Contemporary Social Studies 2010
Updated: 2011-02-28 22:48:18
Ning Brought to you by Search Sign Up Sign In Teaching Digital History using documents , images , maps and online tools Main My Page Members Photos Videos Blogs Forum All Discussions My Discussions Add Contemporary Social Studies 2010 Posted by John Lee on December 6, 2010 at 3:03pm in Visual historical inquiry View Discussions Social studies is a big and sometimes unwieldy subject . Given with the massive body of content in the field and differentiation among pedagogical approaches , social studies educators have the space to be creative and expressive . There are certainly some agreed upon aims in social studies . In fact , there is something approaching consensus that social studies should aim to prepare young people for citizenship . But , what that process entails is a point of
The remains of a 4,500-year-old sauna have been found near Marden Henge in Wiltshire. English Heritage’s Jim Leary said: ‘The building brings to mind the sweat lodges of the native North Americans and the reason for that sauna or sweat lodge interpretation is that the floor plan was utterly dominated by a large hearth – [...]
Archaeologists in Egypt have thwarted the attempted looting of a 160-ton statue of King Ramses II. Archaeologists and guards arrested the looters, who were trying to damage and steal the statue that is part of an ancient quarry in Aswan in Upper Egypt, MENA said, citing Minister of State for Antiquities Zahi Hawass and other [...]
I will contact who I can, but please update your Civil War blogrolls and remove Blog4History and add my Civil War blog: Civil War Voices @ my Civil War soldier letters archive: Soldierstudies.org. B4H is becoming less and less a Civil War blog so I would appreciate you passing the word. Thanks much!
In what is being hailed as a discovery as important as Machu Picchu, Wari tombs dating back to between the 7th – 12th centuries, have ben found in Peru. Archaeologists found a y-shaped silver chest plate, a silver mask, two golden bracelets with feline figures and two wooden walking sticks laminated with silver in the [...]
The remains of an 11,500-year-old child has been found in a prehistoric home in Alaska. “You can see that the child was laid in the pit—a fire hearth inside the house—and the fire was started on top of the child,” study co-author Joel Irish said. Charred wood from the pit allowed scientists to assign a [...]
A new species of slurped has been found with massive thighs that palaeontologists hypothesize were used to keep predators at bay. The article at National Geographic also has an awesome illustration of those thighs being put to good use. The team suspects the dinosaur—a type of sauropod, or plant-eating, four-legged lumberer—used its massive legs to [...]
The fossilized remains of an extinct funny-looking “walking cactus” has been found in China. The 2.4-inch-long (6-centimeter-long) Diania cactiformis had a worm-like body and ten pairs of armored and likely jointed legs. It would have lived about 500 million years ago during a period of rapid evolution called the Cambrian explosion. Study leader Jianni Liu [...]
The Telegraph has compiled an interesting list detailing all the Jack the Ripper suspects. Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward, the Duke of Clarence One of Queen Victoria’s numerous grandchildren, the Duke of Clarence, “was as heedless and as aimless as a gleaming gold-fish in a crystal bowl,” and reputedly suffered from syphilis which drove him [...]
A burial chamber dating back to the Hellenistic period has been unearthed in Apamea, Syria. The burial chamber, which was discovered during maintenance work in the historic city of Apamea, contains 6 graves dug into the earth, one of which contains pottery fragments from a cone-shaped burial urn. [Full story] Story: SANA | Photo: Wikimedia [...]
New facts about the “world’s first skyscraper”, a 28-foot tall 11,000-year-old tower in Jericho, have come to light. “Reconstruction of the sunset revealed to us that the shadow of the hill as the sun sets on the longest day of the year falls exactly on the Jericho tower, envelops the tower and then covers the [...]
In honour of the 20th anniversary of his discovery, Oezti the Iceman is getting a new face for an exhibit in Italy, this time with brown eyes. Indeed, recent research has shown the Iceman, now approaching the tender age of 5,300 years, did not have blue eyes as previously believed. The Kennis model was created [...]
A Bronze Age settlement and Samartian burial ground has been uncovered at a construction site in Hungary. Several thousand metal objects, Roman bronze, silver and golden coins, and jewellery were excavated by archaeologists in the Oros district of the city, said the head of the excavation. One old pot contained as many as 34 bracelets, [...]
A colourful house has been built in England using actual Roman techniques, based off the remains found of a house in Wroxeter. The builders were incredulous when Evans insisted that, however advanced their plumbing and road-building, the Romans had no wheelbarrows, so everything had to be carried on to the site by hand. The builders [...]
A previously unreleased photograph of Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler taken moments after his suicide is due to be auctioned. After his death, Army chiefs released propaganda photographs of the monster’s corpse slumped on the floor and a makeshift bed. But Lance Corporal Adderley kept the stark, grainy close-up taken at a British safe house in [...]
