Under an old warehouse in Shoreditch, secrets of London's 16th Century Theatreland are being painstakingly uncovered. Thousands of artefacts have been uncovered giving us more clues about Elizabethan life.
Three meters under what was an old warehouse in Curtain Road Shoreditch, secrets of London’s 16th century theatre land are painstakingly uncovered.
It’s a hugely exciting project to be part of, and it’s not just that here we are with all that chance to look at one of this really rare buildings which is connected to people such as William Shakespeare, but it’s also what’s gonna happen to the archaeology at the end.
The Curtain Playhouse was one of London’s first theatres. Historians believe this was the first place where Shakespeare performed some of his plays. The rectangular shape of the stage and the mysterious underground tunnel are puzzling archaeologists.
You realise the size and shape of the stage, but these were doorways that would allow access under the stage so, again, you know, how were actors using that space, how does that influence what you can form on the stage itself. It’s asking a whole range of questions that can really kind of change our understanding of the evolution of early English drama.
We’ve got this lovely drinking jug…
Thousands of Elizabethan artefacts have also been found, including the cones everyone carried for tackling headlights.
These are tops from ceramic pots that would’ve been used to collect theatre-goers takings. They were sealed to prevent theft, and taken to a special office to break them open and transfer the money to a strongbox, hence the term box office, still in use today.
16th century audiences were apparently a rowdy bunch.
There would’ve been thousands coming to these places. We know about pawnshops, in fact there was a famous pawnshop at the door of The Curtain in 1613, we know people were eating and drinking, we know that people would throw rotten apples or whatever at the actors if they didn’t like it.
The Curtain Theatre and artefacts will be on show to the public when an office and housing development opens near the sight in 2019.
Yvonne Hall, BBC London News, Shoreditch.
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta History. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta History. Mostrar todas las entradas
jueves, 15 de junio de 2017
viernes, 5 de mayo de 2017
The celebrity love triangle which shocked a nation
He was a war hero and an admiral, she the great beauty of her age. The problem was they were both married to others. Now a new exhibition at Greenwich's Royal Maritime Museum remembers the story and the scandal of Emma Hamilton and Lord Nelson.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1. What was Emma Hamilton’s father’s job?
2. Who was George Romney?
3. Why was Emma Hamilton painted?
4. Where did the affair between Emma and Lord Nelson begin?
5. Who lived in Merton Place, in South West London, according to rumours?
6. When did Emma find Merton Place?
7. What was Emma’s financial situation when she died?
Lord Nelson, held in the highest esteem, whose passions ran deep for a blacksmith's daughter, Emma Hamilton. Her stunning looks set her apart. Then this man, George Romney, the most fashionable painter of the day, came across the young beauty and at his studios here, in Cavendish Square, she became his muse.
And the 18th century was a remarkable time for an explosion in print culture…
Mass produced, cheap black-and-white prints of George Romney's paintings then made Emma a pin-up. It was like Hello magazine for the first time.
She is naturally beautiful, which is the reason she was painted, one of the reasons she was painted in the first place. And those images are carried through to sort of the broader public.
So printing technology and prints of Emma Hamilton made her a celebrity.
Yes.
Fame made her desirable and led to marriage with this man, Sir William Hamilton, the British envoy to Naples. It was here that Norfolk's favourite son, the hero of the day, Lord Nelson, stopped for supplies and an enduring love affair began. It was like a Hollywood romance, but it also fuelled another familiar feature of modern-day life: scandal.
Sir William watches as lovers carry on!
Nelson and Lady Hamilton in love tryst!
Gossip was rife, not only was Nelson married, the lovers conducted their affair openly, in front of Sir Williams. There were rumours the three of them lived together here at Merton Place, in South West London, which Nelson and Emma had bought for their future. Now it’s an old council estate but then it was Paradise Merton, a place in the country away from all the chatter.
In 1800, Emma Nelson and Sir William come back to live in England and Nelson instructs Emma to find him and her a country pad where they can live out their future days together. And so in 1801, she finds Merton Place, and it's the love nest that they hoped for, which they call Paradise Merton.
But it didn’t last for long. After losing his eye, and then an arm, Nelson's luck ran out. Shot dead, Kiss me Hardy, and the rest, of course, is history. For Emma, the high life ended too, crippled by debt, dying in poverty but her legacy will always be one half of one of the world's greatest love affairs.
Jim Wheeble, BBC London News.
KEY:
1 blacksmith
2 a painter / the most fashionable painter of the day
3 because she was very beautiful
4 In Naples / Italy
5 Lord Nelson, Emma and her husband
6 in 1801
7 she was poor
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1. What was Emma Hamilton’s father’s job?
2. Who was George Romney?
3. Why was Emma Hamilton painted?
4. Where did the affair between Emma and Lord Nelson begin?
5. Who lived in Merton Place, in South West London, according to rumours?
6. When did Emma find Merton Place?
7. What was Emma’s financial situation when she died?
Lord Nelson, held in the highest esteem, whose passions ran deep for a blacksmith's daughter, Emma Hamilton. Her stunning looks set her apart. Then this man, George Romney, the most fashionable painter of the day, came across the young beauty and at his studios here, in Cavendish Square, she became his muse.
And the 18th century was a remarkable time for an explosion in print culture…
Mass produced, cheap black-and-white prints of George Romney's paintings then made Emma a pin-up. It was like Hello magazine for the first time.
She is naturally beautiful, which is the reason she was painted, one of the reasons she was painted in the first place. And those images are carried through to sort of the broader public.
So printing technology and prints of Emma Hamilton made her a celebrity.
Yes.
Fame made her desirable and led to marriage with this man, Sir William Hamilton, the British envoy to Naples. It was here that Norfolk's favourite son, the hero of the day, Lord Nelson, stopped for supplies and an enduring love affair began. It was like a Hollywood romance, but it also fuelled another familiar feature of modern-day life: scandal.
Sir William watches as lovers carry on!
Nelson and Lady Hamilton in love tryst!
Gossip was rife, not only was Nelson married, the lovers conducted their affair openly, in front of Sir Williams. There were rumours the three of them lived together here at Merton Place, in South West London, which Nelson and Emma had bought for their future. Now it’s an old council estate but then it was Paradise Merton, a place in the country away from all the chatter.
In 1800, Emma Nelson and Sir William come back to live in England and Nelson instructs Emma to find him and her a country pad where they can live out their future days together. And so in 1801, she finds Merton Place, and it's the love nest that they hoped for, which they call Paradise Merton.
But it didn’t last for long. After losing his eye, and then an arm, Nelson's luck ran out. Shot dead, Kiss me Hardy, and the rest, of course, is history. For Emma, the high life ended too, crippled by debt, dying in poverty but her legacy will always be one half of one of the world's greatest love affairs.
Jim Wheeble, BBC London News.
KEY:
1 blacksmith
2 a painter / the most fashionable painter of the day
3 because she was very beautiful
4 In Naples / Italy
5 Lord Nelson, Emma and her husband
6 in 1801
7 she was poor
sábado, 4 de marzo de 2017
My That's English! Revisited -Mapping Africa
The In Pictures section of the BBC News website hosts slideshows about a wide range of current and historical topics.
One of the audio slideshows is Mapping Africa, which gives us a five-minute presentation of the changing map of Africa from 14th century to today.
Self-study activity:
Watch and listen to the audio slideshow and say whether the following statements are true or false.
1 The Sahara has always been infertile.
2 A Berber tribe gives its name to the continent.
3 The maps shows a mix of religions in the north of Africa.
4 Some of the kingdoms in the 1625 map are real.
5 The 1625 map was drawn with information from travelers and traders.
6 Ethiopia in Greek means South Atlantic.
7 People at that time showed respect for the boundaries.
8 The map shows places where slaves were kept.
9 The 1898 map shows borders for the first time.
10 The blank areas in the map show that the area is not populated.
H/T to Free Technology for Teachers.
MAPPING AFRICA
A 14th century map produced by the Catalan state, and this map is really a composite of information brought by Arab travellers, Portuguese explorers just beginning to explore the coast of West Africa and hitting on the Canary Islands.
The Sahara has not always been the sort of empty place that we think of it as it was the bread basket of the Roman Empire, and it’s the top end of the Sahara that actually gives its name to the whole of the continent. A tribe of Berber people lived in what is now Tunesia, who called themselves the Africhia, who gave their name to Africa as a continent, on the map their position in what is now the Sudan.
There’s a river that runs north to south, that’s the Nile. The upper ends of the river contain a
number of cities with crosses on the top, denoting that these were Christian kingdoms, but the map also depicts on its northern coast a city with the star of David, so clearly a Jewish city.
For 1625 it’s quite an accurate description of the landmass of Africa. What we learn from this that some of the kingdoms we hear about in the 19th and 20th century were actually real rather than imaginary. This map would have been made or drawn with narratives collected from Africans who came from the hinterland to the coast, because the European travellers were not necessarily familiar with the areas further inland, so would have relied upon that, people who came to the coast to trade.
Also in this particular map what I thought was really striking is that while the North Atlantic is called the Atlantic Sea the south Atlantic is called the Ethiopian Ocean. Ethiopia is the Greek word for somebody who is black, and so clearly the old name for the South Atlantic was the black people sea.
This map has no borders, I think that’s because the rivers and the mountains depicted in it are the borders of different ethnicities.
These trade routes show products coming from modern-day Ghana, products coming from north of Nigeria and products going towards the coast. We can see through the range of things that were exchanged cattle, cloth, salt. People have always moved to play their trade. They have had to disregard the boundaries because the boundaries were almost always arbitrary.
This map would have been made for and by the British government. It just confirms the point of long-established trade routes. We know that this area is maybe further than, is very rich in copper because then they are going to the central Africa. We know the huge history of cloth-making around here. I’m not too pleased with the word slaves, but human beings were sold from here perhaps these were, places where, they were kept.
