Explore this collection of six original stories featuring young people in prehistoric and ancient times. The heroes and heroines of each story exhibit admirable curiosity, initiative, and courage as they risk all to face the challenges they experience in their time and place. The story settings are based in fact while the characters and their lives are imagined.
Starting in the caves of Stone Age Europe, a teenage boy encounters a Neanderthal girl. From there, readers will travel to Syria, where a forager girl meets a prehistoric farming family. In the next story, a girl saves a boy trapped in a collapsed copper mine in Eastern Serbia. In the next three stories, the reader will discover some of the great civilizations around the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. In Uruk, Mesopotamia, a teen-age boy escapes indentured slavery. In Thebes, Egypt, a girl auditions to be a dancer in Pharaoh's court. In the final story, a young weaver and her grandmother travel to Athens, Greece and help rescue a young bride. In these coming-of-age stories, young people find their voice and their place in the world.
While the characters and their stories are fictional, the descriptions of the times and places they inhabit are built on real world historical research--the work of archeologists, scientists who unearth the things early peoples left behind: weapons, tools, pots, jewelry, sculptures and toys made of stone, clay, metal and animal bones. Then, many thousands of years later, some people began to also leave written records inscribed in stone, clay and metal and written in ink on papyrus and dried goatskins. Archeologists cracked the codes of their ancient languages to discover what the words meant. Working together with geologists, botanists and others, archeologists studied their findings to piece together a picture of how early peoples lived through the ages.
This delightful collection is the perfect primer for inquisitive minds who want to explore ancient history. It's a valuable resource for teachers and librarians who want a relatable story to enrich and extend a lesson. Anyone curious about how people lived in those long-ago times will enjoy these stories of young people finding their way through the ages.