DNA extracted from dried spit found on old envelopes belonging to Amelia Earhart could help researchers solve the mystery of what happened to the pilot. To get at the DNA-containing saliva, Yang, the geneticist, will first carefully steam the seals open. Yang is aiming to gather two kinds of DNA from the letters: mitochondrial DNA, [...]
Ice Age mugs made from a human skull has been found in a cave in southwestern England. Bello suspects that ice age Britons hoisted hollowed-out craniums in rituals of some kind. Other human bones found near the skull cups show signs of flesh and marrow removal, a result either of cannibalism or mortuary practice. The [...]
I love President’s Day as three day weekends this time of year are always welcomed! And to send it off right, I want to share the results of a new Gallup poll that asked Americans who the nation’s great president was. The results were interesting. Now remember, these are just average folks, not scholars, historians [...]
David Sehat has an interesting commentary over at the CS Monitor concerning today’s Tea Party and the U.S. Constitution. The Federalists wanted a strong central government that could correct the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation. Men such as Alexander Hamilton sought a powerful central force that could control inter-state commerce and assert direct taxes, [...]
An ancient Mesoamerican sculpture of a figure with a raise arm and determined scowl has been unearthed in southern Mexico. “Usually sculptures are first seen by archaeologists in private art collections and we normally have no good idea where they came from. The depictions of figures and the motifs change in form through time so [...]
Two false toes found on a female Mummy near Luxor are the world’s oldest known practical prosthesis. Unlike the ownerless Greville Chester, the Cairo toe was found fastened onto the right toe of a female mummy identified as Tabaketenmut who lived some time during the period from 950-710 B.C. “Tabaketenmut may have had diabetes, which [...]
Engineers drilling in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park uncovered two 90-foot scow schooners which date back to the 19th century. Buried under more than 14 feet of sand and fill dirt, the 45-foot-long hull sections came to light at the mouth of an enormous trench that will house a new overflow sewage pipe for the Visitacion [...]
The 7th-century Mayan ruler Pakal had a previously unknown second son, according to a recently analyzed wall panel in Palenque. In 2009, an epigraphist from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, Guillermo Bernal Romero, interpreted the glyphic text found in the recovered panel fragments and found mention of a second son of Pakal named [...]
Newly discovered documents found in British archives show that Abraham Lincoln wanted to send many slaves to toil in British colonies in the Caribbean. Although earlier historians have conceded that he did propose sending some of the freed slaves to new colonies, they have dismissed it as a ruse designed to placate racist voters. However, [...]
The Two Brothers, a Nantucket whaler which sank in the Pacific in 1823 has been found. The captain also helmed The Essex, another whaler whose sinking inspired Moby Dick. In the early 19th century, whaling voyages often took two years or more. The Two Brothers set sail from Nantucket in November 1821. By winter 1822, [...]
Now that the situation in Egypt has essentially ended in a military coup, what will this latest Middle East Revolution ascend or descend into? Some say Western style Democracy. Others say a Sharia Law Theocracy. Is this movement a bottom up democratic one or something triggered by the Muslim Brotherhood? Who knows, hopefully some kind [...]
I remember an article by historian Eric Foner posted at HNN after 9/11. Foner hoped we could re-think how we teach American history and that he worried about the “self-absorbed, super-celebratory history promoted in the aftermath of September 11 – a history lacking in nuance and complexity — will not enable students to make sense [...]
A team of researchers looking for fossils of giant rats in East Timor stumbled across ancient carved faced in a limestone cave. ‘Looking up from the cave floor at a colleague sitting on a ledge, my head torch shone on what seemed to be a weathered carving,’ CSIRO’s Dr Ken Aplin said. ‘I shone the [...]
A study of the famous fossil Lucy’s 3 million-year-old foot bones shows the hominid was perfectly comfortable walking upright. The new discovery shows these relatives “were fully humanlike and committed to life on the ground,” Ward said in a telephone interview from Africa. “It lays to rest the idea that they were a compromise.” The [...]
Apparently several Chicago Mayoral Candidates support the idea of “reparations for descendants of slavery.” Am I the only one who wonders how on God’s Green (er, sun blasted over heated Co2 saturated…) Earth this is accomplished? Does anyone agree with this idea? I have some concerns. 1. Is this Really Fair? What’s the true goal [...]
The Blue Eagle, a blue-colored representation of the American thunderbird, with outspread wings, was a symbol used in the United States by companies to show compliance with the National Industrial Recovery Act. It was proclaimed the symbol of industrial recovery on July 20, 1933 by Hugh Samuel Johnson, the head of the National Recovery Administration.