-The students need to understand the basic difference between the concept of history (based on written records of human activities in the past) and prehistory (past events before writing was introduced in a given culture or society). They should be shown examples of history and prehistory resources such as chronicles, annals, documents, letters, inscriptions/meaningful symbols versus archaeological artefacts, excavations, tools, oral traditions, myths, legends, past customs or tra-ditions. The next step is to introduce and discuss with students how modern science (e.g. archae-ology, genetics/human DNA studies or carbon dating techniques of fossils to determine their age, etc.) helps us to look into the “Dark Ages”. It is very welcome and recommendable to create a little bit of “mysterious and magical” atmosphere to the topic by mentioning ancient legends, myths or folklore stories together with music pieces and projected images in the background (thus activating multi-sensory perception of the students). The teacher should rather simplify the scien-tific terms and/or avoid overburdening the students with too much of “a scientific talk” depending on their age, general knowledge and cognitive skills.

Activities and their web resources : (to be transferred to and/or modified into Canva History tem-plates in the development process)

– Presentation

Intro: Presentation of the oldest known image of wheel in the world: the Bronocice Vase in Po-land– the invention and use of wheel for the history of mankind cannot be overestimated when you think about all civilisation and not just travelling and means of transport – learn about sensa-tional discovery of joint Polish and American team of archaeologists and try to discover the mean-ing of the story told on the vase (it’s a kind of a prehistoric cartoon – what story will it tell you?). Find out about other places in Europe and the world of similar archaeological discoveries.

https://muzea.malopolska.pl/en/objects-list/1619

The link above transfers you the virtual museum where you can read more information about the object, see gallery of pictures and activate 3D model. If you are interested in technical details you will find even more information on the website to explore on your own.

The next link (down below) transfers you to the website of Archaelogical Museum in Kraków, Po-land, where you can navigate a series of pictures and photos with descriptions (including English right below Polish text) which will give you a chance to explore the story behind the Bronocice Vase discovery, other artefacts showing wheels and carts of this kind in the world with historical timeline. Finally you can try yourself to interpret the story that may be hidden behind the draw-ings on the vase as if it was a kind of cartoon strip from the prehistoric past. The students should be given enough time to explore the websites on their own and acquire some more information out of their curiosity.

WAZA z Bronocic

At the final stage the students should clearly understand and be able to communicate the importance of the wheel for the history of humankind. The teacher can summorise the topic by pointing out that the invention of the wheel is one of the foundations of modern civili-sation and culture. Thousands of years of inventiveness have not created anything to re-place the wheel. The wheel has encouraged progress and creativity for all human civilisa-tions. The teacher then may (optionally ) expose students to the discovery of the oldest wooden wheel, with an axle, 5,200 years old, which was discovered in Slovenia in the Ljubljana Marshes. The link below presents a very short film about the discovery (with pic-tures and maps) including the Bronocice Vase at the end as well (there is no need of tran-script).