And this is the map produced in 1889, for the first time you see borders of some sort or the other. What is interesting is the majority of these borders are straight lines and clearly not drawn by Africans or for Africans. The map is also colour-coded, the yellow areas representing the areas of the German sphere of influence, the Portuguese areas are two green areas on either end, Angola , Mozanbique. And the rose colour at the bottom of the Cape colony, slowly and gradually moving up to cut Africa in two. There are large areas inland which are blank, and that’s kind of saying, you know, free for sale, nobody’s here, unlike the earlier maps that show all these places fully populated. And so within this map you see the emergence of the kind of empty dark Africa ready for exploitation and the kind of notions that still have a legacy today.
Key:
1F 2T 3T 4T 5T 6F 7F 8T 9F (1889) 10F
One of the audio slideshows is Mapping Africa, which gives us a five-minute presentation of the changing map of Africa from 14th century to today.
Self-study activity:
Watch and listen to the audio slideshow and say whether the following statements are true or false.
1 The Sahara has always been infertile.
2 A Berber tribe gives its name to the continent.
3 The maps shows a mix of religions in the north of Africa.
4 Some of the kingdoms in the 1625 map are real.
5 The 1625 map was drawn with information from travelers and traders.
6 Ethiopia in Greek means South Atlantic.
7 People at that time showed respect for the boundaries.
8 The map shows places where slaves were kept.
9 The 1898 map shows borders for the first time.
10 The blank areas in the map show that the area is not populated.
H/T to Free Technology for Teachers.
MAPPING AFRICA
A 14th century map produced by the Catalan state, and this map is really a composite of information brought by Arab travellers, Portuguese explorers just beginning to explore the coast of West Africa and hitting on the Canary Islands.
The Sahara has not always been the sort of empty place that we think of it as it was the bread basket of the Roman Empire, and it’s the top end of the Sahara that actually gives its name to the whole of the continent. A tribe of Berber people lived in what is now Tunesia, who called themselves the Africhia, who gave their name to Africa as a continent, on the map their position in what is now the Sudan.
There’s a river that runs north to south, that’s the Nile. The upper ends of the river contain a
number of cities with crosses on the top, denoting that these were Christian kingdoms, but the map also depicts on its northern coast a city with the star of David, so clearly a Jewish city.
For 1625 it’s quite an accurate description of the landmass of Africa. What we learn from this that some of the kingdoms we hear about in the 19th and 20th century were actually real rather than imaginary. This map would have been made or drawn with narratives collected from Africans who came from the hinterland to the coast, because the European travellers were not necessarily familiar with the areas further inland, so would have relied upon that, people who came to the coast to trade.
Also in this particular map what I thought was really striking is that while the North Atlantic is called the Atlantic Sea the south Atlantic is called the Ethiopian Ocean. Ethiopia is the Greek word for somebody who is black, and so clearly the old name for the South Atlantic was the black people sea.
This map has no borders, I think that’s because the rivers and the mountains depicted in it are the borders of different ethnicities.
These trade routes show products coming from modern-day Ghana, products coming from north of Nigeria and products going towards the coast. We can see through the range of things that were exchanged cattle, cloth, salt. People have always moved to play their trade. They have had to disregard the boundaries because the boundaries were almost always arbitrary.
This map would have been made for and by the British government. It just confirms the point of long-established trade routes. We know that this area is maybe further than, is very rich in copper because then they are going to the central Africa. We know the huge history of cloth-making around here. I’m not too pleased with the word slaves, but human beings were sold from here perhaps these were, places where, they were kept.
And this is the map produced in 1889, for the first time you see borders of some sort or the other. What is interesting is the majority of these borders are straight lines and clearly not drawn by Africans or for Africans. The map is also colour-coded, the yellow areas representing the areas of the German sphere of influence, the Portuguese areas are two green areas on either end, Angola , Mozanbique. And the rose colour at the bottom of the Cape colony, slowly and gradually moving up to cut Africa in two. There are large areas inland which are blank, and that’s kind of saying, you know, free for sale, nobody’s here, unlike the earlier maps that show all these places fully populated. And so within this map you see the emergence of the kind of empty dark Africa ready for exploitation and the kind of notions that still have a legacy today.
Key:
1F 2T 3T 4T 5T 6F 7F 8T 9F (1889) 10F
domingo, 2 de octubre de 2016
Extensive listening: The Real Versailles
To accompany the BBC's drama about the French court, BBC aired the documentary
The Real Versailles, where historians Lucy Worsley and Helen Castor
tell the real-life stories behind one of the world's grandest buildings, revealing in vivid detail the colourful world of sex, drama and
intrigue that Louis XIV and his courtiers inhabited to explain how he became the longest serving absolute monarch in European history.
Lucy Worsley untangles Louis XIV's complex world of court etiquette, fashion and feasting, while court politics expert Helen Castor examines the Machiavellian world that Louis created and inhabited.
Lucy Worsley untangles Louis XIV's complex world of court etiquette, fashion and feasting, while court politics expert Helen Castor examines the Machiavellian world that Louis created and inhabited.
martes, 13 de septiembre de 2016
Fashion vs Art
Fashion occupies a prime position in our culture and economy. But is it art?
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1 What's the name of the tour?
2 How much of the object of art is what the characters are wearing?
3 What were the three 'arts' that constituted art as opposed to the 'decorative arts'?
4 What did the soldiers capture their enemies' wives in ancient Greece?
5 What does '1450' refer to?
6 What two elements does fashion combine in today's world, according to Anne Winterthur?
7 What is the name of John Singer Sargent's painting?
8 What was a suntan a symbol of in the Industrial Revolution?
There is the perennial debate about whether or not fashion can ever be art. It has, in some instances, to do with intention. But just because it's clothes doesn't mean it can't be art.
The name of this tour is Fashion and Art.
Fashion is laden with cultural, social, aesthetic ideas, everything that we subject the criteria of art to.
What we do is look at the objects of art… masterpieces and highlights of our collection from a very interesting viewpoint. What are the people wearing in the object of art? And more than that, what does it mean? This is something almost nobody talks about. But sometimes it's 60% to 70% of the object of art anyway. So I hope that you will see fashion is not trivial.
When I started off as a curator, art was considered to be painting, architecture, and sculpture. Anything outside of that was decorative arts and quite frankly, looked down on, costume and fashion being one example of that.
Our first object dates from ancient Greece. The basic garment was made by one long length of linen. The flax had to be picked, it had to be spun, it had to be woven by hand. And in war, the soldiers who were victorious would kill the man and capture the women as slaves to do the spinning and the weaving. So the fabric represents a great deal.
Fashion is still considered more in the female domain than something like painting. And I think that's a reason why some people are quick to dismiss fashion as art.
So we will move on to another culture altogether, another civilization altogether.
It's our role as a center of art and culture to give fashion and costume respect and that attention.
Fashion should be recognized for how it defines a time, how it can be controversial, how it can be revolutionary.
So right now, we are in Burgundian France. And these are courtiers in a rose garden. This is one of the earliest examples we have of cut and tailored clothing. With the growth of big, powerful courts, people began to want to outdo each other in a fashion sense. You are looking at the red carpet of 1450.
Fashion seems frivolous and trivial to the 19th-century attitudes about fine art. There's a kind of puritanical tradition, and we hate the notion that there might be commerce associated with anything, because somehow, that makes it less pure. But as the definitions of art have become more elastic, you know, post-Dada, post-Warhol… we're no longer bound by the 19th-century categories of art.
In the world that we work in, you need the mixture of art and commerce. They have to exist hand in hand.
High fashion paired with celebrity becomes something bigger than both…
All right, we're going to finish the tour with John Singer Sargent. This is Madame X. People wanted the artists of the day to advance themselves. And the artist of the day wanted the famous people in order to advance their career.
The art of what someone wears is as important and as revealing an artefact as a particular portrait painted at a particular time.
Why did she wear this white duck skirt? One day, she came in from playing tennis, and her face was all flushed, and her eyes were sparkling. But what we don't see is what it's saying about society. In the industrial world, when people were in factories all day long, it suddenly became a status symbol to have a suntan. So this dress shows a complete switch in values.
Fashion can be used to tell stories about gender, race, and identity, and challenge us to rethink what is beautiful, and challenge our prejudices, and our expectations.
Everyone aspires to go higher in life, to be better than they are. And these moments in a museum give you moments of betterment. Escapism, yes. But this could be inspiring. This could inspire someone.
This is the achievement of having no delineation between what is high and low culture, what is right and wrong history.
Cara, how you…
Rihanna!
Key:
1 Fashion and Art
2 60% or 70%
3 painting, architecture, and sculpture
4 to have them as slaves making clothes for them
5 the year the red carpet was painted
6 art and commerce
7 Madame X
8 status
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1 What's the name of the tour?
2 How much of the object of art is what the characters are wearing?
3 What were the three 'arts' that constituted art as opposed to the 'decorative arts'?
4 What did the soldiers capture their enemies' wives in ancient Greece?
5 What does '1450' refer to?
6 What two elements does fashion combine in today's world, according to Anne Winterthur?
7 What is the name of John Singer Sargent's painting?
8 What was a suntan a symbol of in the Industrial Revolution?
There is the perennial debate about whether or not fashion can ever be art. It has, in some instances, to do with intention. But just because it's clothes doesn't mean it can't be art.
The name of this tour is Fashion and Art.
Fashion is laden with cultural, social, aesthetic ideas, everything that we subject the criteria of art to.
What we do is look at the objects of art… masterpieces and highlights of our collection from a very interesting viewpoint. What are the people wearing in the object of art? And more than that, what does it mean? This is something almost nobody talks about. But sometimes it's 60% to 70% of the object of art anyway. So I hope that you will see fashion is not trivial.
When I started off as a curator, art was considered to be painting, architecture, and sculpture. Anything outside of that was decorative arts and quite frankly, looked down on, costume and fashion being one example of that.
Our first object dates from ancient Greece. The basic garment was made by one long length of linen. The flax had to be picked, it had to be spun, it had to be woven by hand. And in war, the soldiers who were victorious would kill the man and capture the women as slaves to do the spinning and the weaving. So the fabric represents a great deal.
