Western Civilization I / Unit 2 WC1 0124 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Reading a Bronze Age Map: Who Bordered Whom
The idea
The exam's map questions on this period show the eastern Mediterranean with four or five regions shaded and ask which power held which, or which two shared a frontier. The method is to fix the coastline first, then place the four Bronze Age regions clockwise: Greece in the northwest, Anatolia in the north, Canaan and Mesopotamia in the east, Egypt in the south. Everything else is a question about neighbors.
In practice
Take three questions. Which power's heartland was a peninsula with an island civilization to its south: Greece, with Crete below it, so Mycenaeans over Minoans after the early fourteen hundreds. Which two empires shared a contested frontier in Syria: the northern power and the southern power, so the Hittites and New Kingdom Egypt, who settled it by treaty with Syria north and Canaan south. Where did the Phoenician cities lie: on the coast between the Hittite south and the Egyptian north, the strip of present-day Lebanon, with Carthage far to the west across the sea. Every answer comes from the clockwise order and one fact about each region.
Where people slip
The map moves over time. After eleven hundred the Hittites are gone, Assyria fills the northeast, and by six seventy-one one power holds both the Nile and Mesopotamia for the first time. Check the date on the map before you answer.
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