Our Games

At Play

Everyday life and our games

People are always inventing ways to have fun. The Egyptians threw stone balls at upright pins in a game similar to bowling about 5,000 years ago. The Greeks played soccer with inflated animal bladders about 2,500 years ago. Some games seem timeless – hopscotch, marbles, tick-tack-toe and rope skipping are as popular today as when they were first played.

 Dolls have delighted young and old for centuries. They have been made of many different materials, from apples and animal skins to china and plastic. In 1823, baby dolls were made to cry. Soon, they were talking as well. Today, the games industry is booming as inventors create new and exciting games that challenge all who play them. 

Checkmate

Chess was invented in about AD 500 in India. The moves we play today were first used in Europe in the mid-1900s. The winning position “checkmate” comes from shah mat, Arabic for the king is dead.

Barbie Doll

In 968, Ruth Handler invented Barbie, a dress-up doll complete with a wardrobe of clothes and a way of life. More than two billion Barbie dolls have been sold in 140 countries.

Barbie Dolls. Photo by Elena.

Did you know?

The very first roller skates invented by a Belgian musician Joseph Merlin in 1760, had wheels in one line – similar to today's rollerblades.

Lego

The Danish word leg-godt means to play well. Ole Kirk Christiansen chose the name “Lego” for his line of toys. By 1955, his toy plastic bricks that can be joined to construct things such as buildings, machines, people and animals, were known as Lego all over the world.

Name of ten pins

In 1845, nine-pin bowling had become so popular in the state of Connecticut that it encouraged heavy gambling. A law was passed that banned the game of bowling at nine pine. The eager bowlers added a tenth pin and kept on bowling.

Games, Games, Games

In 1972, American Nolan Bushnell invented the first successful computer game. It was like table tennis, and was called Pong. In 1978, Space Invaders was introduced and became a big success. Today's electronic games, such as Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, use full color animation, speed and constantly changing tactics to outwit even the best human players. The computer game Lunicus pits players against a giant bee!

A Monastic Life

A Monastic Life

Religious communities lived in monasteries or abbeys and these were the chief centers of art and leaning in Europe between the tenth and twelfth centuries. A single community often included several hundred men called monks, or women, called nuns, who lived in a walled settlement. The monks and nuns divided each day between worship, study and work. Monasteries were often located in the frontier areas of Europe among various nomadic tribes.

Monks built churches that looked like fortress because they were seen as strongholds of God in an evil world. People came there seeking peace from the violence and wars around them. Living areas of a monastery opened off a cloister – a covered walkway built around a square garden. After the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, many building techniques were forgotten. Stone,masons had to rediscover how to build arched stone vaults so the churches had fireproof roofs. These vaults were like those built by the Romans, so the style is called Romanesque.

People liked living near a monastery. It often provided the only hospital or school in an area and travelers stayed at guest houses located within the monastery.

Sleeping Quarters

Dormitories in the abbey at the cathedral in Durham, England, has a trussed roof built from thick, roughly cut timbers. Light from large windows allowed the monks to read during their afternoon rest period. In the winter, the monks sat by a fire in the warming room then went to bed in the unheated dormitory upstairs. A door in the dormitory led into the church because the monks worshiped in the middle of the night.

Feeding the community

On feast days, the monks roasted a wild boar over a fire in the center of the floor of the kitchen at Glastonbury Abbey in Somerset, England. They cooked other dishes for the large community over the four fireplaces in the corners of the room.

Refectory

Twice a day, monks sat down in the refectory to eat their simple meals.

Monastic Life. Photo by Elena.

Cellar

The monks made cheese and candles, cured hams and brewed ale to stock their cellar with all the things the community needed.

Maria Laach Abbey

The twelfth-century Romanesque abbey west of Koblenz, Germany, has six towers decorated with dark stone. This scene reconstructs a typical monastery cloister next to the abbey church.

Growing food

The monks worked in the fields of the farm outside the monastery walls. They also cultivated a small herb garden where they grew the plants used to make medicines.

Make pilgrimages

People rarely traveled in these times, but the did make a trip, or pilgrimage, to pray at the burial place of a Christian saint. Some pilgrims walked hundreds of miles to reach their goal, such as Santiago de Compostela in Spain. They slept in monastic guest houses and prayed at churches along the way. Pilgrims brought home new ideas from their travels, including new ways to build churches.

China and Japan Open Up

China and Japan Open Up

By the early 1800s, Europeans had set up trading bases in most countries except China and Japan. The Chinese hated foreign “barbarians” and allowed only Dutch and Portuguese merchants to trade in certain areas. Europeans first ventured into Japan in the 1500s, bringing Christianity with them. But in the 1600s, the ruling Tokugawa shoguns expelled all Europeans, except the Dutch. For the next 200 years, Japan was closed to the rest of the world. In the 1800s, the western powers tried to open up China and Japan for trade. In 1839, Britain went to war with China. Three years later, the Chinese signed a treaty giving Hong Kong to the British and allowing them to trade in other ports. In 1853, four American warships, led by Commodore Perry, sailed into Edo Bay (now Tokyo Bay) in Japan. Perry carried a letter from his president to the Japanese emperor, requesting trade ports. Japan and the United States signed a treaty a year later. The Japanese began to build railways and factories and soon became a major industrial nation.

Dutch Boy

From the 1600s to the 1850s, the Japanese allowed the Dutch to trade from an island in Nagasaki harbor. Japanese artists included Dutch figures in their art.

Opening up Japan

The Japanese were astonished at the sight of the stranger foreigners who sailed into Edo Bay in their black ships. Cautiously, they approached the steamships in small craft. The British, Russians and French soon followed the Americans into Japan. By the 1860s, many foreign diplomats and traders were living in Japan.

Japanese culture. Photo by Elena.