Fashion is still considered more in the female domain than something like painting. And I think that's a reason why some people are quick to dismiss fashion as art.
So we will move on to another culture altogether, another civilization altogether.
It's our role as a center of art and culture to give fashion and costume respect and that attention.
Fashion should be recognized for how it defines a time, how it can be controversial, how it can be revolutionary.
So right now, we are in Burgundian France. And these are courtiers in a rose garden. This is one of the earliest examples we have of cut and tailored clothing. With the growth of big, powerful courts, people began to want to outdo each other in a fashion sense. You are looking at the red carpet of 1450.
Fashion seems frivolous and trivial to the 19th-century attitudes about fine art. There's a kind of puritanical tradition, and we hate the notion that there might be commerce associated with anything, because somehow, that makes it less pure. But as the definitions of art have become more elastic, you know, post-Dada, post-Warhol… we're no longer bound by the 19th-century categories of art.
In the world that we work in, you need the mixture of art and commerce. They have to exist hand in hand.
High fashion paired with celebrity becomes something bigger than both…
All right, we're going to finish the tour with John Singer Sargent. This is Madame X. People wanted the artists of the day to advance themselves. And the artist of the day wanted the famous people in order to advance their career.
The art of what someone wears is as important and as revealing an artefact as a particular portrait painted at a particular time.
Why did she wear this white duck skirt? One day, she came in from playing tennis, and her face was all flushed, and her eyes were sparkling. But what we don't see is what it's saying about society. In the industrial world, when people were in factories all day long, it suddenly became a status symbol to have a suntan. So this dress shows a complete switch in values.
Fashion can be used to tell stories about gender, race, and identity, and challenge us to rethink what is beautiful, and challenge our prejudices, and our expectations.
Everyone aspires to go higher in life, to be better than they are. And these moments in a museum give you moments of betterment. Escapism, yes. But this could be inspiring. This could inspire someone.
This is the achievement of having no delineation between what is high and low culture, what is right and wrong history.
Cara, how you…
Rihanna!
Key:
1 Fashion and Art
2 60% or 70%
3 painting, architecture, and sculpture
4 to have them as slaves making clothes for them
5 the year the red carpet was painted
6 art and commerce
7 Madame X
8 status
viernes, 9 de septiembre de 2016
Where did sugar come from?
Brian Cox looks into where sugar originally came from and talks to a sugar historian about when it arrived in Britain.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1. As well as sugar what other commodities were available to our ancestors part of the year?
2. Where was wild cane first farmed?
3. When did sugar first come into Britain?
4. Who could afford to buy it?
5. Apart from being an additive to food and drinks, what was sugar used for?
6. How much sugar did Henry III order?
7. How much sugar could you find across the entire kingdom back in Henry III's times?
Back in the Middle Ages, sugar was only available to our ancestors part of the year, as fruit or honey. Sweetness was in short supply, so where did sugar, as we know it, come from? Well, it originated centuries before as a giant wild grass in the South Pacific, where its value was so recognised.
Legends from there tell of a story of how a sugar cane sprouted a man and a woman, who founded the human race. Wild cane was first tamed and farmed in New Guinea, and over time, spread by travellers, across the globe.
By the 13th century, it had migrated to the Middle East, where traders discovered it, and carried it to Europe. A commodity so rare, sugar's value equalled that of precious gems.
And what about its first appearance in Britain? My journey begins in Cumbria, where I'm going to meet a sugar historian, whom I'm told has a rather hands-on approach to this subject.
All of the sugar we imported into this country came from the Arab world, via the Venetians. The Venetians were the sugar controllers, they bought it from the Middle East, and then they shipped it out to every other European nation and they put a huge premium on it. If we go back into the 13th century, small quantities of it are coming to this country, but they are only being purchased by royal palaces.
Because it was quite expensive?
It was very expensive, and it was rare. Sugar in the early modern period is very much a symbol of status. But it was used as a plastic medium, as an art form. We have some marvellously detailed images of these sugar sculptures.
My gosh.
There is one piece of sculpture which was six-feet high, entirely made out of sugar.
Six-feet high!
Yeah, so it is standing like that on the table.
And this would be consumed, they wouldn't be ornamental?
No, no, no it was totally ornamental.
You are talking about a kind of decadence. Ordinary people eat food just to sustain themselves, but the very wealthy use it to show off, and having a sugar sculpture, six- foot high, on your table, is the equivalent of having a Maserati nowadays.
And all we have is this evidence of it.
The only evidence we have are the actual images we have of them. The other bit of evidence, that is not really obvious, we also have some of the tools we used to create it. So, for instance, this lovely wooden mould has got these four little goddesses on it. I’m going to get you actually to have a go at making some of these….
Really!
Okay, that’s it, one more there, it’s sticking there. If you just drop it on to the surface, you have your perfect grinning gibbons.
My goodness me!
One of the first recorded royal requests for sugar was by Henry III in the 13th century, who ordered three pounds of it, if so much is to be had, he’s reputed to have said.
It was so rare and luxurious that today’s equivalent of a bag and a half from a supermarket might be all there was across the entire kingdom.
You have created your own beautiful little thing.
I am impressed, I am, because I'm so cack-handed normally.
Key:
1. fruit and honey
2. New Guinea
3. 13th century
4. royal palaces
5. art, ornaments
6. three pounds
7. (the equivalent of) a bag and a half (from a supermarket)
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1. As well as sugar what other commodities were available to our ancestors part of the year?
2. Where was wild cane first farmed?
3. When did sugar first come into Britain?
4. Who could afford to buy it?
5. Apart from being an additive to food and drinks, what was sugar used for?
6. How much sugar did Henry III order?
7. How much sugar could you find across the entire kingdom back in Henry III's times?
Back in the Middle Ages, sugar was only available to our ancestors part of the year, as fruit or honey. Sweetness was in short supply, so where did sugar, as we know it, come from? Well, it originated centuries before as a giant wild grass in the South Pacific, where its value was so recognised.
Legends from there tell of a story of how a sugar cane sprouted a man and a woman, who founded the human race. Wild cane was first tamed and farmed in New Guinea, and over time, spread by travellers, across the globe.
By the 13th century, it had migrated to the Middle East, where traders discovered it, and carried it to Europe. A commodity so rare, sugar's value equalled that of precious gems.
And what about its first appearance in Britain? My journey begins in Cumbria, where I'm going to meet a sugar historian, whom I'm told has a rather hands-on approach to this subject.
All of the sugar we imported into this country came from the Arab world, via the Venetians. The Venetians were the sugar controllers, they bought it from the Middle East, and then they shipped it out to every other European nation and they put a huge premium on it. If we go back into the 13th century, small quantities of it are coming to this country, but they are only being purchased by royal palaces.
Because it was quite expensive?
It was very expensive, and it was rare. Sugar in the early modern period is very much a symbol of status. But it was used as a plastic medium, as an art form. We have some marvellously detailed images of these sugar sculptures.
My gosh.
There is one piece of sculpture which was six-feet high, entirely made out of sugar.
Six-feet high!
Yeah, so it is standing like that on the table.
And this would be consumed, they wouldn't be ornamental?
No, no, no it was totally ornamental.
You are talking about a kind of decadence. Ordinary people eat food just to sustain themselves, but the very wealthy use it to show off, and having a sugar sculpture, six- foot high, on your table, is the equivalent of having a Maserati nowadays.
And all we have is this evidence of it.
The only evidence we have are the actual images we have of them. The other bit of evidence, that is not really obvious, we also have some of the tools we used to create it. So, for instance, this lovely wooden mould has got these four little goddesses on it. I’m going to get you actually to have a go at making some of these….
Really!
Okay, that’s it, one more there, it’s sticking there. If you just drop it on to the surface, you have your perfect grinning gibbons.
My goodness me!
One of the first recorded royal requests for sugar was by Henry III in the 13th century, who ordered three pounds of it, if so much is to be had, he’s reputed to have said.
It was so rare and luxurious that today’s equivalent of a bag and a half from a supermarket might be all there was across the entire kingdom.
You have created your own beautiful little thing.
I am impressed, I am, because I'm so cack-handed normally.
Key:
1. fruit and honey
2. New Guinea
3. 13th century
4. royal palaces
5. art, ornaments
6. three pounds
7. (the equivalent of) a bag and a half (from a supermarket)
viernes, 12 de agosto de 2016
The origins of tobacco
Brian Cox explains how Christopher Columbus was involved in the beginnings of tobacco.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions.
1 Apart from beads, what did the natives give Columbus?
2 What destination did Columbus think he had reached when arriving in Cuba?
3 How did the natives feel after inhaling the dried leaves?
4 How long ago did the tobacco Columbus knew originate?
5 Who did the native Americans believe had created tobacco?
On the 11th of October, 1492, on a Caribbean island that no European had ever seen before, Christopher Columbus carried out one of history's most baffling and pointless transactions. He and his landing party had met some natives who were blissfully unaware that Columbus had renamed their island San Salvador, and had claimed it on behalf of the Spanish monarchy.
The natives gave Columbus beads, fruit and some dried leaves. In return, Columbus gave them a pair of red hats. The beads and the fruit needed no explanation. The leaves were just confusing. Columbus had them thrown overboard, and sailed on. What the natives did with the red hats is not recorded. And it wasn't just the leaves.
Geography was confusing too. Columbus thought he was here, or hereabouts, near China. Actually, he was here, on the other side of the world, amongst the islands of the Caribbean, near to his next discovery. We should forgive Columbus for being bad at navigation. After all, no-one else was any better.
Yet, when his ships arrived at what we now know as the island of Cuba, Columbus, still thinking he was near China, sent two members of the crew ashore with letters for the Chinese Khan.
When they returned, it was to report that the Great Khan was nowhere to be found, but they had met several more natives on the road with some more of those mysterious dried leaves, and these natives had rolled the leaves into tubes, lit them, sucked them, inhaling the smoky fumes. The two men had tried some and liked it. It filled them with a sense of energy, wellbeing.
