History - ancient Maya (Upper KS2) Lesson 4 BUNDLE

**This lesson introduces a non-European society that provides contrasts with British history - the ancient Maya civilization. **

Included in the bundle:
-Lesson Slides
-Student Reader
-Source Pack

This is Lesson 4 of a series of four, knowledge-rich curriculum lessons.

Each lesson combines an accessible student reader with high-quality historical sources, explicit vocabulary instruction and regular retrieval opportunities.

Activities encourage pupils to think like historians: examining evidence, making inferences, asking questions and connecting new learning to prior knowledge.

Lesson 4 introduces the following key knowledge:

-The ancient Maya were not ruled by one king. Different city-states had their own rulers and royal courts.

-Maya rulers demonstrated their status through clothing, jewellery, headdresses and carefully constructed images.

-They commissioned monuments, temples, palaces and inscriptions that displayed their authority.

-Inscriptions connected rulers to their ancestors and royal dynasties and recorded important events.

-Maya kingship was closely connected to religion. Rulers could be presented as intermediaries between humans, ancestors and gods.

-Pakal’s tomb and the Temple of the Inscriptions provide unusually rich evidence about Maya rulership.

-His burial included jade jewellery and a mosaic jade mask, while the enormous carved sarcophagus presented Pakal in a religious and dynastic context.

-Archaeologists have to distinguish between what evidence shows directly and what they infer from it.