Lesson video

Hello, this is Mr. Cooper tuning in for your fourth and final lesson of this inquiry, looking at the Mongol empire.

Hope you find interesting so far, I certainly did, really enjoyed making these lessons for you guys.

So today, we're going to be looking at something called the Pax Mongolica.

It's two strange words, but you will learn all about what these two words mean.

So first of all, same as ever, piece of paper, books, date, title, underline both, and hide your phone.

Put it away.

Don't want to see it.

Well, I can't see it, but you shouldn't be able to see, either.

So when you've done that, restart the video, and we'll get going with the lesson.

So this is the last lesson, and I would like you to do the following as we have done three times before.

Please write the date and the title.

So "The Pax Mongolica" is your title for today.

Underline both.

Pause now just to get that done, and then when you've done so, restart the video, and we will crack on with the lesson.

So on your screen is a, well, I think it's a very beautiful image.

This is actually the first part of a map and I'm going to tell you about this map because we will look at this map in more detail as we go through the lesson.

So this map was made by a Jewish man called Abraham Cresques who lived in the 1300s on the Island of Majorca, and he was a very well known mapmaker, and he was asked to make a map by a very important king.

Now, the thing about this map that was different was that it covered the whole of, well not the whole world, but the whole of the known world at that time.

So we've got Europe, and we've also got Asia.

Now, this map is, I have to say, one of my favourite things that I've come across whilst teaching history, and I hope by the end of this lesson you will agree that it's pretty awesome.

On the screen now, we have the map, and it's a map that stretches right the way from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east.

Now, I want you just to imagine what Abraham Cresques had to help him make this map.

There was no internet, no phones, no newspapers.

He was making this map with candlelight, basically, and he managed to make this map, which we will look at in more detail in a moment, basically by asking people what they'd found, where they travelled, what they'd seen, and it's a really incredible achievement, and it's a really beautiful piece of work, as well, and what we're going to do now is to look at the map in more detail and also the characters.

You see there are characters, little pictures of people all over the map.

Each of them represents an important person, and when we talk about the Pax Mongolica, the Mongolian Peace which you'll be reading about in more detail, and the fact that Abraham Cresques was able to make this map was thanks to the connections that developed thanks to the Pax Mongolica.

Because there was peace within the empire, people could travel more.

They could exchange ideas.

They could talk.

They could trade more, and the consequence of this, one of the consequences at least, was a greater awareness of what was happening elsewhere in the world.

So just quickly, I'd like you to work out if you can, first of all, spot where Britain is on this map.

Can you see where this country is, just to give you an idea of where are we're going to be talking at? So pause here.

Have a go.

If you can't find, don't worry 'cause I'll show you in a moment.

There we go.

So I've put on the bottom side half of the screen a Google map.

So bear in mind that Google uses satellites to map the world.

Abraham Cresques was making his map based on what people told him and perhaps some other maps, as well.

So the skill that went into the making of this map was a real achievement.

So I'm going to show you just so you can see where things are.

Inside the purple circle, we have the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.

Then we have India in the dark green circle, and then we have China over in the pink circle.

Now, you will see that the further away we get from Europe, the less accurate the map becomes, and this shouldn't surprise us because, obviously, the further away from Majorca where Abraham Cresques was living we get we go, the less accurate the information becomes.

So he still is able to give roughly the correct shapes and sizes, but it starts to get less and less accurate.

So for Europe, it's pretty, pretty close actually to the Google map below, but the further east we go, the less accurate it becomes, and that shouldn't be a surprise because there's just less knowledge about these these areas.

So we're going to zoom in now.

So the first two panels, we have Britain there, Spain there, and North Africa there.

So he's got the shapes right.

He's got the general sizes right, and we have a pretty accurate representation of Europe there, and then also, we have Sardinia inside that circle there.

You can even see he's got the two islands, Sardinia and Corsica, just north of the island, pretty much they're, actually, pretty accurate.

We then have going to the other end of the map, China here and the South China Sea here.

Now what's interesting about this map, you'll see that the characters, the images at the top of the map are upside down.

Now, it's important to think about what this map was used for.

So the Catalan Atlas made by Abraham Cresques would have been laid out on a table, and you would have been able to walk around the table to inspect, to look closely at the map.

So it looks like it's upside down to us, but actually, if you would have seen this map, it wouldn't have been hanging on a wall.

It would have been lying on a table.

So it wouldn't have appeared like it was upside down if you had it in front of you, and then very importantly, when we're talking about the relevance of this map to the Pax Mongolica, this will become clear, actually, when we zoom into this particular character more, Mongolia right in the middle.

