*This is the message I left with my Y13 History class at the end of our last lesson*:

This is the modern day, 2020 AD. It is a bizzare and confusing time, full of uncertainty, unknowns and upheaval.

Thread/1

This is the Suleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul, the architectural zenith of the classical Ottoman Empire. Sultan Suleiman passed away in 1566, leaving behind an transcontinental empire which stretched from the bell towers of Buda to the minarets of Cairo.

/2

This is the Bayeux Tapestry, depicting the Norman conquest of England in 1066. It reshaped the politics, culture, language and future of our island home. That event was about as distant in time to Suleiman's empire - 5 centuries - as his empire was to us.

/3

This is Caesar and Cleopatra - in the 4th century BC, over 1000 years before the Norman conquest of England, their alliance paved the way for the Roman Republic's annexation of Egypt. This was just over 2000 years before the modern day.

/4

These are the Great Pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure; built in the 26th century BC. There is a greater length of time between their construction and Cleopatra - about 2500 years - than Cleopatra and the modern day. Ancient Egypt is really, *really* ancient.

/5

The pyramids are over 4500 years old, today. Nestled in the Anatolian mountains of Turkey is a temple that is about 8000 years older than the pyramids. It was a lost ruin when the first limestone blocks were being pulled into place on Egypt's desert sands.

/6

Göbekli Tepe is the oldest temple ever discovered. Its standing stones are millennia older than Stonehenge, and carved with animals and plants. Surrounded by an abundance of wild einkorn wheat, it is the closest thing to a cradle of humanity - a Garden of Eden.

/7

The story of human civilisation is tens of thousands of years old, its origins so unimaginably distant from us today that we can hardly conceive of the chronological scale except by incremental comparison. What binds it all together?

/8

This is a femur - a leg bone (from an Egyptian mummy to be precise). It has broken and healed, which is why it is misaligned. To draw on the work of the anthropologist Margaret Mead, this is the glue of civilisation and the heart of the human story.

/9

If an animal breaks its leg in the wild, it will die. You almost never see a healed femur. A lame animal becomes easy prey; it cannot move; it cannot forage or hunt. To survive, you need a compassionate society which will shelter the individual and nurse them back to health.

/10

For me, that's the essence of humanity and civilisation. Be smart, be successful - change the world. You will do all of those things because you have immense talent.

But above all, especially in these difficult times, remember what underpins all of this.

Be kind.

/11