Tobacco, the natives called it. At least, that's the word Columbus's men had heard. The name stuck. And so did the habit. What Columbus's men had seen and smoked was a kind of tobacco as domesticated as any dog. It only survives as a pure strain through cultivation, and archaeologists have traced its cultivation all the way back to the highlands of Peru in 2000BC. It's part of a plant family, the nightshades, that includes deadly poisons, spicy peppers, chillies, aubergines and potatoes.
From Peru, it had spread throughout the Northern and Southern Americas, that Columbus would have called the Caribs. In common with all other Native Americans, the Caribs believed that the gods had made tobacco as the very first step in the creation of the whole world.
Key:
1 fruit and some dried leaves
2 near China
3 with a sense of energy and wellbeing
4 2000BC
5 the gods
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions.
1 Apart from beads, what did the natives give Columbus?
2 What destination did Columbus think he had reached when arriving in Cuba?
3 How did the natives feel after inhaling the dried leaves?
4 How long ago did the tobacco Columbus knew originate?
5 Who did the native Americans believe had created tobacco?
On the 11th of October, 1492, on a Caribbean island that no European had ever seen before, Christopher Columbus carried out one of history's most baffling and pointless transactions. He and his landing party had met some natives who were blissfully unaware that Columbus had renamed their island San Salvador, and had claimed it on behalf of the Spanish monarchy.
The natives gave Columbus beads, fruit and some dried leaves. In return, Columbus gave them a pair of red hats. The beads and the fruit needed no explanation. The leaves were just confusing. Columbus had them thrown overboard, and sailed on. What the natives did with the red hats is not recorded. And it wasn't just the leaves.
Geography was confusing too. Columbus thought he was here, or hereabouts, near China. Actually, he was here, on the other side of the world, amongst the islands of the Caribbean, near to his next discovery. We should forgive Columbus for being bad at navigation. After all, no-one else was any better.
Yet, when his ships arrived at what we now know as the island of Cuba, Columbus, still thinking he was near China, sent two members of the crew ashore with letters for the Chinese Khan.
When they returned, it was to report that the Great Khan was nowhere to be found, but they had met several more natives on the road with some more of those mysterious dried leaves, and these natives had rolled the leaves into tubes, lit them, sucked them, inhaling the smoky fumes. The two men had tried some and liked it. It filled them with a sense of energy, wellbeing.
Tobacco, the natives called it. At least, that's the word Columbus's men had heard. The name stuck. And so did the habit. What Columbus's men had seen and smoked was a kind of tobacco as domesticated as any dog. It only survives as a pure strain through cultivation, and archaeologists have traced its cultivation all the way back to the highlands of Peru in 2000BC. It's part of a plant family, the nightshades, that includes deadly poisons, spicy peppers, chillies, aubergines and potatoes.
From Peru, it had spread throughout the Northern and Southern Americas, that Columbus would have called the Caribs. In common with all other Native Americans, the Caribs believed that the gods had made tobacco as the very first step in the creation of the whole world.
Key:
1 fruit and some dried leaves
2 near China
3 with a sense of energy and wellbeing
4 2000BC
5 the gods
lunes, 30 de mayo de 2016
Listening test: Pirates
Listen to a report on the history of pirates and choose the heading A to J that goes with each of the extracts 1-7. 0 is an example.
A -A long history of pirates 0 Example
B - Fighting off pirates
C - Idealistic vision of pirates
D - In the national interest
E - Not only a matter of the past
F - Pioneering organizations
G - Piracy beyond the ships
H - The latest attack
I - The most successful period
J - Very different forms of piracy
0
Piracy - the act of robbery from ships at sea - has existed for thousands of years. It was written about by the ancient Greeks and has been written about ever since. As long as some people have moved valuable cargo in ships, other people have wanted to rob them.
1
To most people in Britain and North America, piracy belongs to the Caribbean of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a time known to some as ‘The Golden Age of Piracy’. This is the era of parrots sitting on shoulders, wooden legs, eye patches, metal hooks instead of hands and men with beards shouting, ‘Aha me hearties’. And people robbing ships.
2
Many of these ideas and images come from books, such as Stevenson’s ‘Treasure Island’, Defoe’s ‘King of Pyrates’ and Barrie’s ‘Peter Pan’. As you may have noticed, pirates are well-represented in films and cartoons, from Errol Flynn to Walt Disney right up to the Curse of the Black Pearl.
Why is this era of piracy written about so much in English literature? One obvious reason is that the pirates were British and American. While many stories show them to be cruel robbers and killers, another view of piracy is commonly depicted, in which the pirates are much more heroic and adventurous.
3
There are a number of reasons for this. One is that rebellious outlaws are often attractive figures, especially if they are from another time in history. More importantly, many pirates were acting in the national interest and became heroes for this. It was quite common for governments to give permission for pirates to attack ships belonging to enemy nations. These pirates were known as ‘privateers’. The British privateers in the Caribbean became famous because they were part of the long-running conflict with Spain for domination of the region and the world. One of England’s great naval heroes, Sir Francis Drake, was really just a privateer who attacked Spanish ships. The rich cargoes of gold and silver leaving South America were an attractive target for him and many others that followed.
4
There is another reason why pirates have a positive image in popular history. Most pirate ships were surprisingly egalitarian and democratic. It was normal for the captain to be elected and most issues were decided by a vote. The stolen goods were fairly divided amongst the crew members. Many pirates were men who had escaped from the harder discipline of the merchant ships and the navy. In their escape from authority, they created a model of a more just and fair society, many years ahead of the revolutions in America and France.
5
To many of us, pirates are an interesting and colourful part of history, useful as entertainment but not much else. However, modern piracy is alive and well and increasing every year. In 2002, there were 370 incidences of piracy world-wide. These days, the Caribbean is fairly quiet. The piracy hotspot now is Asia, particularly in the seas around Indonesia, where over a hundred pirate attacks took place.
6
Some acts of piracy are opportunistic, simple affairs – robbers boarding a ship that is waiting in a port, hoping to take money and anything else that can be easily carried. Others use advanced technology and are very organised. Sometimes, the pirates take the valuables from a ship and sometimes they take the entire ship. This is especially true if the cargo is a valuable one that can easily be transferred to another ship, such as oil or gas. Very often, a stolen ship can be repainted, renamed and reused elsewhere.
7
Protecting ships is difficult. Most ships have fewer sailors than they did in the past, and they no longer carry weapons. One defence mechanism now on the market is an electric fence that deters attackers with a 9,000 volt shock.
Key:
1I 2C 3D 4F 5E 6J 7B
A -
B - Fighting off pirates
C - Idealistic vision of pirates
D - In the national interest
E - Not only a matter of the past
F - Pioneering organizations
G - Piracy beyond the ships
H - The latest attack
I - The most successful period
J - Very different forms of piracy
0
Piracy - the act of robbery from ships at sea - has existed for thousands of years. It was written about by the ancient Greeks and has been written about ever since. As long as some people have moved valuable cargo in ships, other people have wanted to rob them.
1
To most people in Britain and North America, piracy belongs to the Caribbean of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a time known to some as ‘The Golden Age of Piracy’. This is the era of parrots sitting on shoulders, wooden legs, eye patches, metal hooks instead of hands and men with beards shouting, ‘Aha me hearties’. And people robbing ships.
2
Many of these ideas and images come from books, such as Stevenson’s ‘Treasure Island’, Defoe’s ‘King of Pyrates’ and Barrie’s ‘Peter Pan’. As you may have noticed, pirates are well-represented in films and cartoons, from Errol Flynn to Walt Disney right up to the Curse of the Black Pearl.
Why is this era of piracy written about so much in English literature? One obvious reason is that the pirates were British and American. While many stories show them to be cruel robbers and killers, another view of piracy is commonly depicted, in which the pirates are much more heroic and adventurous.
3
There are a number of reasons for this. One is that rebellious outlaws are often attractive figures, especially if they are from another time in history. More importantly, many pirates were acting in the national interest and became heroes for this. It was quite common for governments to give permission for pirates to attack ships belonging to enemy nations. These pirates were known as ‘privateers’. The British privateers in the Caribbean became famous because they were part of the long-running conflict with Spain for domination of the region and the world. One of England’s great naval heroes, Sir Francis Drake, was really just a privateer who attacked Spanish ships. The rich cargoes of gold and silver leaving South America were an attractive target for him and many others that followed.
4
There is another reason why pirates have a positive image in popular history. Most pirate ships were surprisingly egalitarian and democratic. It was normal for the captain to be elected and most issues were decided by a vote. The stolen goods were fairly divided amongst the crew members. Many pirates were men who had escaped from the harder discipline of the merchant ships and the navy. In their escape from authority, they created a model of a more just and fair society, many years ahead of the revolutions in America and France.
5
To many of us, pirates are an interesting and colourful part of history, useful as entertainment but not much else. However, modern piracy is alive and well and increasing every year. In 2002, there were 370 incidences of piracy world-wide. These days, the Caribbean is fairly quiet. The piracy hotspot now is Asia, particularly in the seas around Indonesia, where over a hundred pirate attacks took place.
6
Some acts of piracy are opportunistic, simple affairs – robbers boarding a ship that is waiting in a port, hoping to take money and anything else that can be easily carried. Others use advanced technology and are very organised. Sometimes, the pirates take the valuables from a ship and sometimes they take the entire ship. This is especially true if the cargo is a valuable one that can easily be transferred to another ship, such as oil or gas. Very often, a stolen ship can be repainted, renamed and reused elsewhere.
7
Protecting ships is difficult. Most ships have fewer sailors than they did in the past, and they no longer carry weapons. One defence mechanism now on the market is an electric fence that deters attackers with a 9,000 volt shock.
Key:
1I 2C 3D 4F 5E 6J 7B
martes, 23 de febrero de 2016
10 Questions for David McCullough
In this Time Magazine interview historian David McCullough talks about his new book The Greater Journey and how the French influenced a generation of ambitious Americans.
Self-study activity:
Watch the interview and say whether the statements below are true or false.
