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Work out the order events happened in from the days, times and order words a source gives, and say when a source does not fix the order at all.
Paper packet. Every task here also exists on screen, where it is checked automatically; answers written on paper are not assessed by Nydus. When you are back at a device, enter your answers there.
By the end of this lesson you can put the events a source reports into the order they happened, and point at the day, time or small word that told you. You will also learn that the order a writer chose is not the order things happened in, and what to say when a source fixes no order.
This passage is not old. Nobody from long ago wrote it. We wrote it at the school, out of what people who study the past have dug up, read and published. That makes it a secondary source: it tells you about the past second-hand. The things it tells you about — the clay tablets — are the sources it rests on.
Thousands of years ago, in the land between two rivers that is now mostly Iraq, people wrote by pressing the cut end of a reed into a lump of soft clay. The reed left small wedge-shaped marks. When the clay dried it went hard, and the marks stayed in it. Archaeologists have since dug up a great many of these tablets, and museums keep them today.
Most of the tablets that have been found are not stories or poems. They are records. How much grain went into a store. How many sheep. Who owed what to whom. How many workers were given food. Somebody was keeping count, and the tablet was how they remembered.
A tablet that lists sacks of grain is good evidence that somebody was counting sacks of grain. It is not evidence about what those people found funny, or what they were afraid of, because nobody wrote that on it. When you meet a source, the useful question is not only "is it true?" but "what is it evidence for?"
Notice something about those tablets and about Bel's made-up list in Ashfield. Both are lists. Both were written by somebody who was counting, so that they would remember. A very long time apart, and the same reason for picking something up to write with.
You can say what a source states and how far it reaches. Nearly every source you have read is also a record of when: a list of days, or a note written the same evening.
The order of some events is which came first, which second, and so on. An order word fixes one event against another: before, after, first, then, already. A date or a time does the same job without words.
The passage you have just read mentions museums before it mentions the reed. But no museum could hold a tablet before somebody made it. The events have an order of their own, and it does not have to be the order a writer chose.
So where does the real order come from? Three places, all of them small. Days and dates: Monday comes before Tuesday. Times: 8:02 comes before 8:26. And order words: I sold honey before noon and none after, because it rained fixes the selling before the rain, whichever half of the sentence comes first.
When none of the three is there, the source has not fixed the order, and saying so is the right answer.
Another way: picture
A washing line with pegs on it. Each event hangs at one place along the line. A writer can point at the pegs in any order, and the pegs do not move.
Another way: steps
One: look for days and dates. Two: look for times. Three: look for order words. Four: if none is there, say the source does not fix the order.
| What you find | What it fixes | Example |
|---|---|---|
| A day or a date | Everything on the earlier day came first | Monday: grain in. Tuesday: the gate mended. |
| A time | The earlier time came first | 8:02 leaving; 8:51 arriving |
| An order word | The one thing against the other | sold before noon, rain after |
Two things mentioned together are not ordered by being mentioned together.
The commonest mistake is taking the order of the sentences for the order of the events, which is how a tablet ends up in a museum before anybody made it. The second is reading before and after too quickly: they look alike and point opposite ways. The third is deciding an order the source never gave you.
The note says: "I sold eleven pots of honey before noon and none after, because it rained."
Both the selling and the rain are in one sentence.
The word doing the work is before, and then after: honey before noon, nothing after the rain came.
The order word is the smallest word in the line.
So the selling came first and the rain came second.
Mentioning two things together does not order them; the word does.
The passage tells you about museums keeping tablets, and then about a reed pressed into soft clay.
That is the order it is written in.
But a museum cannot hold a tablet that has not been made yet.
Ask what had to happen before each thing could happen at all.
So the real order starts with the reed and ends with the museum.
The writing runs one way and the events ran the other.
These five things come from the life of one clay tablet, and they have been mixed up. Put them back into the order they happened.
Number the steps in order (write the number in the box):
The passage about writing on clay is at the top of this lesson. Three questions about when things happened in it.
This task has no paper form; do it on a device.
Here is a made-up Ashfield store note. Mark the one line that tells you which of two things happened first.
This task has no paper form; do it on a device.
A made-up note says: "I sold eleven pots of honey before noon and none after, because it rained." Which of the two happened first?
Here is five made-up messages sent on one morning, mixed up. Nothing here is old, and every one of them is a source. Put them into the order they happened.
Number the steps in order (write the number in the box):
Lesson test: one question per skill, one attempt each, no hints. Your answers are checked when you submit.
These five things come from a made-up Ashfield store list for one week, and they have been mixed up. Put them back into the order they happened.
Number the steps in order (write the number in the box):
You can order the events in a source, name the day, time or order word that fixes each one, and say when a source does not settle the order. Look at anything with a date on it today and say what it tells you came first.