Empires Strike a Pose: Artwork OPTICS

OPTIC: is a way to analyze a visual or graphic image. Paintings, videos, architecture all help to tell the story of a people and time. Knowing how to analyze and interpret these visuals will help you understand a time and culture better.

O: Overview

P: Parts

T: Title

I: Interrelationships

C: Conclusion

Each of these are explained in more detail on the OPTIC form. In addition to filling out the information data sheet for the different empires, you will need to complete an OPTIC form for the following images.

Ancient Egypt

Notice also the hierarchical scale within the painting at the left, which pictures the king in enlarged scale, and his servant at a much smaller scale, according to their relative importance.

Persian Empire

In addition to hunting Crowther suggests archery images on Achaemenid coinage indicatePersians engaged in archery competitions (Sport in Ancient Times, 2007, 21). Xenophon’s remarks suggest the Persian elite engaged in sporting competitions:
“passing their time shooting with the bow and hurling the spear and practising all the other arts they learnt when boys, they continually engage in contests of this kind with one another. There are also public contests of this sort, for which prizes are offered” (Cyropaedia)

India's Empires
Gupta 

Krishna Killing the Horse Demon Keshi, Gupta period (ca. 321–500), 5th century
Vishnu appears in innumerable guises (avatars) on earth but none is more popular than that of Krishna, the warrior-king who freed his people from demonic threats. On one occasion, the youthful Krishna slayed the demon Keshi, who appeared in the guise of a horse. This subject probably has its origins in Hellenistic legends, most notably the labors of Hercules in which the Greek hero slays the horses of Diomedes. In this terracotta relief, Krishna restrains the ferocious Keshi with his foot while thrusting his elbow down the beast's throat. Below the combatants are the dead horse and balls of dung emitted at the moment of death. The graphically observed rendering of the subject is a reminder of the importance of horse sacrifices in early Indian Vedic cult practices, of which this Krishna myth undoubtedly preserves a memory. Temple building began in earnest in India only in the Gupta period, and these brick and stone structures typically were decorated with terracotta plaques of this type for which Krishna was a popular subject.

There will be more OPTICs to come in a future post

Build a Better Empire

Once civilizations began to arise, the next step is for those dominate civilizations to start to collect power - ultimate power and control and land and resources and … once this starts to happen we move into the realm of EMPIRES!

Cue the music ….

For this unit, you and your allies will construct a board game, with the goal of the game - to build the ultimate board game!

But before you can get to that part, we need to know some basic information on empires, what let to their rise and ultimately what caused them to fail. We will look at the empires of Assyria, Egypt, Persia, Maurya (in India), Gupta (in India), Zhou (in China), Qin (in China), Han (in China), Greece, and Rome.

This will process will take us a few weeks - these empires can be found in Ch. 3, 4, and 5 of your textbook, but like always that’s just one resource.

Each of these empires rose to power for different reasons, had major influences on their cultures, and ultimately failed for a variety of reasons. Your job will be to identify, explain, and analyze this information to figure out how to build the ultimate empire and incorporate that into your board game.

Gathering Information - you will gather basic data/information on each civilization. I will provide you with a form to organize your information. Each person is responsible for completing this form on each empire. Each of these data forms will be a minor grade (so require an OPTIC which will be a major component of this grade).

Analyzing Your Data - Now that you have basic data and terms for each empire, it’s time to examine this information for common themes (sometimes in analyzing you need to return to information sources for additional information as well - this is okay). You will receive a form to help you analyze the information needed to make connections - looking for common themes as to why empires succeed and what caused them to fail. Your data analysis form will count as a double minor grade (you should have to do some thinking so it’s worth more)

Creation - Now that you have basic information on the major early empires and you have analyzed this information and found common themes, it’s time to create your board game. Your game will allow players to gather information/resources needed to build an empire, while trying avoid the pitfalls that lead to empire collapse. How this is done is up to you! This will be your unit assessment - your game should so and even require some knowledge of the empires, the characteristics of their success and failure.

Visual Look at River Valley Civilizations

For your first learning through discovery activity we will be making a infograph over different Early River Valley civilizations, you will also create questions to be answered from your infographic and will finally present your infograph to the class on Thur.

Before we get into how you will gather the information you will need for your infograph and then you you will create your infograph, lets first look at what is an infograph by looking at some infographs.

First the simplest definition ...

A little more detailed description ...

If you are still wondering what an infograph is - it simply takes gathered information, organizes it, and displays it with visuals.

This is what you will be doing - gathering information, organizing it, and then assigning visuals to your information and displaying it.

So what information do you need?
1. The name of your early river valley civilization.
2. The time period and location of your civilization (this has time line and map written all over for visuals, but thats just me)
3. Characteristics that led to the rise of your civilization
           a. Economy (what did they produce, what did they trade, with whom did they trade)
           b. Military (size, type, successfulness)
           c. Number of cities (maybe even city-states, also how large were these cities)
           d. Religion (type of religion, how did they show this religion, how did it impact the civilization)
           e. Art (examples, anything they are known for in particular)

Now that you have gathered the needed information (and maybe even some other facts - this would be a good idea), it's time to organize it. Think of how your group whats to visually show the information you have acquired. Now think, will this visual makes sense to the rest of class? To Mr. Moulden?

Now you are ready to put together your infograph, the good news - there really is no wrong way to do this. But some basic tips:

1. Keep it simple
2. Most import information is where you what people to start - this is usually visually the top or middle of the page.
3. Use different size and colors of fonts to show similarities and differences.
4. Have fun!