Annotated Timeline of Silk Road History

Working as a group, students will be expected to complete the Annotated Timeline as described in the Example of Methods. Timelines must express chronologically events relevant to a history of the Silk Road from at least seven civilizations including Chinese, Indian, Islamic and Roman. The period from Qin dynasty (221 BCE) to the end of the Ming dynasty (1644 CE) must be covered. At least eighty events must be cited with dates. Twenty-four events must be annotated with concise yet informative text which relates the event to the theme your group has chosen from the Five Questions Facing China Today.

One of a historian's most difficult decisions is determining which information to include or omit from a product. In this case, you should emphasize events which affect travel and commerce across the Silk Road. The events you chose then will not necessarily be the internal political or social developments within a civilization. For example, the fall of the Roman Republic and transformation to imperial rule may not be a significant fact to include unless it affected trade and travel across the Silk Road.

Products will be graded according to the following criteria:

• (15 points) The product is attractive, well–designed and well–constructed;
• (15 points) The product provides valuable and usable information;
• (15 points) Annotations and citations are free of mechanical and historical errors;
• (15 points) The product meets minimum requirements for the number of civilizations, time span, number of citations and number of annotations;
• (20 points) The selected events are relevant to the history of the Silk Road;
• (20 points) The annotations relate to and convey information about one of the Five Questions Facing China Today.