Now what's amazing about this is that Abraham Cresques, even though it's not fully accurate, it's not exactly how it is, clearly China is not the right shape, and he's kind of missed out a lot of the Arctic Circle, he does get the location of Mongolia correct, Mongolia in the middle of Asia, and that is exactly where Mongolia was.

So we're going to zoom in now to some individual areas.

So this particular, inside of this pink circle, roughly where the Mongol Empire was, so I'm just going to, sorry, zoom back.

So think about this.

This is the map here, and we are going to then go to the Google map.

Sorry, not the Google map.

It's a recreation of where the Mongol Empire was.

So roughly, we are talking about this area.

So this would have been what we refer to as the Mongol Peace, the Pax Mongolica.

Inside this empire, there was no longer any fighting between kingdoms and empires because they were all obeying the Mongol emperor, and this had, as you'll read, had some really big consequences.

It made trading a lot easier.

It made travelling easier, and we have something called The Silk Road becoming much more important.

So now we're going to zoom in.

This is my favourite part.

I'm really looking forward to doing this with you.

So we're going to zoom into some of the images on this map.

So we've looked at the map as a whole.

We're now going to zoom into these images.

So first one, remember flipping it around so it's now the right way up, camels and people on horseback, traders.

So you might see on the map, actually, there's some sentences just there.

So these sentences, this is what these sentences say.

"Those that wish to cross this desert stop and rest during a week in a city where travellers and their animals relax.

After that, they get what is needed for the next seven months of the journey because in the desert, one travels an entire day and night before reaching drinkable water." Now, what is incredible about this, Abraham Cresques had clearly how to chat with someone or how to chat with someone who'd had a chat with someone else who had travelled across the desert to transport goods from Asia to Europe, and this is an amazing, like he's describing a really detailed thing.

So it'd take seven months to make this journey.

and it could end, crossing the desert took was so dangerous that you could run out of water.

So next one, can you work out who these guys are? Men, three men with crowns on.

"This area is called Tarsia, and it is from there which the three very wise kings departed and came to Bethlehem in Judea with their presents and worshipped Jesus Christ." So here, we have Abraham Cresques describing the location that people in the mediaeval era thought the three wise men came from.

I love the facial expressions of these guys.

The first, the one in front, he's kind of pointing, presumably pointing at the star.

We've got the guy in the middle.

He's looking little bit unsure about this, and then the guy behind is, well, he's just following it all.

Next one, "The Sea of the Indies there are seven thousand five hundred and forty-eight islands whose wonders of gold, silver, spices, and precious stones we cannot discuss here." So if you look at the picture on the right, you see the South China, well, what is now called the South China Sea, as Abraham Cresques has clearly been told that there were, that there's a very specific number of islands there full of all sorts of expensive luxury goods, and I just love the phrasing, "We cannot discuss here." Now, I think that's because they're just too many to discuss her, rather than them being sort of very unpleasant to talk about, and the last one, this is the most, from our perspective, we're talking about the Mongol Empire.

The most important person on this map, here we go.

We've turned him the right way up.

These are the words next to him.

So, "The most powerful prince of the Mongols is Great Khan.

This emperor is richer than any other emperor in the world.

This emperor is protected by twelve thousand horsemen that stay at the court three months of the year." So Abraham Cresques, he made this map in 1375.

As we've looked at the Mongol Empire, it'd had fallen apart into four different bits, but still, this was the view at the time,.

The richest man in the world, the richest emperor in the world was the Mongol Khan, right in the middle of the map, and this was kind of the centre of the world, the centre of Asia.

So pause here, and then what I'd like you to do is read each sentence and see if you can spot the mistakes.

Each of these sentences, there's a mistake.

There's one mistake, and I'd like to, is if you've spotted what the mistake is, I'd like you to correct it.

So write the sentence out, correct the mistake, and then we will continue the lesson.

So, first one, it's not two wise men.

It's three wise men.

The three wise men are shown on the Catalan Atlas, travelling from the east on The Silk Road.

Two, travelling along The Silk Road was very difficult because it crossed huge deserts, not forests, deserts.

Three, the Catalan Atlas says that the Khan was protected by a huge army and was the richest emperor in the whole world, not the poorest, the richest emporor.

Four, European explorers thought that on the islands in the Sea of the Indies, there was a lot of gold, silver, and spices, not sheep.

Five, the Catalan Atlas was made in 1375, not 1975, on the Island of Majorca.

So make sure you've got the correct answers down, and then, we'll move to the next part of the lesson.

So done this many times before.

what you're going to do now is pause the video, go to the next part of the lesson.

You're going to read through the worksheets on the slides, and then you're going to answer these five questions in full sentences.

So pause the video, read the slides, answer the questions, and then when you've done that, restart the video, and we'll go through the answers together.

