Talk:Ancient History

Stubs
The Ancient History project now has its own stub marker,. Please feel free to use it.

AP Ancient History Standards
The Ancient History page formerly specified in the first boxed text that the book should follow the standards for teaching AP Ancient History. Does anyone know or have easy access to those standards? Why was this specific standard removed? What is the new standard to which we are creating and editing this document? I am interested in developing it for a ninth grade audience, at least, but maybe this isn't good enough. Andrew Watt 04:15, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
 * It was probably removed because College Board does not offer an AP Ancient History test, but a comprehensive World History test. Some schools divide the AP course into multiple classes; some called AP Ancient History. The standards for the first section of the World History course covers the Neolithic through the fall of the Classical civilizations. (8000 BCE - 600 CE). A brief topic outline can be found here, on the College Board website. -JCarriker 07:14, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
 * OK, that makes sense. Thank you. -Andrew Watt 11:02, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Bibliography, Glossary and Biographical Dictionary
Please remember to insert materials consulted into the Bibliography as you work, and that special words can go in the glossary, and that important persons should go in the Biographical Dictionary. This will help build a textbook worthy of the name. It would also be useful to develop a set of study questions at the end of each wiki page, but that will come in time. Andrew Watt 16:44, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Russia?
Russia has no ancient history, I don't think there is much sense comparing it to for example Mezopotamia or Rome. --Derbeth talk 09:04, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Does Russia not have ancient history, or does it not have ancient history yet? What does archaeology show? What is known and available in Russian, but not known much in English? Andrew Watt 00:54, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
 * The area that is now Russia does have ancient history, but Russian civilization dates to the formation of the Kievan Rus society. What is now Russia was occupied by earlier semi-nomadic societies like the like the Sycthians or the Huns. Discussion of these peoples would probably be best in their own section, rather than one entitled ancient Russia to avoid confusion. -JCarriker 03:17, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I have moved that section to History of Russia/Contents, where it will be expanded to include the entire scope of Russian history. Νεοπτόλεμος ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 21:11, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Philosophy of Text
I am putting the following two paragraphs in boldface because I would like them to represent the philosophy of this book. They're not the official policy, because I wrote them and no one has agreed that they're the philosophy yet. Please feel free to use strikethru's and italics to make proposed changes. My own preference is for karass and not granfaloon, but some people like policy so here's my proposal. -Andrew Watt 15:25, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

'Ancient History is intended to be a high school level history textbook of the world from 4 million years before the present day to 500 CE 600 CE''. It will deal wtih themes chronologically, geographically, and thematically. So, questions of human evolution origins will be placed in the first chapter, because this is a widely accepted scientific theory based on archaeology and paleoanthropology; while questions of Biblical creation will be addressed in a chapter on Israel and the origins of Judaism. Issues appropriate to a specialist in the field should be summarized ("Scholars [or the specific term for the scholar such as Egyptologist, if the term is well known] wonder whether Tutankhamun was killed or died of natural causes.") rather than argued in several paragraphs. Broad themes supported with accurate detail are better than mountains of data. Other textbooks dealing with specific ancient cultures should be developed to deal with deeper issues&mdash;if desired&mdash;rather than become a disproporionate section of this text. For this project, no specific culture should have more than ten or twelve separate modules/wikipages.'''

'''Contributors agree that people make history interesting; therefore they use active voice statements rather than passive voice. ("archaeologists have found caves where people lived" as opposed to "caves have been found where people lived.") They prefers human explanations to divine or alien intervention. Because the book deals with numerous world civilizations, and because Wikibooks is an international project, BCE/CE dates should be used instead of BC/AD dates. Contributors recognize that environmental changes can be both a cause and effect of human behaviors, this is a text that presents consenus among modern historians about historical events&mdash;where there is dissension among historians the leading arguments will be briefly presented and in a manner apropriate for a high school audience&mdash;theories that contradict historical ans scientific consensus should not be included in the text..'''

Comments
I have suggested some changes, per Andrew's above prompt. I'll offer more comments later. - JCarriker 11:12, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I like your changes. I'm taking my car in for repairs today, and I may or may not have internet. We'll see. -Andrew Watt 11:46, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I see that this issue remains unresolved. I have a number of comments, which I number for ease of future reference:

