to collapse and in 900 A.D. most Mayan cities were showing signs of citizens abandoning their cities.

Videos

Watch these two videos The Mayans and the Mayan Encounter at the website provide on this slide. You will need to take notes from these selected videos to help with questions later in this lesson. (http://www.history.com/topics/maya)

Note: you can pause the videos so you can take quality notes if the videos are moving too fast.

Facts:

Explore this website to obtain information about the five major cities in the Mayan empire http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/spirits/html/body_maya.html

Five major cities within the Mayan empire were Uxmal, Chichen Itza, Tulum, Tikal, Copan.

These five cities covered a vast area from Mexico in the Yucatan peninsula to Guatemala finally ending at the bottom portion of Honduras.

Question

What caused the people of the Mayan empire to abandon their cities?

Diseases

Over use of natural resources

Drought

Overpopulation

All of the above

Correct.

Yes, all the above is the correct choice because scholars do not know exactly what caused the Mayan people to abandon their cities. So theories are that the collapse was caused by diseases, over use of natural resources, drought, and overpopulation.

Question

What was the first great city of the Mayan empire in 500 A.D. ?

Teotihuacan

Tikal

Uxmal

Kabah

Correct

Yes, Tikal became the largest known city of the Mayan Empire in 500 A.D. growing to around 55,000 in 700 A.D.

Question

Who first invented chocolate to consume?

Incas

Aztecs

Mayans

Spanish

Correct

Yes, Mayans were the first civilization to develop chocolate that is now eaten throughout the world.

Click here to move to next slide

Summary

In this lesson the students will have learned what the major cities of the Mayan empire were. They will have watched two videos that explain the history of the Mayan people and what they had created such as the Mayan calendar, chocolate, and developed the concept of zero.

Students will have also learned theories to why the Mayan empire collapsed and the cities were left abandoned. Such as overpopulation of cities, drought, civil war, diseases, and exhausting nature resources.

The students will have read and taken notes from a timeline in the website provided on slide three giving detailed information of important periods such as when cities and regions of the empire began and collapsed. Also students will have learned of the different types of periods that the Mayan people lived in such as the Early Classic, Late Classic, and Post Classic Mayan society and what they accomplished in these time periods.

Incorrect answer

Click here to try again.

Works cited

Pictures: from 2007 PowerPoint clip art web collection. (http://office.microsoft.com)

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