Ancient Worlds (Mysteries of the Unexplained)

Tsukasa Ogawa

Author: Kathy Burke

Genre: Mystery

Date: Sunday March 6^th 〜 Monday March 8^th

Describing the book:

1. Stonehenge

It was built 5,000 years ago in the UK. 1,500 men had to work every day over five years to built this. The most popular opinion why it was built is Stonehenge was used like a giant computer to make predictions from the position of the sun, moon and stars.

2. The Easter Island statues

The island of Rapa Nui, in the Pacific Ocean, was named Easter Island when it was ‘discovered’ by Europeans on Easter Day in 1722. It is famous for over 800 stone statues, called moai. In the early 1990s, forty scientists moved fifteen of the statues and put them on new platforms. They used modern equipment and worked every day, but it took them four years. So how did the people of Easter Island move more than 300 statues?

3. Mysteries of Egypt

The three most famous pyramids are in Giza. They were built for the bodies of the pharaohs after they died almost 5,000 years ago. The Great Pyramid is the largest. It is 140m high and 228m wide at its widest point. People think that the pyramid shape helped the pharaohs climb to the sky after their death. Maybe over 100,000 men worked for more than twenty years to build this. The stones that made the Pyramid are very large and very heavy, so how were they lifted to the top?

The Sphinx guards the Pyramids. It is 20m high and more than 73m long.

The Valley of the Kings is near the city of Luxor, in Egypt. The bodies of the most famous pharaohs were put in special rooms there. An Englishman, Howard Carter, found the place where King Tutankhamen’s body was kept, in 1923. He took many things away but his teammates, twelve of the twenty scientists, died. A sign at the entrance promised death to the people who opened it.

4. The Nazca Lines

In Peru, very large ‘drawings’ of animals and 1,300km of straight lines cover more than 500km² of land. These were made by the Nazca people thousands of years ago. Many of the animal shapes are as big as two football fields. How could the Nazca people make perfect shapes like these when they couldn’t see them from the ground?

These are still mysteries.

The theme is the mystery of world. The message is ancient people were intelligent.

Responding to the book:

This book was very interesting, because I like mysteries of history. I thought the ancient people were great, because we couldn't build these buildings or draw these lines without modern equipment.

I thought the English level of this book was about right. I recommend this book to other students, because this book was very interesting. I think everyone should read this book to know how smart the ancient people were!