1. The period David McCullough has written about in his book is most of the 19th century.
2. The people David McCullough writes about are politicians and high officials in the administration.
3. Augustus Saint Gaudens worked as a shoemaker.
4. The schools of art and architecture in Paris were far better than those in US.
5. Samuel Morse invented the telegraph.
6. Charles Sumner was an advocate for abolitionism.
7. David McCullough is currently working for the US Information Agency in Washington.
Hi, I’m Belinda Luscombe. I’m an editor at large at Time Magazine. Today’s 10 Questions answerer is David McCullough, the author of nine books. His newest is called The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you.
Now your new book is about a bunch of Americans who moved to Paris and they were a mix of professions, largely artists and writers. The effect it had on them and thus, I guess, the effect it had on America, it seems like a sort of strange subject considering our history. What made you think of it?
Well, I’m drawn to it because the big period of the experience of Americans in Europe and in Paris in particular about which very little had been done. And it’s the period of 1830’s and 1900. We know a good deal about the time when Franklin Adams and Jefferson were all in Paris and we’ve heard more than a great deal about the 1920’s and 30’s, the Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein time. And my feeling was that this period brought to France for a very specific kind of ambition a group of Americans who in many ways are among the most interesting and important figures in American life in that span of time. I also feel very strongly that history ought to been seen as a great deal more than just politics and the military and this was a chance for me to illustrate that with the lives of these individual people.
Who was your favourite character from the book?
Augustus Saint Gaudens is one of my favourite characters that I’ve ever written about in my writing life. Infinitely interesting man. Complicated. Immensely talented and important. An immigrant shoemaker’s son who was put to work at age 13. Street kid here in New York, who felt he had talent that could be, could be something. And he, and he was determined to excel. They all were in that period ambitious to excel, I think it’s the common ingredient in the outlook of these young people. Remember there were no schools of art, no art museums here, no schools of architecture. If you wanted to become an architect, there was no place you could study architecture, so you went to Paris.
Samuel Morse, he was one of the guys that fascinated me. How did he go from portrait painter when he went to Paris to the guy who invented like the single line telegraphs and the code?
Well, I don’t think in that day people saw that they had to necessarily belong to one category. The fact that Morse was a painter and a very gifted painter, a brilliant painter, did not mean that he couldn’t have other ideas. And while he was in Paris he got the idea for the telegraph. Now a man like Charles Sumner brought back another kind of an idea. He brought back the realization for him that we, in America, treated black people the way we did largely because of what we’d been taught, that treating black people as equals was part of the natural order of things because he saw it demonstrated in how the French students treated black students at the Sorbonne, where he was taking courses of all kinds. And that, that changed our history because Sumner, who was only a young lawyer then, decided to devote his life to politics and to the abolitionist movement, became the most powerful voice for abolition in the United States Senate. So if that, if the book were about that one man’s one experience in Paris and how it mushroomed him into a larger effect on the country, that would have made the point. But I wanted to make the point in a variety of ways because I believe so strongly that history is more than just soldiers and politicians.
Do you ever wish you stayed at Sports Illustrated?
No.
Never?
No, I loved being in Time Inc. I worked at Architectural Forum, which is no longer being published, and I worked at Time. I worked at three different places. I got wonderful training, made great friends. I learned a lot about writing, learned a lot about self-editing, which is the real point of it all, learning to edit yourself. But I was ready to move on and when President Kennedy was elected and he called on people to do something for their country, I took it very much to heart and went to Washington to work with the US Information Agency under Edward R. Murrow and that was very exciting. And I learned a great deal there of a different kind.
Now from the point of view of the present, we look back, we look at history and we think, you know, often in a sort of childlike way how could people have possibly owned slaves, how could that happen. [Yes.] What was the thing? How could we have thought it was okay to not educate with it. [Yes.] What do you think? Our… the people that will come after us will look back and say, how, what where they thinking? How could they have done this?
How could they spent so much time of their lives sitting, watching television. You mean, they spend seven hours a day watching that? That is a really good answer, it’s not what I was expecting. David McCullough, thank you so much for coming and seeing us today.
Thank you very much. I’ve hugely enjoyed it. I truly have. Thank you.
Key:
1T 2F 3F 4F 5T 6T 7F
Self-study activity:
Watch the interview and say whether the statements below are true or false.
1. The period David McCullough has written about in his book is most of the 19th century.
2. The people David McCullough writes about are politicians and high officials in the administration.
3. Augustus Saint Gaudens worked as a shoemaker.
4. The schools of art and architecture in Paris were far better than those in US.
5. Samuel Morse invented the telegraph.
6. Charles Sumner was an advocate for abolitionism.
7. David McCullough is currently working for the US Information Agency in Washington.
Hi, I’m Belinda Luscombe. I’m an editor at large at Time Magazine. Today’s 10 Questions answerer is David McCullough, the author of nine books. His newest is called The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you.
Now your new book is about a bunch of Americans who moved to Paris and they were a mix of professions, largely artists and writers. The effect it had on them and thus, I guess, the effect it had on America, it seems like a sort of strange subject considering our history. What made you think of it?
Well, I’m drawn to it because the big period of the experience of Americans in Europe and in Paris in particular about which very little had been done. And it’s the period of 1830’s and 1900. We know a good deal about the time when Franklin Adams and Jefferson were all in Paris and we’ve heard more than a great deal about the 1920’s and 30’s, the Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein time. And my feeling was that this period brought to France for a very specific kind of ambition a group of Americans who in many ways are among the most interesting and important figures in American life in that span of time. I also feel very strongly that history ought to been seen as a great deal more than just politics and the military and this was a chance for me to illustrate that with the lives of these individual people.
Who was your favourite character from the book?
Augustus Saint Gaudens is one of my favourite characters that I’ve ever written about in my writing life. Infinitely interesting man. Complicated. Immensely talented and important. An immigrant shoemaker’s son who was put to work at age 13. Street kid here in New York, who felt he had talent that could be, could be something. And he, and he was determined to excel. They all were in that period ambitious to excel, I think it’s the common ingredient in the outlook of these young people. Remember there were no schools of art, no art museums here, no schools of architecture. If you wanted to become an architect, there was no place you could study architecture, so you went to Paris.
Samuel Morse, he was one of the guys that fascinated me. How did he go from portrait painter when he went to Paris to the guy who invented like the single line telegraphs and the code?
Well, I don’t think in that day people saw that they had to necessarily belong to one category. The fact that Morse was a painter and a very gifted painter, a brilliant painter, did not mean that he couldn’t have other ideas. And while he was in Paris he got the idea for the telegraph. Now a man like Charles Sumner brought back another kind of an idea. He brought back the realization for him that we, in America, treated black people the way we did largely because of what we’d been taught, that treating black people as equals was part of the natural order of things because he saw it demonstrated in how the French students treated black students at the Sorbonne, where he was taking courses of all kinds. And that, that changed our history because Sumner, who was only a young lawyer then, decided to devote his life to politics and to the abolitionist movement, became the most powerful voice for abolition in the United States Senate. So if that, if the book were about that one man’s one experience in Paris and how it mushroomed him into a larger effect on the country, that would have made the point. But I wanted to make the point in a variety of ways because I believe so strongly that history is more than just soldiers and politicians.
Do you ever wish you stayed at Sports Illustrated?
No.
Never?
No, I loved being in Time Inc. I worked at Architectural Forum, which is no longer being published, and I worked at Time. I worked at three different places. I got wonderful training, made great friends. I learned a lot about writing, learned a lot about self-editing, which is the real point of it all, learning to edit yourself. But I was ready to move on and when President Kennedy was elected and he called on people to do something for their country, I took it very much to heart and went to Washington to work with the US Information Agency under Edward R. Murrow and that was very exciting. And I learned a great deal there of a different kind.
Now from the point of view of the present, we look back, we look at history and we think, you know, often in a sort of childlike way how could people have possibly owned slaves, how could that happen. [Yes.] What was the thing? How could we have thought it was okay to not educate with it. [Yes.] What do you think? Our… the people that will come after us will look back and say, how, what where they thinking? How could they have done this?
How could they spent so much time of their lives sitting, watching television. You mean, they spend seven hours a day watching that? That is a really good answer, it’s not what I was expecting. David McCullough, thank you so much for coming and seeing us today.
Thank you very much. I’ve hugely enjoyed it. I truly have. Thank you.
Key:
1T 2F 3F 4F 5T 6T 7F
domingo, 10 de enero de 2016
Extensive listening: Blood and Gold- The Making of Spain
In Conquest, the first of this three-episode BBC Series, Simon Sebag Montefiore explores Spain's early years, its emergence as the battleground of empires and its golden age under the Cordoba Caliphate.
We are in Andalusia, following Hannibal as he arrives in Cadiz to raise an army and conquer Rome, complete with elephants. Then past the early Christians, keen for martyrdom, and on to the Umayyad dynasties, who built gorgeously (the Mezquita in Cordoba) and treated those who opposed them equally extravagantly – the punishment for unwilling concubines is gleefully described. On the way, we meet musicians and poets, and it all looks quite stunning: places like Italica and Madinat al-Zahra should expect an immediate jump in visitor numbers.
We are in Andalusia, following Hannibal as he arrives in Cadiz to raise an army and conquer Rome, complete with elephants. Then past the early Christians, keen for martyrdom, and on to the Umayyad dynasties, who built gorgeously (the Mezquita in Cordoba) and treated those who opposed them equally extravagantly – the punishment for unwilling concubines is gleefully described. On the way, we meet musicians and poets, and it all looks quite stunning: places like Italica and Madinat al-Zahra should expect an immediate jump in visitor numbers.
jueves, 10 de diciembre de 2015
Hiroshima: The tram that survived the atomic bomb
One of the few remaining trams which survived the Hiroshima bomb has been restored to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the attack.
Self-study activity:
Watch this BBC video and answer the questions below. The activity is suitable for Intermediate 2 students.
