Interpretations and significance, Year 7: more practice

How long the effects lasted

提示Think about duration: for how much time did people feel it?

为什么Significance is judged by breadth (how many people), depth (how much their lives changed) and how long the effects lasted.

No, because fame is not the same as significance

提示Check depth, number of people and length of effect.

为什么A battle can be famous without changing many lives for long. Another event that is less famous might change far more.

Printing changed far more lives, more deeply and for much longer

提示Compare the number of people affected, and for how long.

为什么Printing spread ideas, news and learning across Europe for centuries, while a wedding is mostly a single day.

It can change, as later effects appear or people's questions change

提示Think about what hindsight reveals as the years pass.

为什么Something that seemed minor at the time may later be seen as a turning point, and historians' questions change with each generation.

Continuity

提示Ask whether life stayed the same.

为什么Great political changes did not always change everyday work. History includes both what changed and what stayed the same.

Events affect different groups, such as town and country, rich and poor, in different ways

提示Think of two people in the same period whose daily lives were unalike.

为什么A new law might transform a city overnight but make little difference in a remote village.

continuity

提示The opposite of change.

为什么Spotting continuity alongside change gives a fuller picture of a period.

It judges the Romans by technology they did not have

提示Could anyone in ancient Rome know about electricity?

为什么Judging the past by what we know now is anachronistic. A better question is what the Romans actually used and why.

People acted on the ideas and knowledge available to them then, not ours

提示Think about what someone living in that era could understand.

为什么Understanding beliefs of the time helps explain decisions without simply approving or condemning them.

Potatoes reached Europe from the Americas long after Roman times

提示Think about which continent the vegetable was first grown in.

为什么Potatoes came to Europe in the 1500s after contact with the Americas, around a thousand years after the Romans left Britain.