Saturday, June 25, 2011

Ancient Greece Questions

The students at Whitefish Bay in Wisconsin sent me some good questions. Today I will answer the questions that the archaeologists helped me with and tomorrow I will write out the information from my guide.
Thanks for your questions!! I love how it helps me to talk to specialists here and they really liked the questions.

HOW OLD IS THE ACROPOLIS?
First-the age of the Acropolis. Acropolis actually means city on a hill. What you want to know about I think is the building on top called the Parthenon. They said that it is about 2458 years old. That means it is more than 2000 years older than the United States! Do you know the poem about Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492? Well that means that even when Columbus discovered America it was OLD already! Can you figure out how old?

HOW OLD IS ANCIENT?
The Archaeologists here thought your question about what ancient means was really good. They did not all agree on what it means and we all realized that it can mean different things in different situations. Like someone can say, "My couch is ancient" and mean 20 years old. And a paleontologist might find a bone and call it ancient and mean millions of years old.

The first thing that they said is that it was before the Middle Ages, so I asked them what that meant. They said you needed to figure that out! You can write me back and tell me what you think and I can find out what they say.


WHAT KIND OF CLOTHES DID PEOPLE WEAR IN ANCIENT GREECE?
I also asked about ancient clothes and they said that they wore tunics. A tunic is a big piece of cloth that they draped around themselves. They know this because of statues and painted pots that they have found. They did not sew, but sometimes used buttons and pins. I am putting in some pictures so that you can see what clues Archaeologists can get from pots and statues. They also said that they never wore pants and they were not sure about underwear or sox.

WHAT FOODS DID PEOPLE EAT IN ANCIENT GREECE?
Ancient Greeks ate a lot of the same foods that we do. They had LOTS of olives, olive oil and wine. They also ate bread, lentils, chickpeas, honey, fruit, cheese, and lots of seafood. They probably only ate meat (beef, pork, chicken, goat) on special occasions. They did NOT have tomatoes, squash, or coffee because those thing were brought from other countries later. The picture is a wine jug that was used to mix water with the wine so it was not too strong. It also has pictures of people and animals. The Archaeologists can learn a lot from this

In the next post I will answer the modern questions with the help of my guide.

Thanks to Eustaquio Santimago for the image of the Parthenon-from Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eustaquio

2 comments:

  1. Hi Janice, I LOVE your blog! What a wonderful, clear way of writing you have. I can picture these kids being excited to learn about ancient Greece. And the pictures you chose are perfect. It was wonderful meeting you, and I hope we cross paths again someday!

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  2. Thank you so much for answering our questions, Janice. The students were very interested in the clothing and the fact that the people in the photos dress very much like people in the US.

    Students thought that the middle ages were in the 1500-1600s and related it to the kings of England. Your clue about Columbus helped them to put the time in perspective. We talked about how ancient was relative to the context of the conversation or to the point of view of the people thinking about how old ancient really is :-)

    Ms. Kreul and Students

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