First writing systems · About 3400-1050 BC

How the world learned to write

Wedges in clay, pictures on temple walls, cracks in oracle bones and, finally, a short list of letters. Students compare the first writing systems, find out which ones we still cannot read, and trace their own alphabet back to the Bronze Age.

Teach it live New Open on the map
Length
50 minutes
Ages
11–14
On the map
3 steps, 3200 BC to 1050 BC
Live lesson
7 rounds, 3 on the map
Worksheet
Two A4 pages, with Classroom
You need
A projector; phones for live

Live lesson · new in Classroom

Teach it live. The class answers on their phones.

Put the board on the projector. Students join with a six-digit code, no account needed, and tap the map: where was the frontier, where did the grain come from. Their pins drop in together when you reveal, and the closest student takes the round.

€19 per month: every lesson live, every worksheet, cancel anytime. Rome at its height runs live for free.

A live lesson on the projector: the class's pins on the map around Alexandria, the closest students listed beside it A student's phone: the question and a map to tap
7 rounds
3 places to find on the map, quiz questions, a class vote and a one-line answer.
About 15 minutes
Run it as the map step, or to open the discussion. You move on with the space bar.
A report
Every answer, per student and per round, to read back or print after the lesson.
1

Introduction

5 min

Read aloud

Wedges in clay, pictures on temple walls, cracks in oracle bones and, finally, a short list of letters. Students compare the first writing systems, find out which ones we still cannot read, and trace their own alphabet back to the Bronze Age.

By the end of the lesson, students can

  • Locate where the first writing systems appeared and roughly when.
  • Compare scripts that use pictures, syllables and letters.
  • Trace the alphabet from Sinai and the Phoenician coast to the letters we use today.
2

Explore the map

15 min

Project the map, or let students follow on their own devices. Each step opens the map at the right year and place.

a

3200 BC

Writing's birthplaces

Open the map in 3200 BC and find Uruk on the Euphrates and Abydos on the Nile. Writing appeared in both places around this time. Did one copy the other? What do you think?

Open this view on the map
b

1800 BC

Letters in the mines

Jump to 1800 BC and zoom in on the Sinai peninsula. At the turquoise mines of Serabit el-Khadim, workers scratched some of the oldest known alphabetic letters. Why might miners, not scribes, invent a simpler script?

Open this view on the map
c

1050 BC

The Phoenician alphabet

Jump to 1050 BC, turn on Historical Events and find the marker for the Phoenician alphabet on the Levant coast. How many letters did it have, compared with the hundreds of cuneiform signs?

Open this view on the map
3

Class discussion

15 min

Pick two or three. They run from what happened to why it mattered.

  1. Writing was invented separately in Mesopotamia, in China and later in the Americas. Why might different peoples come up with the same idea?
  2. Cuneiform used hundreds of signs; the Phoenician alphabet only 22. Who gains when writing becomes easier to learn?
  3. Some scripts, like Linear A and the Indus script, are still unread. What is lost when we cannot read a people's writing?
  4. The Rosetta Stone carries the same text in three scripts. Why are such stones so valuable to decipherers?
  5. The letters you are reading now go back to signs scratched by workers in Sinai. Does that surprise you? Why?
4

Game round

10 min

Play one round of Rule History as Hatshepsut and look at the hieroglyphs on her monuments. Discuss: hieroglyphs took years to learn. How did writing help a pharaoh, and who was left out?

Open Rule History
5

Worksheet

5 min

This worksheet comes with Classroom

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