Track 5

Unit 1a, Archaeology.

What can we learn from the past.

Page 6 and 7.

Listen for main ideas and listen for details.

For me travel isn’t just for fun I’m an archaeologist, so travel is also an important part of my research, today I want to tell you about three of my favourite archaeological discoveries.

These discoveries are important for research because they link us to our ancestors, the three discoveries you’ll hear about today tell us something about one societies, ancient accounting practices, another’s ancient rituals and the thirds written language.

And these three things are still very important to us today right?

Okay our first stop will take us to a site in Corrado Peru in South America, here we’ll look at a recent discovery about a group of people called the Incas.

Why is this site important?

Well it shows us that the Incas were very interested in accounting archeologists have found that the Incas used a very detailed system of colored strings for keeping records or counting things. They call the system of colored strings Khipu, that’s K H I P U. The khipu tells us that the Incas were interested in organizing their world and keeping track of finances or maybe events of some type.

We know that this system consisted of different colors and lengths of string and knots in the strings.

Don’t you wonder what they were counting?

Archaeologists through, and they’re using computers to try to discover the code or system of the people. funny isn’t it?

That we’re using computers today to figure out what maybe was a type of computer in the past for the Incas.

Let’s make another stop this time in England.

Here we find Stonehenge have you heard about Stonehenge?

It’s a site with a structure and this site shows us how important ritual was for the people who lived in that area thousands of years ago.

What do you think the structure was made of?

Well yes stones as the name tells us, these stones are huge much too heavy for people to lift.

We wonder how these ancient people placed the stones in the circle that forms Stonehenge.

Archaeologists believe that Stonehenge was used for ceremonies the size of Stonehenge tells us that human rituals were significant to these ancient people just like rituals are important for many people today.

Our final stop is Easter Island a very small piece of land in the Pacific Ocean now this is really interesting.

Have you ever wondered how ancient people told stories or passed on their knowledge?

One way was the use of petroglyphs spelled P E T R O G L Y P H S.

These are pictures or symbols carved into stone with a knife or tool. Many of these carved pictures tell us about hunting practices for example. Others show Birds or Birdman which tells us that birds were very important to the ancient people of this island.

In general the petroglyphs tell us that these people were interested in three things, one communicating their ideas and stories, two learning, and three recording information.

Isn’t it interesting how these archaeological discoveries can tell us things about ancient societies?

Even thousands of years ago accounting, rituals and language were important so to review, to see one of the earliest computing systems you can’t miss a trip to Peru to see the Incan people, interested in human rituals? make sure you visit Stonehenge and the trip to Easter Island will show you some fascinating petroglyphs you really should see this early form of writing.

That’s all for today, bon voyage.