-Excerpt from the student worksheet
Students worked in groups to create hypothesis that might explain the reasoning behind this gruesome event. Some of the student ideas are listed below.
"Maybe they fought a battle and were captured and executed."
"They might have been sacrificed to a god."
"They could have owed someone money and the person wanted to make an example of them"
"They might have upset the king."
"Maybe they were Christians and didn't want to follow another religion"
"It could have been a warning to others."
"We thought they might have been traitors or assassins."
The goal of the activity was to show students the difference between learning history from a book, and actually being a historian. They learned that the study of history depends on forensics, a bit like the crime labs we see on television, because true historians don’t retell neatly written stories—they solve mysteries. Historians must use a variety of approaches and seek input from a variety of experts to make sense of the past. This lesson illustrates the importance of using an interdisciplinary approach to solve complex questions...
We watched a 15 minute clip from the BBC video below. Students took note of the variety of experts who were brought in to solve this mystery.
Tomorrow we will finish this activity with a short reading and students will discuss the problems future historians will have when learning about our time period. We have so little evidence about the Romans to go on, but future historians will have far too much information about us. How will they decide what is important and memorable about our time period, and who will decide?
* Please note I adapted this project from materials over at the Big History Project, a free online course focusing on history from the big bang to today.