1 When did the tram car stop being in regular service?
2 When was the tram service back in service after the bomb exploded?
3 What material was the Bank of Hiroshima made of?
4 How high were the temperatures after the explosion?
5 What prediction was wrong about Hiroshima after the atomic blast?
...of August 6 Japanese time, the first atomic bomb hit an enemy target.
This has to be the most famous building in Hiroshima, and one of the most famous in Japan. But many people outside Japan think the A-bomb dome is the only thing that survived in the middle of Hiroshima after the atomic explosion. That’s simply is not true.
So this actual tram car survived the atomic blast, was restored after the war, put back into operation and, in fact, this car was running on the streets of Hiroshima in regular service (1) until just a few years ago. It’s now used for tourists rides. But the tram system itself is another remarkable story because they got the trams up and running on part of the system (2) just three days after the atomic bomb exploded here. So the trams are a symbol of rejuvenation and survival for the people who live here.
Quite a lot of other large buildings in the middle of Hiroshima actually survived, especially if they were made of (3) reinforced concrete. And one of them was the Bank of Hiroshima. It’s just down the street over here.
So actually this is the Bank of Japan building and it’s only around 400 metres from the hypercentre of the explosion. This building survived despite temperatures which would have risen to (4) 3,000º. Everything and everybody around here was incinerated but amazingly, inside this building, because of its thick walls, some people survived.
After the bombing a lot of people here thought (5) Hiroshima would be an atomic wasteland and nothing would grow here for 50 or maybe 70 years, but that, too, was wrong.
These are the grounds of Hiroshima castle, and all of the buildings here were completely wiped out in the explosion. But look at the trees. You come here and you can’t help thinking some of the trees must be older than 70 years, and indeed they are. This one is a survivor. Not only has it survived, it seems to have thrived and there are many trees in Hiroshima like this. And they are an incredible testament to the resilience of nature.
Self-study activity:
Watch this BBC video and answer the questions below. The activity is suitable for Intermediate 2 students.
1 When did the tram car stop being in regular service?
2 When was the tram service back in service after the bomb exploded?
3 What material was the Bank of Hiroshima made of?
4 How high were the temperatures after the explosion?
5 What prediction was wrong about Hiroshima after the atomic blast?
...of August 6 Japanese time, the first atomic bomb hit an enemy target.
This has to be the most famous building in Hiroshima, and one of the most famous in Japan. But many people outside Japan think the A-bomb dome is the only thing that survived in the middle of Hiroshima after the atomic explosion. That’s simply is not true.
So this actual tram car survived the atomic blast, was restored after the war, put back into operation and, in fact, this car was running on the streets of Hiroshima in regular service (1) until just a few years ago. It’s now used for tourists rides. But the tram system itself is another remarkable story because they got the trams up and running on part of the system (2) just three days after the atomic bomb exploded here. So the trams are a symbol of rejuvenation and survival for the people who live here.
Quite a lot of other large buildings in the middle of Hiroshima actually survived, especially if they were made of (3) reinforced concrete. And one of them was the Bank of Hiroshima. It’s just down the street over here.
So actually this is the Bank of Japan building and it’s only around 400 metres from the hypercentre of the explosion. This building survived despite temperatures which would have risen to (4) 3,000º. Everything and everybody around here was incinerated but amazingly, inside this building, because of its thick walls, some people survived.
After the bombing a lot of people here thought (5) Hiroshima would be an atomic wasteland and nothing would grow here for 50 or maybe 70 years, but that, too, was wrong.
These are the grounds of Hiroshima castle, and all of the buildings here were completely wiped out in the explosion. But look at the trees. You come here and you can’t help thinking some of the trees must be older than 70 years, and indeed they are. This one is a survivor. Not only has it survived, it seems to have thrived and there are many trees in Hiroshima like this. And they are an incredible testament to the resilience of nature.
jueves, 17 de septiembre de 2015
Can signatures survive the digital age
A new exhibition at the National Archives in Washington explores the stories behind the famous and little known signatures that have made their mark on history.
Self-study activity:
Watch this BBC video clip and answer the questions below about it. The activity is suitable for intermediate 2 and Advanced students?
1 What document of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun can we see on the video?
2 What new law did Bill Clinton sign digitally in 2000?
3 What says a lot about us when writing emails?
Signatures are deeply personal. For centuries we’ve used them to make our mark on the world. Even the humble ex can be legally binding while the flourishes and swells of famous names have become linked with moments in history.
Jennifer Johnson is the curator of an exhibition about signatures at the National Archives.
The signatures on the document carried the force of law and can impact many people.
On display a shoe pattern signed by the pop star Michael Jackson. A card from the former Iraqui dictator Sadam Husseim and (1) the marriage certificate of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun.
Gives you goose bumps, and that one is especially unique in that it is what I call… its multiple signatures, on one page you have Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun but Joseph Gobbles and Martin Boardman signed as witnesses.
But technology is replacing pen and paper. In 2000 President Bill Clinton used a smart card encrypted with his digital signature to e-sign (2) a new law that made online contracts legal.
Just imagine if this had existed 224 years ago, the founding fathers wouldn´t have had to come all the way to Philadelphia on July 4th for the Declaration of Independence. They could have emailed their "John Hancocks" in.
The US National Archives now collects millions of pieces of digital data every year.
If we were to look at the same exhibit a hundred years from now, it would have a combination of some of the quaint artifacts of today, the paper with the signatures and a really interesting and creative, I think, snapshot of the various ways people have been communicating and making their mark in an electronic environment.
But what technology could replace a signed sports shirt? And what do we learn about a person whose signature includes, excuse the typo, sent from my cell phone. Experts say electronic signatures can still create a unique impression.
What do you use as your closing for your email, your signature line, then we have of course options of fun. Now getting too out of control would be, you know, using the colours and the exciting pastel backgrounds and things that dance around. But I think that (3) just showing what signature line you use and how you close out your emails says so, so much about you.
What historian will make of our electronic communications is anybody’s guess, but one thing is already certain: the pen maybe mightier than the sword but it’s no match for email.
Jane O’Brien, BBC News, Washington.
Self-study activity:
Watch this BBC video clip and answer the questions below about it. The activity is suitable for intermediate 2 and Advanced students?
1 What document of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun can we see on the video?
2 What new law did Bill Clinton sign digitally in 2000?
3 What says a lot about us when writing emails?
Signatures are deeply personal. For centuries we’ve used them to make our mark on the world. Even the humble ex can be legally binding while the flourishes and swells of famous names have become linked with moments in history.
Jennifer Johnson is the curator of an exhibition about signatures at the National Archives.
The signatures on the document carried the force of law and can impact many people.
On display a shoe pattern signed by the pop star Michael Jackson. A card from the former Iraqui dictator Sadam Husseim and (1) the marriage certificate of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun.
Gives you goose bumps, and that one is especially unique in that it is what I call… its multiple signatures, on one page you have Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun but Joseph Gobbles and Martin Boardman signed as witnesses.
But technology is replacing pen and paper. In 2000 President Bill Clinton used a smart card encrypted with his digital signature to e-sign (2) a new law that made online contracts legal.
Just imagine if this had existed 224 years ago, the founding fathers wouldn´t have had to come all the way to Philadelphia on July 4th for the Declaration of Independence. They could have emailed their "John Hancocks" in.
The US National Archives now collects millions of pieces of digital data every year.
If we were to look at the same exhibit a hundred years from now, it would have a combination of some of the quaint artifacts of today, the paper with the signatures and a really interesting and creative, I think, snapshot of the various ways people have been communicating and making their mark in an electronic environment.
But what technology could replace a signed sports shirt? And what do we learn about a person whose signature includes, excuse the typo, sent from my cell phone. Experts say electronic signatures can still create a unique impression.
What do you use as your closing for your email, your signature line, then we have of course options of fun. Now getting too out of control would be, you know, using the colours and the exciting pastel backgrounds and things that dance around. But I think that (3) just showing what signature line you use and how you close out your emails says so, so much about you.
What historian will make of our electronic communications is anybody’s guess, but one thing is already certain: the pen maybe mightier than the sword but it’s no match for email.
Jane O’Brien, BBC News, Washington.
domingo, 30 de agosto de 2015
Extensive listening: Medieval Lives- A Good Birth
Medieval Lives is a BBC documentary series in which historian and author Helen Castor explores how the people of the Middle Ages handled the most fundamental moments of transition in life - birth, marriage and death.
For a medieval woman approaching the moment of labour and birth, there were no antiseptics to ward off infection or anaesthetics to deal with pain. Ms Castor reveals how this was one of the most dangerous moments a medieval woman would ever encounter, with some aristocratic and royal women giving birth as young as 13. Birth took place in an all-female environment and the male world of medicine was little help to a woman in confinement. It was believed that the pains of labour were the penalty for the original sin of humankind - so, to get through them, a pregnant woman needed the help of the saints and the blessing of God himself.
For a medieval woman approaching the moment of labour and birth, there were no antiseptics to ward off infection or anaesthetics to deal with pain. Ms Castor reveals how this was one of the most dangerous moments a medieval woman would ever encounter, with some aristocratic and royal women giving birth as young as 13. Birth took place in an all-female environment and the male world of medicine was little help to a woman in confinement. It was believed that the pains of labour were the penalty for the original sin of humankind - so, to get through them, a pregnant woman needed the help of the saints and the blessing of God himself.
lunes, 18 de mayo de 2015
10 Questions for Brian Williams
Brian Williams, NBC Nightly News anchorman, reflects on the stories that shaped the decade in this interview for Time Magazine.
I’m Gilbert Cruz for Time and this is 10 Questions with Brian Williams. Brian, thanks for being with us today.
Thank you for having me.
Now, you’ve been an anchor of NBC Nightly News for five years now. And our first question comes from Jared May in Boston. And Jared wants to know, ‘What do you consider to be the most important story of the decade?’
I would say 9/11. It changed how we are viewed in the world and changed how my children’s generation will grow up as Americans. It changed how I entered this building today. So I think
beyond everything else, it has to be when we were attacked very early on in the new decade.
