1. Bellwork: Using the artifacts in this classroom, make one inference or conclusion about Mr. Woodman and how he lives his life.

2. Objectives 8/29 and 8/30
You will know the origins and significance of the civilization in the Indus River Valley and will be able to analyze documents and artifacts from this time period.
Procedures
1. Finish Egypt document analysis
2. Crash Course and Harappan Inferences sheet
3. GRAPES for Indus River Valley
4. Notes over the Vedic Age in India
5. Begin religion groupwork if time

3. Weeks of August 28 and September 4
F 8/25/M 8/28: River Valley Civilizations: Egypt
Time travel assignment due
Tu 8/29/W 8/30: River Valley Civilizations: Indus River Valley Time Travel Assignment due
Th 8/31/F 9/1: River Valley Civilizations: China
Ch. 3 Study Guide due
M 9/4: No School
Tu 9/5/W 9/6: Unit 2 Coming Attractions, Han China binder activities
Th 9/7/F 9/8: Finish Han China activities, Practice civil service exam
No study guide due or quickwrite this week

4. Binder Activities
Page 7 and 8: Read through the pieces of evidence to make inferences about what the lives of the people living in the Indus River Valley may have been like.
Use information seen in the Crash Course video, from Chapter 1, and the Cracking the Culture worksheet to complete the GRAPES for the Indus River Valley (Binder Page 4)

5. The
Vedic
Age
(1500 BCE BCE)

6. Aryan (noble) Migration
pastoral  depended on their cattle.
warriors  horse-drawn chariots.

7. Sanskrit writing

8. The Vedas 1200 BCE-600 BCE. written in SANSKRIT.
Hindu core of beliefs:
hymns and poems.
religious prayers.
magical spells.
lists of the gods and goddesses.
Rig Veda  oldest work.

9. The Caste System (Binder Page 11)
Originally based on color: Aryans were “wheat-colored” and Dasas (people who were already in India) were darker skinned.
Four Main Varnas (colors) or Castes:
Priests (Brahmin)
Warriors and Aristocrats (Kshatriya)
Cultivators, artisans, and merchants (Vaishya)
Landless peasants and serfs—the word dasa comes to mean slave (Shudra)
Untouchables (people who performed dirty tasks) added much later
Caste comes the Portuguese word casta which refers to a social class of herditary and unchangeable status. When Portuguese merchants visited India during 16th century, they noticed the sharp, inherited distinctiosn between different social groups, which they referred to as castes. Scholars have employed the term caste ever since in reference to the Indian social order.
When Aryans first entered India, they probably had a fairly simple society consisting of herders and cultivators led by warrior chiefs and preists. As they settled in India, however, growing social complexity and interaction with Dravidian peoples promted them to refine their social distincitions. The Aryans used the term varna, a Sanskrit word meaning color to refer to the major social classes. This terminology suggests that social distinctions arose partly from differences in complexion between the Aryans who referred to themselves as wheat colored and the darker skinned Dravidians. Over time Aryans and Dravidian mixed, mingled, interacted, and intermarried to the point that distinguishing between them was impossible. Nevertheless in early Vedic times differences between the two peoples probably prompted Aryans to ase social distinctions on Aryan or Dravidian ancestry.
After about 1000 BCE the Aryan increasingly recognized four main varns.

10. Doctrines of the Upanishads
Samsara – Upon death, individuals go temporarily to the World of the Fathers and then return to earth in a new form
Karma – “…a man of good acts will become good, a man of bad acts, bad. He becomes pure by pure deeds, bad by bad deeds”
Suffering – A certain amount of pain and suffering is inevitable in human existence
Moksha is a deep endless sleep that comes with permanent liberation from physical incarnation (death)
Brahmin – You can achieve Brahmin through meditation and asceticism, leading extremely simple lives and denying all pleasure