Paul Klee

Short before going to the Neat Baustelle we went to the Paul Klee Center.
Paul Klee was an artist in the Bern area and in this center you see a lot of his work, but you can also take an art workshop.
We did both, we went to look to some of his work in the exhibition area, this was very interesting as he has used a lot of techniques. He also had to make do with the supplies he could get his hands on and had to make a lot of things himself, as he lives in war times when there was very little available. The tour of the exhibition are was during our work in the workshop, as things had to dry a bit.

The workshop was also very interesting as we learned a lot about techniques than can be used. All attending made interesting pieces of art :-)
I will see if I can make a pic of it and put it on here :-)

CBBC educational?

This afternoon there is a feature on CBBC about the nutrition of the caveman on tv. I figured that would be massively interesting. And its sure food for conversation as we found out there are several things mentioned in there which are simply not true.
One of them is that the caveman in the UK valued the rabbit meat. This surprising as the rabbit is not native to the UK, so how can the caveman in the UK have eaten rabbits then, when the vikings brought them over, or were the vikings historically before the caveman in the timeline??
So this is simply not true.
Just like hares weren't in the UK until the Romans, which means that hares were there before rabbits even. And in the time of the Romans there were no caveman anymore.
Besides the rabbits wouldn't have been valued that much as the meat is way way way too lean for the caveman to stay healthy on. They needed the fat from other animal sources and they made sure they got it, as the caveman was healthier than the majority of humans in the western world today.
The other thing that was mentioned is that the caveman first ate its food raw. Sure, very healthy. Then the comment came that by the time the caveman discovered fire there was a boost in healthy. I doubt that very much.
Of course there were more different types of food that became to the caveman, but those were not necessarily boosting its health. Its not for nothing that these days people are going back to the caveman diet to become more healthy, as simply their food was very very healthy.
There was also a fear mongering bit in there about eating meat raw, even my kids know there is nothing wrong with that and they started complaining to the tv :-)
So much for educational tv. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. It became clear to me again that I have to be with them when they watch something "educational" to make sure they also get the other side of the politically correct story.
I keep being surprised about all the inconsistencies.

Good that they didn't go on about the caveman only becoming about 30 and then mentioning in the same phrase that girls didn't get their periods until 16, 17 or 18 and that is the reason why women get more cancer these days in the reproductive system as they get their periods earlier and earlier and are therefore exposed to the hormones much longers.

UGH??? How can that be, mom dies at 30, but you weren't born until she was like 17, so you are 13 when she dies, how can mankind have survived then?
As you are with yr 13 the oldest, the rest must be much younger.
Its soooo stupid those comments.

There is research that shows that stone age people didn't go through puberty like humans today and reached adulthood by about the age of 12 to 13, but then the periods must have come sooner to women and not like around 16, 17. Because that doesn't make any sense then at all.

In a way I am convinced that its all still quite a lot of guess work in stead of real factual stuff, as its very difficult to find real information, as nobody wrote anything down.

I am, however, convinced that the paleolithic diet was a healthy one and that it was not the diet which made people die very young, there must have been more that had to do with it. And maybe it was just more genetically and that we grew older with the centuries.

Whatever was the real truth, its definitely great conversation material with the kids and they keep digging and digging to find out what scientists have come up with :-)

Viking Dork Normansson

Today we visited the museum to have a talk with Viking Dork Normansson. This was very nice, we had a great time. Its a very nice guy who re-enacts the viking and he is quite a good replica.

Adolf Hitler on BBC Exclusiv on Vox

This evening we are watching an episode of BBC Exclusiv on Vox.
Its very interesting, as its a historical piece on Adolf Hitler and the people who tried to kill him over the years of his ruling.
The people who wanted to kill him and how they ended if, if they did.

Flint knapping

Today we went to the museum in Camberley - the Surrey Heath Museum.
There was an exhibition organised where you could see flint knapping being performed by Karl Lee. This was extremely interesting, as he really showed us how several stone age time tools were made. He also made the tools with the tools that they used back then.

He explained to us that in some area's people who do flint knapping will use more modern tools, but he doesn't think the replica's made that way are real replica's.
Karl is an experimental archeologist. Therefore he makes replica's. There aren't many people in the world anymore who can do. Some people like the Aboriginals in Australia still do it, they didn't stop doing it. This is really cool, they are still doing it the authentic way there.
In the US there are only a handful of Native Americans left doing it as unfortunately their culture is slowly but carefully dying out. Which is a pity. Languages dying out as well, its such a shame, our planet was so rich in a big variety of cultures and languages and there is so much gone. Just like animals and plants, so much gone.

What we also discussed was the film Dances with wolves, as its a very educational film. It shows a lot of things very well and pretty accurate historically.
The next thing we discussed was the attitude of the white people back then towards the natives. They first tried to kill them all, but when the natives proved to be too clever they resorted to other measures, trying to kill all their food. This is also pretty clear in Dances with wolves as you can see in the film how the white people killed a load of buffalo's just for their hide and tongue, with no respect for animal, earth or fellow human being.
Its pretty rude if you ask me, to do what happened. The natives were friendly, fed the white people, invited them into their homes, next thing, the white people just take their homes.
Pretty sick minds were around then I would say.

The other thing that was really interesting that Karl had to say was that back in the stone age times people knew lots and lots more about which plants people could eat and which plants were good ad medicine. These days we eat such an incredibly small amount of plants, compared to the people back then.

What he also told us, was that people didn't get much older than about 30. I wonder about that, as I have read bits and pieces here and there where people state that girls have never started their periods sooner than now, so how could that be then, coz the kids that the people get have to grow up before they can take care of themselves.
So if periods didn't start until 16 to 18, and they would die at 30, their kids would be like 12 or so. Doesn't fully add up to me, so I have to look into that a lot more.
The other bit is that their diet was much much healthier than ours, so if we get as old as we get, how come they died so young. They did have good hygiene contrary to medieval times.
That is a topic for some time soon, coz the kids were also very interested in that.

I think this was really super cool. He explained so much to the kids, they could ask away, the kids enjoyed it tremendously. I also think he enjoyed their interest in it all. He talked about how people lived and hunted and everything that had something to do with that. Really great.

And then lateron I ran into the following article which really says it all.

The title is:

The Objective of Education Is Learning, Not Teaching

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2032

Have a read, I really enjoyed reading the article.

Next week we will go the museum to talk to someone who knows tons about vikings and who re-enacts them. I think that is pretty cool as well.

Shopping at the museum

On 18 May there was an exhibition which drew on material across from our area to illustrate what we bought and where we bought it. On show are a wide range of objects displayed in replica reconstructed shop windows, with an old fashioned shop-counter scene as the centrepiece, complemented by a wealth of local photographs and reminiscences. A good chance for some retail therapy without spending money!
The children got to see the weights used back then, and the got the chance to buy some sweets with old money, they loved it.