Pictures Tell a Thousand Tales

Task 4

For the final trip of camp, we're off to Central America to explore the Mayan culture. I hope you brought your sunscreen!

This challenge will require you to use your imagination and submit images of the requested items along with stories to accompany them. The images can be photographs of actual places that someone on your team took, photographs of things that someone on your team created, or images created by members of your team. While only one person at a time is able to take a photograph or build a lego temple, everyone will be able to suggest items to take pictures/create images of, think of stories, and vote on which items will be used by each team. Team work will be an important part of this task. It is expected that each team will rely on input from all of the members that are available and wish to participate. Obviously not many people live near Mayan ruins, so be sure to be very imaginative. Ruins and artifacts can be "created" from memorials in parks, pretzel sticks, or cable cords as long as there are good descriptions and stories. You needn't be a master photographer or photoshopper to have the best entry. (In my first months at HOL, I totally made bat-bogeys out of play-doh and sent in a picture for a PPC contest...and won!) The stories should describe the object or place, its purpose, and who used it. It wouldn't be a bad thing if the items fit in with Mayan culture either...

A. Submit an image of a Mayan place. Describe its purpose and location.

B. Submit an image of a Mayan object. Describe its function, how it works, and who would use it.

C. Submit an image of the effects of a spell attributed to Mayan wizarding culture. Describe its effects, incantation, and any special movements required.

D. Have fun!

First Place: Jolly Green Wizards

The Mayan Place we have discovered is a ruin of a building in what is now central southern Mexico, which was very likely used as a bakery. It is made up of stone blocks, a material which does well at isolating heat as well as cold, which served its purpose to ward off the heat from outside and isolate the chimneys. The fact that the Mayas ate tortillas and roasted meat starting in the 13th century and a thorough analysis of the stone the building was built of let us date the building to around the mid-1500s.

The room seen on the right of the picture was most likely a cooling room or a storage room. It is separated from the room in which the actual baking was done by a double wall, to ward off the extreme heat. Several parts of baskets and even one complete basket found near and on the site indicate that food was transported to and from this room to other buildings or maybe even fields. The second room, seen on the left of the picture, was the place where the Maya baked their tortillas and roasted their meat over two fires, whose smoke was led out of the house by two large square chimneys. The large amount of empty space left in the room indicates that the Maya might also have made other preparations here, such as rolling out the tortillas, cutting the meat, and preparing the maize.

The artifact we found was a Mayan basket.

This basket was typically created by women of the various Mayan tribes and had many different functions. Some were used for gathering herbs, others were used in transporting maize and preserved meats from one place to another. Found next to the building that, during our expedition, we have discovered to be a bakery from Mayan times, we believe that this basket was used to transport Maize to and from the Mayan fields to the bakery where the Maize was then processed and used in bread baking for the Mayan people. The baskets were then used to transport the bread from the bakeries to the Mayan houses where it was traded for other goods and foods for the baker's family.

Baskets in the Mayan tribes were owned by many groups of people, but baskets of this size and of this design were more commonly associated with the baker and from the baker's servants who were primarily responsible for transporting the maize to the bakery from the field to the bakery and then again by the same servants to transport the freshly baked bread from the bakery to the people of the village. The tightly woven strands of reeds that held this basket together were ideal for protecting the maize and bread from insects as well as for preserving the freshness of the final product.

Judges' Comments

I really like your location idea! Extremely creative, and nothing to do with violence or war. I am extremely impressed! I also like how your object goes along with your location. It ties in quite nicely. I also like how you guys added D into your final submission. My only concern is that I don't feel the pictures...even though they are wonderful...are creative enough. They both look as though they came from a museum, not from your own creations. For me, they do not quite meet expectations. 8/10

I know how hard you guys tried to find a good picture, and for that I can't hold it against you because not everyone has a digital camera. However, perhaps you could've made the story more interesting to balance the lack of the images? It is quite a good one you've come up with, I guess I just hoped for something more intriguing/magical. You did good with what you have, though. 8/10

Good images. I could've used a little more magic from your stories, but you did a great job of tying in actual Mayan life. Over all, well done! 7/10

You've found some great images there and have described both the location and object very nicely. 9/10

I really like how you have connected both the item and the place, that was a very good idea! I think the information about the Mayan palace is fantastic, although I'm not too sure of the picture. I found it a bit hard to tell what it was. I do like the information about food, very good subject matter there. I thought that the picture of the basket was fantastic, it really looked Mayan, and I also enjoyed the information given. Great task! 8/10

Overall Score: 8

For the other entries, click here.