Persons are traveling and flying increasingly more daily. It’s significant to retain your wellness first when traveling and at times that may be simple to forget. There is going to be plenty of time to sit even though that you are within the plane, so use your waiting time to walk close to and get your blood flowing and your muscles limber. Even if you might have further luggage you’ll be able to carry it around and add the added weight that will make your muscles function even harder, consequently burning additional calories and boosting the metabolism. Stay away from the persons movers as you get closer for your gate. Use your time wisely and stroll the distance. Your human body will see an raise blood flow and will bring on huge time gains once for the plane.

 One in the important reasons for jet lag is dehydration. The cabin inside of the plane is like a enormous dehumidifier. It can rapidly remove your body’s fluids without you even realizing it. The essential is usually to stay hydrated which means continuously drinking water. Not just will this hydrate your human body, it’ll force you to have as much as go for the bathroom which will encourage correct blood flow. This will retain your muscles from cramping, specifically on lengthy flights. Though you’re waiting in line for that bathroom, do some added stretches to enrich the blood flow much more. They dry air about the prepare can also irritate your eyes. Taking a supplement for example fish oil or flax see had can support in this trouble. This assists to lubricate the eyes from the inside out. Try not to rub your eyes although aboard the plane. This causes the vessels inside your eyes to constrict. Do not use artificial tears either as they do the same issue. Examine with your local chiropractor in Schaumburg for additional wholesome traveling tips.

WINNER TAKES ALL-FROM THE FANS

Vigorous ball games played in walled courts were a regular part of Mayan and other Middle American religious festivals. Players were apparently not allowed to use their hands, but bounced the solid rubber ball off padded elbows and hips. Injuries seem to have been common, and sometimes fatal. Losing teams were sometimes sacrificed to the gods.

The Aztecs played a ball game known as tacitly, whose aim was to knock the ball into the opponents’ end of the court in much the same way as in  modern volleyball. Teams could also win the game outright by knocking the ball through either of two stone rings set on the side walls. Since the rings were often 20 feet off the ground and only just big enough for the ball, goals of this kind were rare. But any player who scored one was allowed to confiscate the clothes and possessions of any spectators he and his friends could catch.

ROCK OF AGES

The Aztecs believed that there had been four previous creations of the world, and that theirs was  the fifth and last. They carved this belief into a single stone-the Sun Stone, or Calendar Stone- a huge block 12 feet across. The stone was dug up in 1790 in the Ocala, the main square of both ancient Tenochtitlan and the modern capital of Mexico, Mexico City.

In the center of the stone is carved the sun god, and on the four panels around it are the four previous creations, their once-bright Aztec colors worn away by time. The stone is now in the city’s National Museum of Anthropology.

WELL OF DEATH

Chechen Itza, last outpost of the Mayan civilization, was built in the heart of the arid Yucatan Peninsula, unlike most of the earlier Mayan cities, which were built in rain forests farther south and east. The city was built  around two wells, known as centos, which were fed by underwater streams. The city folk drank from one well and used the other as a well of sacrifice. In times of crisis a maiden was hurled at dawn into the 60-foot-deep hole in the limestone rock. If she survived in the water at the bottom until midday, priests hauled her out to ask what the gods had told her. The Mayas also threw cherished possessions into the hole. Carved jade, gold, copper discs, and human skeletons have all been dredged out of it.

TEMPLES OF BLOOD

Aztecs believed that the sun died every night and needed human blood to give it strength to rise next  day. So they sacrificed 15,000 men a year to their fearsome sun god, Huitzilopochtli. Most of the victims were prisoners taken in wars, which were often started solely to round up sacrificial victims.

DEATH ROW DELIGHT

A particularly handsome prisoner was chosen each year by the Aztecs as a sacrifice to their chief god, Tezcatlipoca. Tezcatlipoca was the god of matter- and archrival of the Aztecs’ god of wind and spirit, Quetzalcoatl. For 12 months the prisoner was allowed every luxury. He was taught to play the flute, feasted like a king, and was generally doted upon. He spent his last month with four lovely girls. Then he led a procession to the temple of Tezcatlipoca. Four men held him down over the sacrificial altar, and a priest, using a knife of obsidian, a glasslike volcanic stone, cut open his chest and tore out his heart.

LONELY EMPIRES OF THE INDIANS

Five advanced civilizations flourished in brilliant isolation in Middle America- the term many scholars use to describe the area of Central America stretching from Mexico to the northern edge of Nicaragua-over a period of 3,500 years. Theyr first contact with Europe in 1519 was decisive and disastrous. In  a few decades their societies were swamped by the invader. Not until 300 years  later did archeologists and scholars begin to uncover and appreciate the richness of the civilizations so carelessly swept aside.’

