Contemporary Social Studies 2010
Updated: 2011-03-31 22:08:17
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
LiveScience has posted an interesting article about the Dog Catacombs in Egypt, which contain the remains of millions of animals, mostly dogs and jackals. The Dog Catacombs, as they are known, date to 747-730 B.C., and are dedicated to the Anubis, the Egyptians’ jackal-headed god of the dead. They were first documented in the 19th [...]
Scientists are looking to unlock the secrets of Serpent Mound in Ohio, the largest prehistoric effigy of its kind in the world. Nearly a quarter-mile long as measured by the centerline of its curves, Serpent Mound is the largest prehistoric effigy of its kind in the world. It was built on a ridge above the [...]
Goats, cows and sheep are running amok in the ancient Greek city of Cyrene in eastern Libya. ”We really want someone to look at tourism and for companies to invest. Most of the artifacts are still buried. Tourism has been neglected,” said unemployed Shahaat resident Hamdy Bzeiwi, who has seen little of the income that [...]
The nearly complete skull of a newly discovered species of ancient crocodile has been found in Brazil. The animal is what’s called a crocodyliform, part of a group known as the crocodilians that includes modern-day alligators, caimans, and more. Dubbed Pepesuchus deiseae, the new species lived between 99 million to 65 million years ago during [...]
Officials in Jordan are demanding the return of the earliest Christian writings in existence: some 70 codices written on lead which date back 2,000 years. He says they could be “the major discovery of Christian history”, adding: “It’s a breathtaking thought that we have held these objects that might have been held by the early [...]
The Modesto Bee has posted an interesting article about California’s American Indian groups and their warm relationships with their dogs. They were also family pets, as shown by the respect with which they were buried, said Paul Langenwalter, a professor of archaeology and anthropology at Biola University in La Mirada. He has examined dog skeletons [...]
Earlier this month I posted about some Gold Rush-era recordings which were found underwater on the A.J. Goddard. The music has now been recovered. Though damaged from spending more than a century at the bottom of Lake Laberge – a widening of the river and the setting for Klondike poet Robert Service’s ghoulish 1907 masterwork [...]
Archaeologists in Manitoba, Canada, have found explorer David Thompson’s first trading post. Two little piles of stones surrounded by scrub pine in northern Manitoba may have given archeologists and historians a physical link to one of North America’s greatest explorers and map-makers. Archeologist Perry Blomquist believes the rocks at Sipiwesk Lake on the Nelson River [...]
Two skeletons dating back 8,500 years, making them the oldest ever found in what is now Turkey, have been discovered during archaeological excavations in Istanbul’s Yenikap? area. “Such remains have not been discovered during the excavation before; these are the oldest graves in Anatolia,” said Dr. Yasemin Y?lmaz, an expert on anthropology and prehistory, who [...]
The tree islands that dot the Florida Everglades may have originally been garbage mounds left behind by prehistoric humans. Scientists have thought for many years that the so-called fixed tree islands (a larger type of tree island frequently found in the Everglades’ main channel, Shark River Slough) developed on protrusions from the rocky layer of [...]
Archaeologists have discovered India’s most ancient stone tools: a whopping 1.5 million years old. The tools fall in a class of artefacts called Acheulian that scientists believe were invented by the Homo erectus —ancestors of modern humans — in Africa about 1.6 million years ago. “This means that soon after early humans invented the Acheulian [...]
87 WWII mortars washed up on a beach in Hampshire, England, prompting the Royal Navy to spend two days detonating them. The devices were stacked 300m (980ft) offshore at low tide, marked, and then destroyed at high tide. A 1,000m (3,280ft) exclusion zone was set up around the site, between the coastwatch tower and the [...]
There’s another attention grabbing headline for you. High resolution analysis of King Tut’s grandmother, known for her legendary beauty, has revealed that she had a flat wart on her forehead. “I got a high-resolution image of the mummy’s face from the Egyptian museum. From the enlargement, the small growth appears compatible with a flat wart [...]
A huge collection of recently discovered stone tools are rewriting American history by suggesting that the Clovis people were not America’s original immigrants. The hunter gatherers associated with this technology were thought to have crossed from Siberia into Alaska via a land bridge that became exposed when sea levels dropped. Evidence indicates this occurred as [...]
37 pre-Inca tombs, dating between 800 and 1445 A.D., have been found in Southern Peru. Archaeologist Gladys Barreto, who was hired by the Boca del Río consortium to be in charge of executing the construction, said that half of the found tombs contain the remains of children. Also discovered were ceramics, symbolic depictions of boats, [...]
This is pretty amazing. A 2,500-year-old preserved human brain has been found encased in a skull in England. Except for the brain, all of the skull’s soft tissue was gone when the skull was pulled from a muddy Iron Age pit where the University of York was planning to expand its Heslington East campus. “It [...]
X-ray sources known as synchrotons are being used by archaeologists to determine exactly what atoms makes up an artifact. It has even shown, in the case of an inscription that had worn entirely away, that minuscule amount of iron left by the chisel showed a pristine version of the inscription on what appeared to be [...]
A water well abandoned in New Zealand 100 years ago found new life as a rubbish tip. Now, archaeologists are digging down through the layers to find all sorts of cool 19th century artifacts. “Within the well they have found all sorts of 19th century remains, artefacts like shoes and tin cans – some of [...]
Archaeologists in Scotland have found ancient pottery that may have been used by Robert the Bruce and his Scottish Army in 1314. “Borestone could have been the site for the Scots camp prior to the famous Battle of Bannockburn. “If a large number of Scottish spear-men and camp followers stayed on this spot in the [...]
15 tombs dating back to the Byzantine area have been discovered in al-Ruba, Syria. Farzat noted that the findings in the cemetery included 10 incomplete pottery jars, 5 metal and glass bracelets, 2 metal rings in a bad condition, 2 copper coins, 6 stone beads, 2 glass perfume bottles and 4 golden chips believed to [...]
Archaeologists in the Sudan have discovered a medieval settlement in the region’s Nile Valley. “There is no written mention of it and yet it is one of the biggest strongholds in this part of the Nile Valley”, says Polish archeologist Mariusz Drzewiecki. Another interesting find is a settlement on the Nurein hill. “It was a [...]
An archaeologist in England has used geophysical imagery to located several grave pits containing the remains of soldiers killing during the Wars of the Roses 500 years ago. It was one of the biggest and probably the bloodiest battle ever fought on British soil. Such was its ferocity almost 1 per cent of the English [...]
A mural depicting three people adorned with feathers has been uncovered at the Ucupe Palace in Peru. The discovery was made after a group of archaeologists resumed preservation and maintenance works at the archaeological complex located 39 kilometers (24 miles) from the city of Chiclayo. Finds were presented to the press by the director of [...]
Six “lost” letters written by famous composer Frederic Chopin have been found. The letters, written by Chopin to his parents and sisters between 1845 and 1848, were believed lost after the outbreak of World War II. After it emerged in 2003 that they still existed in a private collection, moves were made to secure them. [...]
The Library of Congress has digitized and made available online Alexander Graham Bell’s sketchbook of ideas. Above is a sketch of his telephone system. The books are a priceless treasure of an incredibly fertile mind working through one of the most exciting periods of technological innovation in the history of the world. The sketches, though, [...]