Jguk 11:09, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) When considering style issues, a Wikibook should adopt a style of writing that is suitable for its target audience;
 * 2) Different Wikibooks will have different target audience. Wikibooks writing on a similar subject for different target audiences may well, therefore, adopt different styles;
 * 3) It is still not clear to me what the target audience of the Ancient History Wikibook is. You say "high school", but what age group does this refer to, and where is the high school located? Anywhere in the world, or in a particular US state? You make a reference to Wikibooks being an international project, but not that the book is to have an international audience. This makes it impossible for me to make definitive comments on the style of this book as it presently stands;
 * 4) It's quite reasonable for Wikibooks to have a number of books on Ancient History. In particular, I note that history is of great interest to many non-academics. The popularity of museums, ancient sites and literature published for the popular market evidences this. I would hope that Wikibooks would seek to have a book on Ancient History targeted at a wide, non-academic audience. I wonder whether it would be better to maintain the current text as having a general audience, and then allowing more specialised texts to be added elsewhere;
 * 5) As noted above, I am unable to tell whether this book has that audience. It may be that we need the Ancient History page to be a portal page to a number of books on the subject, one or more of which are for a non-academic audience, others being for various academic audiences;
 * 6) In terms of the particular style under consideration, the most appropriate style when writing for a general, non-academic audience is BC. The sheer domination in numerical terms of BC references, coupled with the likelihood that many general readers will not be as familiar with BCE as with BC, and the disputes that have occurred when there have been attempts to introduce BCE notation to a general audience are all evidence of this. As someone who is interested in history, and who has visited historical sites throughout the UK, Gibraltar and Malta in the last few years, I can truthfully say that I have never seen nor heard BCE notation other than on some internet sites and on the very occasional, and always imported, book. There's no doubt that if you are writing for someone like me, BC notation is the most appropriate;
 * 7) As noted above, this will not be generally true of all target audiences. To give another example (which is deliberately equally clearcut), if you are writing for English-speaking Israelis, BCE notation should be preferred - indeed, nowadays it would be perverse for the knowledgeable writer to use BC when writing for that audience.

Further to my comments above, might I suggest the following:

Heading: Who this book is for

'''Ancient History is intended to be a history textbook targeted English-readers the world over who are not historians by trade, but are interested in ancient history. For the purposes of this textbook, ancient history is taken to be the period from 4 million years before the present day to AD 600. [Wikibooks has other books on related issues that can be found XXXXXX]'''

[jguk comment: AD 600 seems like a late date for Ancient History to end!!!]

Heading: Note for contributors

'''This book will deal with themes chronologically, geographically and thematically. Issues appropriate to a specialist in the field should be summarized ("Egyptologists wonder whether Tutankhamun was killed or died of natural causes") rather than argued in several paragraphs. Broad themes supported with accurate detail are better than mountains of data.'''

'''Contributors agree that people make history interesting; therefore they use active voice statements rather than passive voice ("archaeologists have found caves where people lived" as opposed to "caves have been found where people lived"). This book should present consensus among modern historians about historical events&mdash;where there is dissension among historians the leading arguments will be briefly presented and in a manner appropriate for the target audience&mdash;theories that contradict historical and scientific consensus should not be included in the text.'''

'''This book is written in American [jguk comment: substitute British, if preferred, I don't think it makes much difference which dialect is used] English, but as it is for an international audience, try to avoid words and phrases that are unlikely to be familiar with the American dialect. Use BC and AD for dates.'''

Jguk 11:26, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Exitisting modules for civilizations formed after 600 or 500 CE
The following links are to existing modules that fall outside of the scope of this text, but were previously part of its contents. I have removed them to here in the hope that a more appropriate book can be found for them. -JCarriker 02:16, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


 * 1) (wp) Aztec Empire
 * 2) (wp) Ancient Cuba
 * 3) (wp) Incan Empire
 * 4) (wp) Toltec Empire
 * 5) (wp)  Russia


 * They are after 600 CE. But... if they get put in a book on modern history, they tend to get swept under the rug as civilizations destroyed to make way for the modern era.  Russia should probably go to a book on the Middle Ages -- Incas, Aztecs, Toltecs and Cuba maybe should stay until we find a better book for them.  And frankly, I want to learn more about them, myself! -Andrew Watt 10:42, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I have moved the Russia section to History of Russia/Contents. The other Amerindian civilizations should stay, I think. Νεοπτόλεμος ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 21:14, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

China
Can not the Xia, Shang and Zhou subsections of the East Asian section be merged with the Chinese article itself? As well as this, the whole Eastern Asian portion could use some elaboration, or at least some cleaning up. -GuoXia


 * It could definitely use some cleaning up, but I have to admit that I don't know enough about Chinese history to organize this section. My own school's history text divides the study of China into "early river valley civilizations", the "unification of china", "the Han empire", the "tang and song dynasties", and the closing of China under the "Ming Dynasty".  This is Roger Beck's World History: Patterns of Interaction , from McDougal Littell.  I don't think it's a good book, which is why I'm interested in this project. Andrew Watt (talk) 02:53, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Also, what about a section concerning the Three Kingdoms Period of China, to insert between the Han and Sui sections? -GuoXia

Contents page
I think this book would look better if we separated the cover page into two pages by moving the contents to a separate page, like... say... Ancient History/Contents. Thoughts? Νεοπτόλεμος 21:38, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Level and Depth
We need to keep in mind what level or depth of detail we wish to go into. Will it be high school level or college level. For one it seems beneficial to make it a college level text so that it can be used for study of each of the individual cultures by them selves without being too short.

glossary
Going to work on glossary. I think we should have more than 1 definitions for a word.