OLMEC

First of the great ancient Middle American cultures. They dominated the coastal plain along the Gulf of  Mexico from about 1200 B.C. to about 400 B.C. Their name comes from a Nahuatl Indian word meaning “inhabitant or rubber country,” because of the rubber trees that grew in the region. They began as subsistence farmers but became  accomplished pyramid builders, using clay and earth. Their pyramid at La Venta is 100 feet high. The Olmecs were also great sculptors. Giant stone heads, some 10feet tall, and figurines and animals of jade are  Olmec legacies.

MAYA

Most enduring of the Middle American civilizations. The Mayas were a recognizable political group as early as 2000 B.C. in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and parts of Belize. Their golden age  lasted  from about  A.D. 250 to 900. Their hieroglyphic writing is only partly understood. The Mayas were superbastronomers with an advanced knowledge of mathematics and devised an accurate calendar.

Middle America

NO USE FOR WHEELS

All the pre-Columbian civilizations of Middle America set up  brilliantly organized states and trade systems without two developments considered vital in the Old World; they made no use of the wheel and had no draft animals, such as horses or oxen. However, they did have their own form of currency- cacao beans. The absence  of practical wheels is all the more remarkable because the principle of the wheel was known in Middle America. Wheeled clay models of animals-possibly toys or religious offerings- have been found in Mexican tombs dating from around the time of Christ. But although several Middle American peoples, in particular the Mayas,built flat, broad roads between their cities, the wheel was never used for transportation or in making pottery.

CLAY TOY

The wheel was not put to work in the Americas until the Spanish conquest. But the principle was known; this clay model was made in Mexico before A.D.100.

STAR STRUCK

Sky-gazing Mayan priests accurately calculated the 365-day solar year more than 1,500 years ago. They broke the year up into 18 months of 20 days each, plus 5 odd days. Superimposed on the Mayan solar year was a sacred 260-day calendar  used to indicate days of  religious ritual. The Mayas had no clocks or telescopes, but  they could predict  solar and lunar eclipses and calculated the time Venus took to make a complete circuit of the sky to within 2 hours of the actual figure, 583.92 days.

OLMEC CERAMIC

Naked and hollow “babies” were a favorite subject of Olmec craftsmen, who fashioned them from the whitish clay called kaolin. This one dates from 1200-1000 B.C.

TIAHUANACO

Named after the city of Tiahuanaco, founded in about 800 B.C. near LAke Titicaca in present -day Bolivia. The city was occupied by a series of five different cultures until about A.D. 1200. Then it was largely abandoned, for unknown reasons.

CHIBCHA

Civilization in the Colombian highlands destroyed by Spanish in 16th century. Accomplished goldsmiths, the Chibcha may have inspired the legends of EI Dorado.

MOCHICA

Flourished in northern Peru from about 200 B.C. to A.D. 800. Mochica farmers used irrigation systems, built fortifications, and developed distinctive crafts and sculpture.

CHIMU

Civilization established on northwest Peruvian coast in about A.D. 1000. Its capital  was the city of Chan chan, which at its peak had a population of 100,000. Expanded into the Andes under Nancen-pinco after 1370. Conquered in about 1470 by Incas.

INCA

Last and largest pre-Columbian civilization in South America. Created vast Andean empire between 1438 and 1532. Destroyed by Spanish conquistadores under Francisco Pizarro in 1530s.

MASS MARRIAGES

Marriage by decree was the norm for ordinary people within the Inca empire. Although nobles often had several wives, commoners were limited to one. Furthermore, the state dictated whom and when each commoner could marry. Each year local chiefs assembled all eligible inhabitants (all men over 24, all women over 18), separating them by sex into lines before calling them up to be paired off.

PRINCIPAL PRE-COLUMBIAN CIVILIZATIONS

The arrival of Europeans in the Americas in the late 15th and early 16th centuries brought to an abrupt end a series of cultures that dated back more than 2,000 years. These civilizations are known as pre-Columbian, from the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus (1451-1506).

CHAVIN

Earliest highly developed Peruvian culture, existing from about 850 to 200 B.C. The Chavins were a farming society composed of several different regional groups. Their capital was the city of Chavin de Huantar in central Peru.

NAZCA

Mysterious southern Peruvian culture about which little is known. Thought to have been founded about the time of Christ, but its people had  disappeared before the Spanish conquest. The major artifacts of Nazca culture are a series of enormous figures and designs  drawn with lines of pebbles across the coastal desert of southern Peru, which are best seen from the air. The largest design is of a bird; it is about 900 feet long.

