Fernando M. Reimers et a1.

Earliest cave paintings (about 50,000 BCE)

Earliest writings (pictorial) from Ancient Sumer (about 4000 BCE)
Hammurabi’s Code (about 700 BCE)

Signing of the Magna Carta (AD 1215)

Invention of the printing press (AD 1465)

95”?“93‘37‘

Publication of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, which became the

most widely sold and circulated book in American history to that

point (AD 1776)

7. Invention of the silicon chip, the basis of personal computers, by
Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce (AD 1961)

8. Invention of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners—Lee (AD 1991)

Students should create a drawing and a brief description of their assigned
event to be posted in the classroom.

The teacher and students create a scaled time line. This needs to be done
along a long hallway or outside. The teacher needs to determine the amount
of available space ahead of time. Once that is determined, the period be—
tween 30,000 BCE and AD 2000 (32,000 years will be scaled in more com-
pressed form than the rest of the timeline. If you have one hundred feet of
space, then each foot will represent 320 years, for example. The students
assigned the cave paintings will stand at the far end of it. Then the students
assigned the earliest writings will stand at the appropriate distance from
them. In the end, the first few events will be very far away from one another
and very widely spaced out. Then after the signing of Magna Carta or the
invention of the printing press, the students will stand very close to one
another. They will learn that the development of the written word and the
development of technology that can spread the written word quickly have
led to many rapid developments.

(Note that the Morgan Library in New York City is an excellent resource for
printing history and printed resources.)

142