Our next question is a similar question. It is from Ed Winters. Ed says ‘the most surprising news story in my lifetime was the collapse of the Soviet Union. What would you say is yours?’
It’s, it's very hard to to single out one thing in a lifetime of fifty years. We lost a very visible war in Vietnam. We won a very visible space race, though this theory about the end of the cold war and all that it has rocked is probably as good as any.
Have you ever interviewed anyone that made you angry or sick or just plain nervous?
Of all the lofty and highfalutin people I've interviewed, the worst interview I ever conducted was Steve Allen, who was having a bad day and decided that one word answers should suffice.
Deborah Turner from New York asks, ‘how do you expect television journalism to change in the next five years?’
Deborah, it's a great question. Since I have been in the business, which is roughly twenty-six years, I've seen a lot of death notices come and go about what I do for a living. Not only are we still standing and proud to report that in our neck of the woods, NBC Nightly News, our viewers have increased over even last year, the most exciting presidential campaign of the modern era.
Why are there no ugly people reading the Nightly News?
I would argue that there are a whole bunch of us on television who look normal and look like America. Has there been traditionally an awful fiendish double standard for the appearance of men and women on television? Yes, it's a cruel, cruel medium.
Curtis Ohl from Escondido California asks, ‘do you actually wear pants while doing the news?’
I choose to. I know colleagues and I am and I'm not gonna use any coy initials here, Al Roker, but I know people in the industry who who don't, Garrison Keillor and I, I, I don't celebrate that.
What are your thoughts on losing the “most trusted name in news” poll to Jon Stewart.
I consider Jon Stewart and that broadcast and their freakishly talented staff to be an entire branch of government. I think they are kind of unto themselves in what has become of our media society, a system of checks and balances. So, the truth is I proudly pass the mantle, the told torch of most trusted to Jon, knowing that the people who responded to that poll were just kidding.
Have you ever thought about giving up journalism and doing some sort of comedy?
I'm working in my first love. I don't know what I would do for a living if I if I couldn't work in journalism, not television. I could come off television tomorrow happily and, and as long as I was in the daily writing game.
When are you going to start twittering?
It's the outgoing I have a problem with. I'm happy to read the incoming of some people. Just too much of it is, is kind of “I got the most awesome new pair of sweatpants”. I'm just gonna go ahead and assume that people buy awesome sweatpants every day and that I don't need to know them by name.
What story have you felt the most passionate about covering?
I think probably Katrina. You know, there were dime diamond dusts on op-ed columns saying, well, the media found its voice. They found their footing. They got a little angry. Well, you bet we did. This was a story where we didn't need a pass, a government escort or special permission. We were there. We were standing there as fellow citizens watching fellows suffer and die. So I think that will allow stay with me.
Well, Brian, thank you for taking questions from the readers of Time Magazine.
My pleasure. That was great.
I’m Gilbert Cruz for Time and this is 10 Questions with Brian Williams. Brian, thanks for being with us today.
Thank you for having me.
Now, you’ve been an anchor of NBC Nightly News for five years now. And our first question comes from Jared May in Boston. And Jared wants to know, ‘What do you consider to be the most important story of the decade?’
I would say 9/11. It changed how we are viewed in the world and changed how my children’s generation will grow up as Americans. It changed how I entered this building today. So I think
beyond everything else, it has to be when we were attacked very early on in the new decade.
Our next question is a similar question. It is from Ed Winters. Ed says ‘the most surprising news story in my lifetime was the collapse of the Soviet Union. What would you say is yours?’
It’s, it's very hard to to single out one thing in a lifetime of fifty years. We lost a very visible war in Vietnam. We won a very visible space race, though this theory about the end of the cold war and all that it has rocked is probably as good as any.
Have you ever interviewed anyone that made you angry or sick or just plain nervous?
Of all the lofty and highfalutin people I've interviewed, the worst interview I ever conducted was Steve Allen, who was having a bad day and decided that one word answers should suffice.
Deborah Turner from New York asks, ‘how do you expect television journalism to change in the next five years?’
Deborah, it's a great question. Since I have been in the business, which is roughly twenty-six years, I've seen a lot of death notices come and go about what I do for a living. Not only are we still standing and proud to report that in our neck of the woods, NBC Nightly News, our viewers have increased over even last year, the most exciting presidential campaign of the modern era.
Why are there no ugly people reading the Nightly News?
I would argue that there are a whole bunch of us on television who look normal and look like America. Has there been traditionally an awful fiendish double standard for the appearance of men and women on television? Yes, it's a cruel, cruel medium.
Curtis Ohl from Escondido California asks, ‘do you actually wear pants while doing the news?’
I choose to. I know colleagues and I am and I'm not gonna use any coy initials here, Al Roker, but I know people in the industry who who don't, Garrison Keillor and I, I, I don't celebrate that.
What are your thoughts on losing the “most trusted name in news” poll to Jon Stewart.
I consider Jon Stewart and that broadcast and their freakishly talented staff to be an entire branch of government. I think they are kind of unto themselves in what has become of our media society, a system of checks and balances. So, the truth is I proudly pass the mantle, the told torch of most trusted to Jon, knowing that the people who responded to that poll were just kidding.
Have you ever thought about giving up journalism and doing some sort of comedy?
I'm working in my first love. I don't know what I would do for a living if I if I couldn't work in journalism, not television. I could come off television tomorrow happily and, and as long as I was in the daily writing game.
When are you going to start twittering?
It's the outgoing I have a problem with. I'm happy to read the incoming of some people. Just too much of it is, is kind of “I got the most awesome new pair of sweatpants”. I'm just gonna go ahead and assume that people buy awesome sweatpants every day and that I don't need to know them by name.
What story have you felt the most passionate about covering?
I think probably Katrina. You know, there were dime diamond dusts on op-ed columns saying, well, the media found its voice. They found their footing. They got a little angry. Well, you bet we did. This was a story where we didn't need a pass, a government escort or special permission. We were there. We were standing there as fellow citizens watching fellows suffer and die. So I think that will allow stay with me.
Well, Brian, thank you for taking questions from the readers of Time Magazine.
My pleasure. That was great.
domingo, 8 de marzo de 2015
Extensive listening: Bible hunters
Bible Hunters is a two-episode BBC documentary series which intends to reveal the remarkable stories of the dedicated men and women who travelled across Egypt in the 19th and early 20th century to uncover the earliest Christian texts. Their discoveries would throw controversial new light on the Christian origins and the story of the Bible.
You can read the transcript for the first twelve minutes of the episode here.
You can read the transcript for the first twelve minutes of the episode here.
domingo, 15 de febrero de 2015
Operation Stonehenge What Lies Beneath
In September last year BBC2 aired Operation Stonehenge: What lies beneath, a two-episode documentary.
Stonehenge is an icon of prehistoric British culture, an enigma that has seduced archaeologists and tourists for centuries. A group of international archaeologists led by the University of Birmingham and the Ludwig Boltzman Institute in Vienna believe that a new state-of-the-art approach is the key to unlocking Stonehenge's secrets.
For four years the team have surveyed and mapped every monument, both visible and invisible, across ten square kilometres of the sacred landscape to create the most complete digital picture of Stonehenge and the surrounding area over millennia.
Operation Stonehenge takes the viewer on a prehistoric journey from 8000BC to 2500BC as the scientists uncover the very origins of Stonehenge, learning why this landscape is sacred, preserved and has been revered by following generations.
You can read the transcript for the first thirteen minutes of the programme here.
Stonehenge is an icon of prehistoric British culture, an enigma that has seduced archaeologists and tourists for centuries. A group of international archaeologists led by the University of Birmingham and the Ludwig Boltzman Institute in Vienna believe that a new state-of-the-art approach is the key to unlocking Stonehenge's secrets.
For four years the team have surveyed and mapped every monument, both visible and invisible, across ten square kilometres of the sacred landscape to create the most complete digital picture of Stonehenge and the surrounding area over millennia.
Operation Stonehenge takes the viewer on a prehistoric journey from 8000BC to 2500BC as the scientists uncover the very origins of Stonehenge, learning why this landscape is sacred, preserved and has been revered by following generations.
You can read the transcript for the first thirteen minutes of the programme here.
jueves, 1 de enero de 2015
How the Panama Canal was built
BBC News tells us the story of the construction of one of the seven wonders of the modern world.
Self-study activity:
For Básico 2 students, without watching the video (just minimise the window or scroll the screen down, so that you can't see the images), note down all the numbers and figures that are mentioned in the video.
For intermediate students, watch the video and complete the blanks in the transcript below with the missing words.
It has been a hundred years since the first ship sailed through the Panama Canal. In 1881 France began what would become one of the most challenging engineering projects ever (1) ... . But disease plagued the French (2) ... and up to a third of workers fell ill. After almost a decade, work (3) ... to a halt.
The canal was sold to the US 15 years later. The French suffered a considerable financial (4) ... . But by the (5) ... of the 20th century, medical knowledge was finally capable of controlling (6) ... of tropical disease.
The American opted for a new elevated lock system which would hoist ships above sea level. Upon (7) ... , the canal had cost a massive $639m, enough to build 85 Titanics. But after 33 years of construction the canal had (8) ... the lives of more than 25,000 thousand people. More than three quarters of these under French control. That’s 500 deaths for every mile of canal, and some believe this (9) ... to be even higher.
It was a colossal (10) ... , a journey from the west coast of America to Europe was cut virtually in half, and from Shanghai to New York by 14%. Two foreign nations were responsible for its construction, but the canal was finally handed over to Panama in 1999. Uniting two oceans for the first time, the canal has played a place in history as one of the seven wonders of the modern world.
Key:
1 undertaken 2 workforce 3 ground 4 loss 5 dawn 6 outbreaks 7 completion 8 claimed 9 toll 10 achievement
Self-study activity:
For Básico 2 students, without watching the video (just minimise the window or scroll the screen down, so that you can't see the images), note down all the numbers and figures that are mentioned in the video.
For intermediate students, watch the video and complete the blanks in the transcript below with the missing words.
