Chronology | Raupapatanga Wā

Whāinga ako: Lesson Goals

To define and understand chronology, BC/AD and anachronisms
To use a timeline to organise events in chronological order

Today we are introducing some new keywords.

Chronology is the study of exactly when things happened. When historians put events in chronological order they put them in the order that they happened. Like detectives, by placing important events in chronological order we can discover many interesting things about why events happened. A timeline is an example of chronology.

B.C. stands for “Before Christ,” as in Jesus Christ. It indicates the number of years before the birth of Jesus

A.D. stands for the Latin phrase Anno Domini. That translates to “In the year of our Lord.” It's used to mark years after the birth of Jesus.

Anachronisms is when something is out of its place, out of its time. e.g. an old building surrounded by really new builds.

Chronology & Timelines

To record and refer to things in history we order them using a calendar. We give events seasons, dates, days, times. Putting things in order can help us understand the cause and effect of an event (why something happened and what happened because of it). A timeline is a visual representation of time that shows a sequence of historical events in chronological order.

Note: a correctly done timeline should use a scale; in the same way a graph or ruler measures something, the notches in a timeline should be spaced according to how many years are between each event.