INTRODUCTION
WHY STUDY SOCIAL STUDIES?

Commonality and Diversity

In some ways people everywhere are alike. We all have the same basic needs for things such as food, clothing, and shelter. We all laugh, get angry, and have our feelings hurt. These are a few examples of our commonality (kah muh NAL uh tee), or what we all share. At the same time, we need to understand that each person is different from everyone else. We each have our own ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. That is our diversity (duh VER suh tee). Learning about commonality and diversity can help you see that every person is unique and deserves understanding and respect.

Conflict and Cooperation

Because people are different from one another, they sometimes have conflicts, or disagreements. People can often settle their conflicts by cooperating, or working together. In social studies you will learn about the disagreements people have had in the past and about many of the ways people have found to settle their disagreements. You will also learn ways to cooperate and to settle conflicts in your own life.

Continuity and Change

While some things change over time, other things stay the same. Many things have stayed the same for years and will probably stay the same in the future. This means that they have continuity (kahn tuhn OO uh tee). Understanding continuity and change can help you see how things in the world came to be as they are. You will learn how a past event, or something that has happened, may have helped shape your life. You will also learn how present events can help you make better decisions about the future.

Individualism and Interdependence

Citizens can act by themselves to make a difference in the world. Their actions as individuals (in duh VIJ wuhlz) may be helpful or harmful to other citizens. Much of the time, however, people do not act alone. They depend on others for help, and others depend on them. People depend on one another in families, schools, religious groups, government groups, and other groups and organizations. Such interdependence (in ter dih PEN duhns) connects citizens with one another.

Interaction Within Different Environments

People's actions affect other people. People's actions also affect their environment (in VY ruhn muhnt), or surroundings. This is true of their physical environment, their home environment, their school environment, and any other environments of which they may be a part. Their environments affect them, too.

Understanding such interactions is important to understanding why things happened in the past and why things happen today. Understanding interaction is important for understanding social studies. The subjects that make up social studies are all related. You will learn, for example, that history—the study of people's past—is related to geography—the study of the Earth's surface and the way people use it. Civics and government, or the study of how people live together in a community, is related to economics, or the study of how people use resources. And all of these subjects are related to the study of culture. Culture is a people's way of life, including customs, ideas, and practices. These subjects interact with one another to tell a story. Together they tell how people have lived over time and how they have made contributions as citizens. Understanding this story will help you learn how to hold the office of citizen.

REVIEW What are the five themes of social studies?

Reading and Research Skills
Read Social Studies

2. Getting Started

Your book is divided into six units. At the beginning of each unit, you will find several pages that will help you preview the unit and predict what it will be about.

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3. The Parts of a Lesson

Each unit has two chapters, and each chapter is divided into lessons. The beginning and the end of a lesson are shown below.

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Each lesson, like each chapter and each unit, ends with a review. A time line may show the order of some of the events in the lesson. The review questions and activities help you check your understanding and show what you know.

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4. Understand the Process

You can follow these steps to read any lesson in this book.

Preview the whole lesson.

Look at the title and the headings to find out what the lesson is about.

Look at the pictures, the captions, and the questions to get an idea of what is most important in the lesson.

Read the Focus question at the beginning of the lesson to see how the lesson relates to life today.

Read the Main Idea statement to find out the main idea of the lesson.

Look at the Vocabulary list to see what new terms you will learn.

Read the lesson to learn more about the main idea. As you read, you will come to a number of questions with the label
REVIEW. Be sure to answer these questions before you continue reading the lesson.

When you finish reading the lesson, say in your own words what you have learned.

Look back over the lesson. Then answer the Lesson Review questions from memory. These questions will help you check your understanding of the lesson. The activity at the end of the review will help you show what you know.

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5. Some Other Parts of Your Book

Your textbook has many other features to help you learn. Some of them are shown below.

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At the back of your book is a section called For Your Reference. It includes the following reference tools.

How to Gather and Report Information

Almanac

Biographical Dictionary

Gazetteer

Glossary

Index

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What Happened?

To find out what really happened in the past, you need proof. You can find proof by studying two kinds of sources—primary sources and secondary sources. Historians use these kinds of sources in writing history.

Primary sources are the records made by people who saw or took part in an event. They may have written down their thoughts in a journal. They may have told their story in a letter or a poem. They may have taken a photograph, made a film, or painted a picture. Each of these records is a primary source, giving the people of today a direct link to a past event.

Hourglass (top), ancient writing from southwestern Asia (center), Egyptian wall painting (bottom)

A secondary source is not a direct link to an event. It is a record of the event written by someone who was not there at the time. A magazine article, newspaper story, or book written at a later time by someone who only heard or read about an event is a secondary source. A newspaper may include both primary sources and secondary sources.

When there are no written records of an event, historians gather proof with the help of archaeologists. Archaeologists study buildings, tools, and other objects people make or use. Based on their studies of these things, archaeologists form opinions about people and places in the past.

In this book, you will read many kinds of primary and secondary sources. The stories told in each lesson contain primary sources—the words and photographs of people in the past—as well as secondary sources written by historians. Maps, graphs, literature, pictures, and diagrams also help tell the stories you will read.

Who Took Part in It?

To understand the stories of the past, you need to know something about the people who took part in them and about the times and places in which they lived. This will help you understand their actions and feelings. Understanding of how people acted and felt long ago is called historical empathy. Historical empathy helps make the past seem alive.

By reading the words of people of the past, you can come to understand their perspective, or point of view. A person's perspective will depend on whether that person is old or young, a man or a woman, and rich or poor. Perspective is also shaped by a person's culture and race. Your understanding of history will grow as you study the many perspectives of the people who took part in a story. You will see that all people, even those living in other places and times, are a lot like you.