It has been a hundred years since the first ship sailed through the Panama Canal. In 1881 France began what would become one of the most challenging engineering projects ever (1) ... . But disease plagued the French (2) ... and up to a third of workers fell ill. After almost a decade, work (3) ... to a halt.
The canal was sold to the US 15 years later. The French suffered a considerable financial (4) ... . But by the (5) ... of the 20th century, medical knowledge was finally capable of controlling (6) ... of tropical disease.
The American opted for a new elevated lock system which would hoist ships above sea level. Upon (7) ... , the canal had cost a massive $639m, enough to build 85 Titanics. But after 33 years of construction the canal had (8) ... the lives of more than 25,000 thousand people. More than three quarters of these under French control. That’s 500 deaths for every mile of canal, and some believe this (9) ... to be even higher.
It was a colossal (10) ... , a journey from the west coast of America to Europe was cut virtually in half, and from Shanghai to New York by 14%. Two foreign nations were responsible for its construction, but the canal was finally handed over to Panama in 1999. Uniting two oceans for the first time, the canal has played a place in history as one of the seven wonders of the modern world.
Key:
1 undertaken 2 workforce 3 ground 4 loss 5 dawn 6 outbreaks 7 completion 8 claimed 9 toll 10 achievement
domingo, 23 de noviembre de 2014
Extensive listening: Who were the Greeks?
Think of the ancient Greeks and we form a picture in our heads either of old bearded men talking philosophy or ripped warriors tearing their enemies to shreds. Ancient Greece seems full of such contradictions. A place that invented democracy but also ran on slave labour, that idolised youth but left children to die through exposure. The key questions for Dr Michael Scott in Who Were The Greeks? – the two-part series he wrote and presented for BBC Two – was how to make sense of those contradictions, how to understand what made ancient Greece tick.
What was really exciting about this challenge was bringing together traditional historical investigations with hard-core archaeology and science. The use of infra-red imaging in the British Museum, for example, to see ancient coloured paint (Egyptian blue) never seen before on the Parthenon marbles. For Dr Scott, the most thought-provoking piece of evidence was the well in Athens containing the bodies of infants and dogs, which is examined in the first part. It symbolised how different this world was. Why throw dogs into a well with dead babies?
But, in seeing the bones of these children, and in recognising the markings of killer childhood diseases like meningitis, or defects like cleft palate, it was impossible not to be overwhelmed by sadness, grief and pity. The same human emotions I suspect that affected the mothers and fathers of these children 2,000 years or so before.
You can read the transcript for the first ten minutes of the documentary here.
What was really exciting about this challenge was bringing together traditional historical investigations with hard-core archaeology and science. The use of infra-red imaging in the British Museum, for example, to see ancient coloured paint (Egyptian blue) never seen before on the Parthenon marbles. For Dr Scott, the most thought-provoking piece of evidence was the well in Athens containing the bodies of infants and dogs, which is examined in the first part. It symbolised how different this world was. Why throw dogs into a well with dead babies?
But, in seeing the bones of these children, and in recognising the markings of killer childhood diseases like meningitis, or defects like cleft palate, it was impossible not to be overwhelmed by sadness, grief and pity. The same human emotions I suspect that affected the mothers and fathers of these children 2,000 years or so before.
You can read the transcript for the first ten minutes of the documentary here.
domingo, 15 de junio de 2014
Extensive listening: Vikings, journey to new worlds
Here's the beginning of the documentary on Vikings: Journeys to New Worlds, which explains how these fighters impacted their time, and still have some influence over the world today. The film was shot on location in Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland.
You can read the transcript here.
You can read the transcript here.
lunes, 2 de junio de 2014
Who invented writing
In this Ted-ed lesson, Matthew Winkler shows us the evolution of Sumerian cuneiform and
explains the difference between writing those first symbols and simply
drawing meaning.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say whether the sentences below are true or false. You can also drop by Ted-ed and do the listening and speaking activities you can find there around Matthew's video lesson.
1 The writing system we use today can be traced back to 5,000 years ago.
2 Before the invention of writing, humans were unable to record information.
3 The Sumerians discovered that it is easy to represent meanings with words.
4 Drawing what you mean is art.
5 At some stage symbols for sounds became more important than symbols for meaning.
6 The Chinese writing system resulted from the Sumerian writing system.
7 The Mayan culture started writing in 300 BC.
8 We don't know everything about the invention of writing.
Human beings have probably been speaking to each other for tens of thousands of years, but we've only been writing our words down for about 5,000 years. Before then, we recorded information using pictures and diagrams on pottery and cave walls or woven into fabric. Those artistic impulses led us down the path to writing. The writing system that we use in English actually started with the Sumerian culture sometime between 4500 B.C. and 1750 B.C. in lower Mesopotamia, which is modern-day Iraq and Syria. The Sumerians kept records of business deals using tiny, clay sculptures of goats, donkeys, and oxen. They then discovered that two-dimensional engravings on clay tablets were even simpler. For example, this symbol meant, "mountains," this one meant, "head". If the mouth area of head was emphasized, that could mean, "mouth". Mouth combined with water meant, "drink," and mouth joined to bread meant, "eat." Add the symbol for ox, and you have "eat an ox". Voila - the invention of writing! But some words have meanings that are hard to represent with symbols. How would you draw, "ox in the mountains"?
Remember, if you just draw what you mean, that's art, not writing. In order for this to be writing, the symbol has to stand for the word. Can you read this? It's a famous quote from Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Right, "To be or not to be." That's how the Sumerians solved the problem too. Ox plus water plus mountain. What does water have to do with anything? Well, the Sumerian word for water sounded just like their word for "in," so "ox in mountains". Linguists call this rebus writing.
The Sumerians already knew how to represent meaning through written symbols and by representing sounds as well, the Sumerians expanded their written vocabulary. Gradually the symbols for sounds were used more often and the symbols for meaning were used less. The writing system became streamlined into a phonetic alphabet that we know as cuneiform. Many cultures, like the Acadians and the Syrians, adapted this Sumerian invention to create their own writing systems. The "Epic of Gilgamesh" and the "Code of Hammurabi" were written in variants of cuneiform.
As this technology spread, these symbols found their way to Greece and into the most widely used alphabet in the world today. But Sumeria wasn't the only place on Earth where writing was invented. Ancient Egyptians developed their hieroglyphic and hieratic scripts at about the same time, 3500 B.C. Then writing was independently invented in China, around 1500 B.C., and then, spread throughout Southeast Asia. Most recently, the Mayan culture in Central America began carving their cartouches in 300 A.D.
So, who invented writing? The Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Chinese, and the Mayans for sure. Ultimately, all the writing systems still in use around the world today can be traced back to Sumeria or China. Writing may have also been invented in other parts of the world. Ancient inscriptions left by the Indus Valley and Rapa Nui cultures have been discovered, but nobody has been able to decipher them. Do you want to try?
Key:
1F 2F 3F 4T 5T 6F 7F 8T
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say whether the sentences below are true or false. You can also drop by Ted-ed and do the listening and speaking activities you can find there around Matthew's video lesson.
1 The writing system we use today can be traced back to 5,000 years ago.
2 Before the invention of writing, humans were unable to record information.
3 The Sumerians discovered that it is easy to represent meanings with words.
4 Drawing what you mean is art.
5 At some stage symbols for sounds became more important than symbols for meaning.
6 The Chinese writing system resulted from the Sumerian writing system.
7 The Mayan culture started writing in 300 BC.
8 We don't know everything about the invention of writing.
Human beings have probably been speaking to each other for tens of thousands of years, but we've only been writing our words down for about 5,000 years. Before then, we recorded information using pictures and diagrams on pottery and cave walls or woven into fabric. Those artistic impulses led us down the path to writing. The writing system that we use in English actually started with the Sumerian culture sometime between 4500 B.C. and 1750 B.C. in lower Mesopotamia, which is modern-day Iraq and Syria. The Sumerians kept records of business deals using tiny, clay sculptures of goats, donkeys, and oxen. They then discovered that two-dimensional engravings on clay tablets were even simpler. For example, this symbol meant, "mountains," this one meant, "head". If the mouth area of head was emphasized, that could mean, "mouth". Mouth combined with water meant, "drink," and mouth joined to bread meant, "eat." Add the symbol for ox, and you have "eat an ox". Voila - the invention of writing! But some words have meanings that are hard to represent with symbols. How would you draw, "ox in the mountains"?
Remember, if you just draw what you mean, that's art, not writing. In order for this to be writing, the symbol has to stand for the word. Can you read this? It's a famous quote from Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Right, "To be or not to be." That's how the Sumerians solved the problem too. Ox plus water plus mountain. What does water have to do with anything? Well, the Sumerian word for water sounded just like their word for "in," so "ox in mountains". Linguists call this rebus writing.
The Sumerians already knew how to represent meaning through written symbols and by representing sounds as well, the Sumerians expanded their written vocabulary. Gradually the symbols for sounds were used more often and the symbols for meaning were used less. The writing system became streamlined into a phonetic alphabet that we know as cuneiform. Many cultures, like the Acadians and the Syrians, adapted this Sumerian invention to create their own writing systems. The "Epic of Gilgamesh" and the "Code of Hammurabi" were written in variants of cuneiform.
As this technology spread, these symbols found their way to Greece and into the most widely used alphabet in the world today. But Sumeria wasn't the only place on Earth where writing was invented. Ancient Egyptians developed their hieroglyphic and hieratic scripts at about the same time, 3500 B.C. Then writing was independently invented in China, around 1500 B.C., and then, spread throughout Southeast Asia. Most recently, the Mayan culture in Central America began carving their cartouches in 300 A.D.
So, who invented writing? The Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Chinese, and the Mayans for sure. Ultimately, all the writing systems still in use around the world today can be traced back to Sumeria or China. Writing may have also been invented in other parts of the world. Ancient inscriptions left by the Indus Valley and Rapa Nui cultures have been discovered, but nobody has been able to decipher them. Do you want to try?
Key:
1F 2F 3F 4T 5T 6F 7F 8T
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