“Imperial history of the Middle East.”

I may have pointed to this before, but I wanted to recommend again this animated map of the imperial history of the Middle East.  A very cool survey of 3000 years in 90 seconds. 

We used it today with the 4th-grade boys to accompany Chapter Eight of Story of the World: Early Modern, which contains a too-exhausting-to-remember survey of the history leading up to the Ottoman Empire.  The animation worked a lot better.