INTRODUCTION
Around 500 BCE, four empires emerged along the Mediterranean Sea, Central Asia, and East Asia. The Greek, Roman, Persian, and Chinese Empires all expanded at an astonishing pace, encompassing vast territories and millions of people. Each empire was affected by forces ranging from the impact of geographical factors to the decisions made by a few powerful leaders. The people living within the empires constructed new cultural forms and innovations as they interacted with and responded to these forces.

In this task, you will discuss the impact of geography on your choice of two of these empires. You will also describe the unique cultures of these empires and then consider how they changed over time by choosing one empire and identifying and discussing the empires rulers and the expansion of that empire.

REQUIREMENTS
Your submission must be your original work. No more than a combined total of 30% of the submission and no more than a 10% match to any one individual source can be directly quoted or closely paraphrased from sources, even if cited correctly. An originality report is provided when you submit your task that can be used as a guide.

You must use the rubric to direct the creation of your submission because it provides detailed criteria that will be used to evaluate your work. Each requirement below may be evaluated by more than one rubric aspect. The rubric aspect titles may contain hyperlinks to relevant portions of the course.

A.  Choose two empires from the list below:

  Greece

  Rome

  Persia

  China

1.  Discuss the impact of one geographical factor on each of the empires selected in part A (suggested length of 23 paragraphs).

Note: You must include two different geographical factors (one per empire).

B.  Describe two unique cultural characteristics for each of the empires you selected in part A (suggested length of 23 paragraphs).

C.  Describe changes in one of the chosen empires from part A by doing the following (suggested length of 23 paragraphs):

1.  Identify two major leaders of the chosen empire.

a.  Discuss one significant contribution for each of the major leaders you identified in part C1.

2.  Explain the methods used by the chosen empire to expand its territory and power.

3.  Analyze how your chosen empires political structures changed over time.

D.  Provide acknowledgement of source information, using in-text citations and references, for quoted, paraphrased, or summarized content.

1.  Include the following information when providing source references:

  author

  date

  title

  location of information (e.g., publisher, journal, or website URL).