Assignment Guidelines:

For this assignment, you will compare one aspect of two civilizations we will discuss in this course. You will choose any two civilizations. They can be from any chapter that we are discussing. After you choose the civilizations, look at their social, political, economic, religious, or military characteristics. Choose one of these features, research how each of your civilizations developed the specific characteristic you are researching further. You will then compare and contrast them. To do this, you will look at the ways they are similar, and then discuss how they differ and why. Remember, for a compare and contrast paper, you must address the same elements and characteristics of each civilization and discuss them from each side.

Example Topic:

You could compare the religious characteristics between the Greeks and Romans. To create a successful paper, you would discuss their origin myths, their pantheons, and they way that the temples in both regions were influenced by or had influence on the states. Some things to remember with a topic such as this, Greece never had a specific Greek society and therefore you would need to look at the different city-states (poleis) and how they integrated religion into their rule. Rome borrowed heavily from the Greek pantheon but altered it and you would need to describe how those alterations made it different. Christianity was not an official Roman religion, at least until near the end of the Empire and therefore had much less of an influence on the development of Roman history than the older belief systems. A stronger paper would look at the earlier religions because of how they shaped Rome. Christianity's influence was much more influential on the development of Europe than on Rome.

For any topic you choose, think critically about what you are discussing and the role it played in these civilizations, and choose accordingly.