When Did It Happen?

One way to tell or write a story of the past is to put the events in the order in which they happened. This presents the story's chronology, or time order. As you read this book, you will notice that it is organized by chronology. The events described at the beginning of the book happened before the events described at the end of the book.

You will see many time lines in this book. They will help you understand each story's chronology. A time line is a diagram that shows the events that took place during a certain period of time in the order in which they happened. Time lines may show a period of a month or a year. They may show a period of 10 years, 100 years, or 1,000 years. Time lines can help you understand how one event may have led to another.

How and Why Did It Happen?

Many events in history are linked to other events. To find the links between events, you will need to identify causes and effects. A cause is any action that makes something happen. What happens because of that action is an effect. Historians have found that most events have many causes and many effects.

To understand an event, you need to analyze its causes and effects. When you analyze something, you break it into its parts and look closely at how those parts connect with one another. Once you have analyzed an event, you can summarize it or draw a conclusion about how or why it happened.

REVIEW What questions should you ask yourself when you read about the past?

Participation Skills
Work Together in Groups

3. Think and Apply

Follow the steps above for working together as you take part in the activities in Harcourt Brace Social Studies.

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Location

Everything on the Earth has its own location. Knowing your location helps you tell other people where you are. It also helps you know more about the world around you.

To tell exactly where you live in your town or city, you can use the names and numbers of your home address. To find your absolute location, or exact location, on the Earth, you can use the numbers of your global address. These numbers appear on a pattern of imaginary lines drawn around the Earth.

The location of a place can also be described in relation to the location of other places. You describe the relative location of a place when you say what it is near. You might say that the city of Rome is south of the city of Amsterdam.

Place

Every location on the Earth has a place identity made up of unique features that make it different from all other locations. A place can be described by its physical features—landforms, bodies of water, climate, soil, plant and animal life, and other natural resources. Many places also have human features—buildings, bridges, farms, roads, and the people themselves. People's culture, or way of life, also helps form a place's identity.

Human-Environment Interactions

Humans and the environment interact, or behave in ways that affect each other. People interact with their environment in different ways. Sometimes they change it. They clear land to grow crops. They build cities and towns. Sometimes people pollute the environment. The environment can also cause people to change the way they act. People who live in cold places wear warm clothing. Sometimes things that happen in nature, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes, cause great changes in people's lives.

Movement

Each day, people in different parts of the country and different parts of the world interact with one another. People, products, and ideas move from place to place by transportation and communication. Geography helps you understand the causes and effects of this movement. It also helps you understand how people came to live where they do.

Regions

Areas on the Earth with features that make them different from other areas are called regions. A region can be described by the physical features, such as mountains or a dry climate, that exist there. A region can also be described by its human features, such as the language spoken there or the kind of government. Sometimes a region is described by its political, cultural, or economic features.

Regions are sometimes divided into smaller regions that are easier to compare. Some geographers who study the Earth's surface and its people divide large areas of land into regions named for their relative locations. The huge continent of Asia is often divided into these regions—northern Asia, central Asia, southern Asia, southwestern Asia, southeastern Asia, and eastern Asia. The countries in each region are alike in many ways. They are all in the same part of Asia. They may have the same kind of landforms, climate, and natural resources.

REVIEW What are the five themes of geography?

Map and Globe Skills
Read a Map

2. The Parts of a Map

Maps are drawings that show the Earth or part of the Earth on a flat surface. To help you read maps, mapmakers add certain features to most maps they draw. These are a title, a map key, a compass rose, a locator, a map scale, and an inset map. Mapmakers may also show a grid of numbered lines on maps to help people locate places more easily.

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The map title tells the subject of the map. What is the title of the map shown on page 38? A map title may also help you understand what kind of map it is. Physical maps show landforms and bodies of water. Sometimes, shading is used to help you see where the hills and mountains are located. Political maps show cities and national boundaries, or borders. Many of the maps in this book are historical maps that show parts of the world as they were in the past. Historical maps often have dates in their titles. When you look at any map, look for information in the title to find out what the map is about.

The map key, sometimes called a map legend, explains what the symbols on the map stand for. Symbols may be colors, patterns, lines, or other special marks, such as circles, triangles, or squares. According to the map key for the map on page 38, stars are used to show state capitals. What symbol is used to show the national capital?

The compass rose, or direction marker, shows the cardinal directions, or main directions—north, south, east, and west. A compass rose also helps you find the intermediate directions, which are between the cardinal directions. Intermediate directions are northeast, northwest, southeast, and southwest.

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The locator is a small map or picture of a globe. It shows where the area shown on the main map is located in a state, in a country, on a continent, or in the world. The locator on the map of the United States on page 38 is a globe that shows the continent of North America. The United States is shown in red.

The map scale compares a distance on a map to a distance in the real world. A map scale helps you find the real distance between places on a map. Each map in this book has a scale that shows both miles and kilometers.

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Map scales are different, depending on the size of the area the map shows. Look at the map of the United States on page 38. On that map are two smaller maps—one of Alaska and one of Hawaii. A small map within a larger map is called an inset map. The boxes around Alaska and Hawaii show that they are inset maps. Inset maps have their own scales. Inset maps make it possible to show places in greater detail or to show places that are beyond the area shown on the main map.

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The north-south and east-west lines on a map cross each other to form a pattern of squares called a grid. The east-west lines are lines of latitude. The north-south lines are lines of longitude. This grid helps you find the absolute location, or global address, of a place.

4. Think and Apply

Look again at the map of Venezuela. Find the different parts of the map, and discuss with a partner what information the map gives you about Venezuela.

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