So, first question, what happened to the Mongol Empire by the end of the 13th century? The acceptable answer, it fell apart.

Good answer, by the end of the 13th century, the Mongol Empire had broken into four parts.

From an early lesson, you might remember the name khanate.

So in the same way, a kingdom has a king, a khanate has a khan.

So by the end of the 13th century, the Mongol Empire had broken into four parts, and so that's the good answer.

Two, what does Pax Mongolica mean? Acceptable answer, the Mongolian Peace.

The good answer, the Pax Mongolica is the name given to the period of time when there was peace throughout the Mongol Empire.

So after the expansion of the empire, which we looked at, which was a very violent and bloody affair, there was a period when actually there was a lot of peace between these parts of the world because they're all part of the same empire.

Three, what types of things were traded along The Silk Road? The acceptable answer, silk and spices.

Good answer, the things that were traded along The Silk Road were luxury goods, like silk and spices, that were in demand in other parts of the world.

So in Europe, you couldn't get silk or spices, and therefore there, it was worth spending a lot of money to bring this from other parts of the world.

Four, who was Marco Polo? The acceptable answer, an Italian traveller.

The good answer, Marco Polo was an Italian man who travelled all over the Mongol Empire and wrote down his experiences in a book that became famous back home.

Five, why did the Black Death spread so far? The acceptable answer, the world was connected.

The good answer, the Black Death spread so far because infected animals were accidentally transported by traders travelling along The Silk Road.

So unfortunately, yes, The Silk Road allowed for lots of things to be traded, but it also allowed things that were less good to be transported, so including infecting rats.

This is what historians think, at least.

So the last part of the lesson, writing activity.

Historians, we read, and we write.

Therefore, we've done the reading, and now we're going to do the writing, and we're going to answer this question what was life like inside the Mongol Empire, and what we're really getting at is we're going to describe the Pax Mongolica.

So at the start of this inquiry, we looked at the violent start, the bloody attacks, the invasions of the Mongol armies, the destruction of these very big cities.

Once that had happened, however, once the Mongol Empire had been created, we have this period known as the Pax Mongolica, and this is what we're going to be writing about now in this part of the lesson.

So don't panic, lots of words on the screen.

Don't worry.

What I want you to do, we've done this already, I want you to write down the sentences that will help you answer a question about the Pax Mongolica.

So 10 sentences on the screen, loads of information that hopefully will be familiar to you that we've covered in the last few lessons.

I don't want you to write down every sentence, only the sentences that are going to help you answer a question about the Pax Mongolica.

So pause here.

Write down those that you think are going to be useful, and then we'll come to the last part of the lesson.

So, there we go.

On the screen, There are now six sentences that I think will help you answer this question.

So one and two, four, six, nine, and 10.

So pause it, make sure you've got those sentences down, and then we will come to the last part of the lesson when we're going to use this knowledge to write a nice paragraph, answering the question.

So the question is what was life like inside the Mongol Empire? So there might be things from previous lessons you want to include.

That would be absolutely fine.

The first sentence clearly answering the question life inside the Mongol Empire was what, and then we say this was called the, well, I think we can clearly say this was the Pax Mongolica.

An example, we've got loads of examples now of how people benefited from the Pax Mongolica.

So describe those different examples.

and then what you can do, which would be really fantastic, is use the.

The first part of the lesson, we looked at the Catalan Atlas.

What does the Catalan Atlas show us about the world in 1375, at least, or that period around 1375? For me, the big thing it shows is that there was connection between east and west, and that was thanks to, in part, the Pax Mongolica.

So have a go now.

I don't want you to spend more than five or 10 minutes doing this.

Turn this into a short paragraph, and then this will come to the end of the lesson.

As I have said many times before, this is about practising.

If you could do it without.

If you didn't find this difficult, you wouldn't need to be studying history in school, and even if you could do this, even if you don't find this difficult, this is all about improving the kind of writing that we're producing.

So we've got the knowledge.

Now we're going to use the knowledge to write a good paragraph.

So if you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

Again, this is not compulsory in any sense.

I would just really like to see the work that you're producing, because normally I would see the work that's being produced by my students, and so if you can, please do that.

So that brings us to the end of the fourth and final lesson of this inquiry.

Hopefully, you've learned all about the Mongol Empire, and now you can go and tell your friends and family all about Genghis Khan and the great and slightly unpleasant things that he did.

Interesting story, though, I hope you'll agree, and what I'd like you to do, as I read, there's a short quiz, five questions just to make sure we've got this stuff in our heads so that you can then tell your parents and your carers all about this stuff, and then if I don't see you again, I hope all is well, and if I do, great.

Have a lovely day.