Using Geography to Learn About History

Overview:

As students may already know, geographical factors have impacted the course of history in many ways. When learning about historical topics, it can be very helpful to simultaneously study a region's geography. In this lesson, students will investigate how geography impacted daily life, warfare, and trade in ancient Greece. They will use this information to write statements to a school committee explaining how geography should be incorporated into the history curriculum.

Connections to the Curriculum:

Geography, world history

Connections to the National Geography Standards:

Standard 17: "How to apply geography to interpret the past"

Time:

Three hours

Materials Required:

• Computer with Internet access
• Writing materials (or multimedia software, such as PowerPoint, for a presentation)

Objectives:

Students will

• explain how geography has affected the outcome of events and daily life in historical cultures they have studied;
• find out Greece's elevation zones, precipitation, and average temperatures, and predict how these factors might have influenced daily life, warfare, and trade in ancient Greece;
• research and take notes on how Greece's physical geography affected daily life, warfare, and trade; and
• write statements to a school committee explaining how geography should be incorporated into the history curriculum, using information they have gathered about ancient Greece.

Geographic Skills:

Acquiring Geographic Information
Organizing Geographic Information
Analyzing Geographic Information

S u g g e s t e d P r o c e d u r e

Opening:

Ask students to provide examples from their study of world or United States history to demonstrate how geography affects the outcome of events and the decisions people make. For example, how do the presence of seas, mountains, and rivers affect daily life? How do these physical factors affect the outcome of battles or the establishment of trade routes? How influential is a region's climate? Discuss students' ideas as a class.

Development:

Inform students that they will be looking closely at ancient Greece as an example of geography's impact on human life and the course of history.

Have students use the following Web sites to gather information about Greece's physical geography and climate (e.g., elevation zones, precipitation, and average temperatures). Ask them to write sentences describing the elevation zones (e.g., where it is mountainous and where it is flat) and to list the average annual precipitation and average January and July temperatures for Athens, Iraklion (a city on the island of Crete), and Thessaloniki.

National Geographic: MapMachine
Weatherbase

Have students look at their geography and climate data and write short paragraphs predicting how Greece's physical geography might have impacted its daily life, warfare, and trade.

Have students conduct research on ancient Greece to see how features of the region's physical geography affected daily life, the outcome of battles, and the development of trade. The Web sites below will help get them started, but they may also consult print resources, such as historical atlases and books. As they conduct their research, have them take notes on how daily life, warfare, and trade were affected by geographical factors.

Emory University: Odyssey Online—Greece
ThinkQuest: Ancient Greece
University of Pennsylvania: Worlds Intertwined—Etruscans, Greeks, and Romans

Closing:

Discuss students' research results as a class. How important were geographical factors in the development of the ancient Greek civilization? If the geography had been different, what factors of the civilization's development might have differed?

Suggested Student Assessment:

Ask students to imagine that they have been elected to a committee that will help determine their school's social studies curriculum. The committee has asked for their input on how geography and history relate to each other and how the two subjects should be taught. Should world geography and world history be combined into one class? Should history teachers be encouraged to teach geographical concepts along with historical concepts?

Have students incorporate what they've learned about the geography and history of ancient Greece into an essay explaining the relationship between geography and history and the ways that studying geography can be helpful in learning about a place's history. Alternately, they can create a multimedia slide show (e.g., PowerPoint) that they might present to the committee, explaining their argument with text and graphics.

Extending the Lesson:

Have students research the way that geography impacted historical events or daily lives for another civilization or culture they are studying in history class. Ask them to write paragraphs explaining how geography can help them learn about this historical topic.