Category Archives: Kids: Public Life

Throwback Thursday! KIDS’ BLOG: Rain, Rain Go Away: Ancient Weather, Modern Predictions

Subtropical Storm Andrea Released to Public: Subtropical Storm Andrea, May 8, 2007 by NASA/MODIS

Hurricane season 2019 hasn’t even begun yet and we’ve already had our first official named storm: Andrea. Sure, she came and went pretty quickly, but it was a reminder that these storms are unpredictable and they appear and disappear according to their own timetable. And yet, we must continue to try and predict when the next weather event is going to affect us. We need to know when, where and how bad is it going to be. Technological advances in meteorology have made it possible for us to look into the future and predict with more precise accuracy than our ancestors could have imagined. But for all of our fancy tech, we haven’t forgotten the importance of our past. In the blog post, KIDS’ BLOG: Rain, Rain Go Away: Ancient Weather, Modern, we explore how scientists continue to use information about our ancient weather past to learn about and better predict the storms of the future. And, because it’s a Kids’ Blog, we’ve got an awesome activity built right in to the post!

The LegacyQuest 2016 Letter of Intent Deadline is Approaching!

It’s not too late to get involved! Contact us if you need an extension.

Letter of Intent Deadline- December 11, 2015

Final Entry Submission Deadline- February 26, 2016



LegacyQuest large logo blue borderAntiquityNOW (AN) and Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI) are announcing a call for entries for the 2016 LegacyQuest International Children’s Film and Video Festival. The Festival is open to young people between the ages of 12 and 15 (6th – 8th grades) in the United States and abroad.  It will be held in conjunction with The Archaeology Channel (TAC) International Film and Video Festival, May 11-15, 2016, in Eugene, Oregon, USA. Films must be produced in 2015 and 2016. Continue reading

Happy Hanukkah from AntiquityNOW: Children’s Crafts for the Festival of Lights

IMG_0862For Jews around the world Hanukkah is a season of family and remembrance, and what better way to celebrate the joy and miracle of this ancient holiday than seeing the ingenuity of students from the Hollis Hills Jewish Center Nursery School in Queens, New York.

Students at the school range from ages 18 months through five years old. The slideshow below illustrates the work of children from three classes. The Lego menorah was created by a student and her father.  The children were learning about the story of the Maccabees and the miracle of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, where a small vessel of olive oil burned in the menorah for eight days at the Holy Temple. The pictures of the Hebrew letters Nun, Gimmel, Hey and Shin are translated “Great Miracle Happened There” (in Israel “Here” is substituted). Continue reading

Throwback Thursday! Ancient Games and Toys

Roman_dice_IMG_4367It is the season of toys! Parents are scouring store shelves for the most popular gadgets and games to wrap up for the holiday season. Today’s most prized playthings may take more batteries than those of the ancients, but our ancestors still knew how to have a good time. Consider the recent findings at a 1,900 year old Roman settlement in Germany. Archaeologists uncovered a board game piece and a die, proving the soldiers who lived there weren’t all work, no play. Read the complete article here.

Further evidence of ancient playtime was discovered in a  2,300-year-old tomb near Qingzhou City in China. The heavily looted site still holds valuable treasures, including pieces from a mysterious board game. “Archaeologists found a 14-face die made of animal tooth, 21 rectangular game pieces with numbers painted on them and a broken tile which was once part of a game board.”[1] They believe these pieces were used to play a game called “Bo” that hasn’t been played in 1,500 years. Click here to read more about this fascinating find.

To learn more about how our ancient ancestors amused themselves, check out our Kids’ Blog, Ancient Toys, Wii and You!

DON’T MISS OUT! Call for Entries for 2016 LegacyQuest International Children’s Film and Video Festival

LegacyQuest large logo blue border

Letter of Intent Deadline- December 11, 2015

Final Entry Submission Deadline- February 26, 2016


Not sure how to get started with your LegacyQuest video submission? We’re here to help! First, check out our page called Tips for Making a Video for LegacyQuest. Next, think about what interest and excites you. Do you like art, science, cooking, video games, reading…? Whatever your passion, there’s a fascinating link to the past that you can explore. Feel free to contact us for help getting inspired to make the best video ever!

View our invitational video below and visit our webpage for details about the festival and how your students can get involved!


KIDS’ BLOG! Picture This: Pictograms and Petroglyphs and the Stories They Tell

An example of Aboriginal hand stencil rock art.

An example of Aboriginal hand stencil rock art.

Update! This post was originally published on July 23rd, 2013. In the post below we explore the ancient history of rock art and how we’re still using pictograms to communicate today. Recently, ancient petroglyphs have been back in the news with the discovery of an ancient Aboriginal site in a suburb of Sydney, Australia. Researchers say the site is tens of thousands of years old and has probably been dismissed by locals as graffiti.[1] Actually, it is kind of like ancient graffiti and it helps us see into the past and get a glimpse of what life was like for the ancient people living in the area. The art is made up of hand stencils of things that were a part of everyday life, such as “eels, a spearhead and a crescent-shaped moon.”[2] The images are a particularly advanced form of aboriginal hand stencils in which numerous hands combine to form a particular shape.[3] There’s a waterhole nearby and the petroglyphs are on a rock overhang so the artists were probably living in this spot, using the rock for shelter and fishing out of the waterhole. Because of the size of the hands, researchers have concluded that this site was created by women and children.[4] Continue reading

KIDS’ BLOG! Take a Glimpse into the Lives of the Ancient Judeans and Make Your Own Piece of History

A cuneiform tablet similar to the ones on display in the Bible Lands Museum.

A cuneiform tablet similar to the ones on display in the Bible Lands Museum.

Have you ever sat down at the end of a long day and written in your diary? Or maybe you just updated your Facebook status and shared what you ate for dinner or how you were feeling after a difficult day at school. What if ancient people from thousands of years ago had done the same thing? We could learn so much about the way people lived, how they felt, what they did. These are the kinds of things archaeologists get to study when they are lucky enough to find written records and testimonies from ancient times. Continue reading

KIDS’ BLOG! Proverbs II: Timeless Words and the Soul of a People

An ancient Viking rune symbolizing fertility and new beginnings. In modern times, it is often used as a symbol for the saying "Where there's a will, there's a way."

An ancient Viking rune symbolizing fertility and new beginnings. In modern times, it is often used as a symbol for the saying “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

In Part I, we discovered how proverbs, sayings that carry a message or truth, seem to be a part of every culture going back millennia. In the oral tradition, before writing could delve deeply into the world of ideas, societies needed ways to instruct people as to how they had to behave. Proverbs arose as an effective way to do just that. Their wise and often witty words and images embodied the values of a culture. And while cultural values can be quite complex, proverbs were popular because they conveyed that idea, that value, that moral in a distinctive and memorable way. Continue reading

KIDS’ BLOG! Proverbs I: Timeless Words and the Soul of a People

Book of French Proverbs from 1845.

Book of French proverbs published in 1845.

Every culture has a story to tell, and that story is told in many ways. Artifacts, legal records, letters, journals, art, music, dress, even the detritus of daily life uncover the ways of a people. Values and mores are realized through rituals, religions, oral and written histories, monuments and palaces, and many more touchstones of culture. In particular, language and the expressive arts have produced some remarkable observations of lives lived long ago. Continue reading