Opium Wars

The British East India Company began to bring the drug opium into into China from India to trade for Chinese tea. But it was illegal to trade in opium, and wars broke out between the Chinese government and the British.

Just like the West

After 1854, many Japanese, including the royal family, gave up their traditional costumes for western clothes. They wanted their people to be as modern as those in the West.

Boxer Rebellion

Some Chinese hated anything that was foreign. They formed a secret group called Yihequan (Righteous and Harmonious Fists), nicknamed the Boxers. In 1900, they attacked foreign factories, railways, churches and schools, and besieged diplomats in Peking for 55 days. Many Chinese and foreigners were killed in this rebellion. 

Fondations of Religions

Foundations of Religions

As early as 2500 BC, great civilizations flourished south of the Himalayan mountains, in what is now India. Three world religions began there – Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. All three teach that life, like a circle, has no end. It returns again and again as do the seasons. They believe that a person's soul comes back to to live another life in a new body.. This is called reincarnation. Hinduism began about 1500 BC. Hindus worship alone on most occasions, and many make pilgrimages to temples to pay homage to their gods. Hindu temples have richly decorated exteriors and pilgrims worship outside. The most important part of a temple is a small shrine with no windows, which is the home of the god.

A tall, curved shikhara, or tower, rises above the shrine, and a series of open porches are used for assemblies and religious dancing.

Did you know?

Even a small Hindu shrine can be seen from anywhere in a village because of the tall, carved shikhara above it. The shikhara represents a holy mountain that is thought of a staircase to the heavenly world.

Sri Ranganatha

The tower in Mysore, India is one of 15 giant gateways trough the five walls that enclose a Hindu shrine. The gateways were built between the eleventh and seventeenth centuries. The shrine itself is quite small and crowded by the priests' houses and the assembly rooms for pilgrims.

Ranarpur Temple

The Ranakpur temple honors Mahavira, the founder of Jainism. Jains believe that a person lives many lives, including those of animals. Jains try not to hurt any living creatures. One of Ranakpur's large corbeled domes rises above the courtyard. The dome rests on two stories of columns and is surrounded by smaller domes.

Fondation of Religions. Photo by Elena.

Building in Rock

In the second century BC, Buddhist monks built a monastery at Ajanta by cutting artificial caves into the cliffs above the river. Carvers chipped off unwanted rock and carried it away leaving a building behind. The columned entrance of the vihara, where the monks lived, led to a rectangular room surrounded by galleries. Each monk had a square cave that opened onto a gallery. Stone walls and ceilings were rubbed smooth then covered with paintings or carved with sculpture. The monastery also had a chaitya, or meeting hall, where people gathered to worship and study.

Myth in stone

The lively sculptures on the outside of Kandariya Mahadero represent many of the figures in stories from Hindy mythology.

Kandarya Mahadeo Temple

More than 1,000 carved figures cover this eleventh-century temple in Khajuraho,  At first glance it looks like a mountain of rock covered with rows of sculpture. The temple stands on a high platform with the shrine under the tall shikhara at one end a deep entrance at the other. Processions move through a passageway, which wraps around the halls and shrine.

Temple floor plan

Mathematical rules control the design of Hindu temples. Many small squares make up the floor plan of the temple. A square which never changes, symbolizes the heavenly world.

Heavens Meets Earth

Heaven Meets Earth

Christians believe in Jesus, the son of God, and their religion is based on his life and teachings. Christians were persecuted for many years during the Roman Empire, but in AD 313 Emperor Constantine made the religion legal. He then left the city of Rome and moved east by Byzantium and established a new Christian capital named Constantinople, which is now Istanbul in Turkey.

The Roman Empire later split into east and west. The western empire collapsed after it was invaded many times by nomadic tribes from central Asia,, but the eastern part survived to become the Byzantine Empire. Christianity as it developed there is called Orthodox Christianity. Hagia Sophia was the magnificent Orthodox church in Constantinople and it inspired builders of Orthodox churches for centuries. The great dome at the center of the church represented the heavens. The floor below represented life on Earth.

The Pantheon

For many years, the dome of the Pantheon, in Rome, Italy, baffled modern engineers. They did not know how the ancient Romans managed to build such a large dome. Then they discovered that the dome was made of concrete that becomes lighter as it gets higher because each level is mixed with lighter stones such as volcanic pumice.

For many hundreds of years the dome of the Pantheon was the largest in the world. It measures 142 ft across and is the same in height. Walls 16 ft thick buttress the base of the dome.

Wall of a Temple. Photo by Elena.

The church today

Four towers called minarets surround Hagia Sophia. They were added when the Islamic Ottoman Turks, founders of modern Turkey, conquered the Byzantine Empire and converted the church into a mosque.

Central dome

The large, lightweight dome is built of a single layer of brick and is 107 ft wide. It has a row of arched windows cut into its base.

The Congregation

There were no seats in Hagia Sophia. Worshippers stood in the space beyond the columns – the men in the aisle below and the women in the gallery above – to listen to the singing of the Orthodox church service.

Half domes

A half dome at each end lengthens the nave to 250 ft and buttresses the main dome by pressing against its base.

Decorating with Mosaics

A mosaic is a design of picture made up of small pieces of colored glass or stone that are mounted on a wall or ceiling. Mosaics seem to glow in the dimmest light. At one time, many colorful mosaics covered the ceilings of Hagia Sophia. Jesus and other great leaders and heroes of Christianity were portrayed in mosaics against a gold background, which symbolized Heaven.

Hagia Sophia

Byzantine architects began this church in Constantunople in 532, during the reign of Emperor Justinian. They finished it six years and it soon became the model for future Orthodox churches. The clergy, the worldly ruler, under the great domes, where the teaching of Jesus were read.