Appleseeds articles from November 2004

Appleseeds archives from November 2004

Writing down the ages.
November 1, 2004... Imagine what life was like before writing was invented. No books, no comics, no cereal boxes to read! Imagine walking through a grocery store with no writing in it. How would you find what you wanted? How would the store keep track of what it...

Wood stones, wax, and bones--that's what people wrote on.
November 1, 2004... Right now, you're reading an article in AppleSeeds magazine, printed on paper. Paper is cheap and easy to get, so it's hard to imagine life without it. But how did people record their ideas before paper was invented? The answer is, lots of...

Stone stories: ancient messages from the Anasazi.
November 1, 2004... If you want to leave a message for your friends, do you write them a note? Do you talk to their answering machine? Thousands of years ago, the Anasazi people left messages in a different way. The Anasazi, or "ancient ones," lived in the...

Writing on a wasp's nest.
November 1, 2004... You're outside on a warm spring day and you hear a buzzing sound over your head. On a nearby tree branch, you see a nest shaped like an upside-down umbrella. Wasps! Are you scared, or do you try to get a better look? Now think about this: A...

Johann finds a way ...
November 1, 2004... Johann (YO-hahn) Gutenberg made quite an impression on the world. He invented the mechanical printing press in Germany more than 560 years ago. His invention changed the way people got information, and it changed the world. Before the...

Making homemade paper.(Fun Stuff)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... Did you just throw away that old homework assignment? Did you trash the cardboard box that held your new sneakers? Believe it or not, every American throws away about 700 pounds of paper products each year. That's a lot of paper! Just think......

Pictures on papyrus.
November 1, 2004... My package arrived in six days from Cairo, Egypt. I tore it open and found everything I had hoped for, and more--a colorful picture of Queen Cleopatra painted on a sheet of papyrus. Papyrus looks like stiff paper, but it isn't paper at all....

Lively letters, ancient art.(The Artist's Eye)
November 1, 2004... When you think of art, what comes to mind? Drawing? Painting? Handwriting? Can handwriting be art? Yes! It's called calligraphy, the art of beautiful handwriting. Calligraphy began centuries ago. For hundreds of years, almost no one could...

Sequoyah's talking leaves.
November 1, 2004... Imagine creating a whole writing system by yourself. It seems like an enormous job for one person. But a Cherokee Indian named Sequoyah did it. Sequoyah was born around 1780 in what is now Tennessee. A quiet boy who liked to draw, he grew...

Pvvkrmt hvxivgh *.(Your Turn)
November 1, 2004... "SFUO RRPC RHIR SIES POAN RSTA YT" This top-secret message is on your desk. To read it, though, you need to know something about cryptography, the science of secret messages. For thousands of years, people have been writing and sending...

From papyrus to ... what are pixels anyway?(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... When you look at a computer screen, what you are really seeing is a collection of thousands of tiny squares of light. These little dots are called picture elements, or pixels for short. Row after row of pixels are all lined up, joining together...

Sticks and stones.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... Have you ever gone to a store to buy school supplies? You probably saw dozens of different kinds of pens, pencils, and other writing instruments. It can sometimes feel like we have too many choices! But it hasn't always been that way. Many...

Be a spy.(Puzzle Power)
November 1, 2004... I Would you make a good spy? Do you like writing and reading secret messages? Use the substitution cipher here to read this secret message. (Find out how on pages 26-27.) Good luck! If you get stuck, the answer appears on the next page....

Think about it!(Brief Article)(Poem)
November 1, 2004... In what ways would your life be different without writing? Besides writing, what other ways do we have of keeping records today? In the last 4,000 years, human writing has gone ...