The Nazca People

Today we read about the Nazca people and the amazing Nazca lines in Peru.  We of course, wanted to see better pictures than are offered in Story of the World so we went online of course.  I found two great online sites about these amazing geoglyphs as they are called.

National Geographic has a great interactive picture showing how the lines might have been built.  http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/03/nasca/nasca-animation.

We also watched a quick clip from how stuff works that had some flyover shots and interesting info.  Unfortunately, the narrators chose to make a slightly inappropriate remark at the end about there not being any "dirty" pictures included in the lines.  You could stop the clip at the last few seconds or simply hope your kids don't get it as mine certainly didn't.

http://shows.howstuffworks.com/40459-the-coolest-stuff-on-the-planet-the-nazca-lines-video.htm

Tomorrow we are going to create a Nazca line drawing in chalk on the driveway.  I told B, she will have to try to draw a picture with a single stroke to see how difficult it is.   Of course our driveway is nowhere near the size of the glyphs but it's better than the activities suggested in SOTW.

After reading this section of SOTW, I am feeling even more like I want to create my own history curriculum.  I simply don't like the treatment of non-western peoples.   For example, Bauer says that creating the lines was like drawing with your eyes closed.  This is obviously not the case.  Even my child understands that you can plan out a large drawing using a small drawing.  You could pace it out or measure it.  I'm not saying it was easy to do the glyphs but something about the chapter rubbed me the wrong way.  I would have preferred her to include some of the other great info that I found online.