FOOD FROM THE HILLS

Besides flooding Spain with looted wealth-nearly 200 tons of gold and 20,000 tons of silver by 1650- the conquistadores introduced  several new foods to Europe.These included maize, tomatoes, gourds, manioc (cassava), guavas, and potatoes. The potato had been cultivated by Andean farmers since at least  A.D.200. Its English name is derived from the Taino word for the sweet potato, batata.

The potato was so important to the Inca diet that they invented a method of freeze-drying to preserve it. Potatoes were  left out to freeze for several nights (they thawed by day). Softened by repeated freezing and thawing, the vegetables were then squeezed by hand to remove msot of their moisture and put out in the sun to dry completely. Finally, they reached a stage known as chuno, in which they could be kept indefinitely. Andean Indians still use this technique.

THE GOLDEN ROOM

The Inca ruler Atahualpa, backed by thousand of warriors, came face to face with Francisco Pizarro, backed by 180 men and 37 horses, for the first time at Cajamarca in Peru. The encounter was a disaster for the Indians. Pizarro kidnapped Atahualpa, and the demoralized  warriors were put to flight by their first experience of firearms and cavalry.

After the kidnapping, Atahualpa offered to ransom himself by giving the Spaniards enough gold to fill his 23-by 16 -foot cell as high as he could reach. He was a tall man and standing on tiptoe could reach to 9 feet.Atahualpa also offered to fill a smaller toom twice over with silver. The Spaniards accepted, but then changed their minds, realizing that Atahualpa could become the focus of rebellion if he were released. Instead, they tried the king on several trumped-up charges -such as murdering a former Inca king, Huascar, and plotting against the Spanish forces – and sentenced  him to death. He was garrotted in 1533.

CEREMONIAL KNIFE

Gold inlaid with turquoise forms the image of a god sacred to the pre-Inca Chimu civilization of northwestern Peru. Knife handle probably dates from 12 th century.

INSTANT GALOSHES

Amazonian Indians invented rubber boots many centuries before they were known in Europe. The Indians dipped their  feet and  legs in latex, the raw liquid of the rubber tree. It formed a tough extra skin, or boot, that protected against insects and thorns

WRITING ON THE WALL

Rome marketplace

The writing and drawing of graffiti is by no means new. It was rife in Roman times. The word graffiti itself is derived from the Latin graphium, meaning”stylus,” a pointed instrument for scratching letters onto tablets. Walls in the coastal town of Pompeii, for instance, preserved by ash from the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79, are still daubed with inscriptions and scribblings of all kinds, from brief election addresses to offers of rewards for the return of stolen property. In addition, there are obscenities, rude drawings, and many complaints from lovers, such as: “what use to have a Venus, if she is made from marble?”

LEATHER BIKINI

The wearing of bikinis goes back at least to Roman times. Girls wearing similar two-piece costumes are  portrayed on a Roman mosaic that was found in the ruins of a villa near Piazza Armerina in Sicily. Apparently, the fashion spread as far north as Britain. A leather bikini made by the Romans in the late 1st century A.D. was found in a well in London.

BATHING BEAUTY A painted bikini adorns this statue of Venus from the town of Pompeii. Whether propriety or  fashion inspired the painter is not known.

Greece: democracy’s birthplace

RISE AND FALL OF ALEXANDER’S EMPIRE

Alexander

Alexander the Great created the greatest empire the world had yet seen -and also the shortest-lived. He became king of Macedonia in 336 B.C. at the age of 20 and then subdued the Greek states. Two years later, in 334 he led a large army to conquer Persia. During the next 11 years Alexander conquered an area nearly as large as the United States. His empire extended from Greece and Egypt in the west to beyond the Indus River in the east. When his weary army refused to march farther eastward into India, Alexander retired to Babylon. He died there of a  fever in 323 B.C, at 33. The empire he had  built in13 years was broken up as quickly as it had been formed. Within13 years of his death, the countries Alexander had united were divided again, their territories carved up between his generals.

CONSULTING THE ORACLE

Delphi was the site of Greece’s  most important oracle, where the advice of the gods was sought. The answer was given by a Pythia, a priestess who went into a trance and shouted wildly. Her cries were “interpreted” by priests, who gave the answers, often very ambiguous, in doggerel verse.

It is said that Croesus, the king of Lydia, in Asia Minor, whose name has become a symbol of wealth,asked the oracle if he should attack the Persian Empire. He was  told  that if he did  he would destroy a great empire. Croesus duly attacked in 546 B.C. and did indeed destroy an  empire: his own. Cyrus the Great defeated his army, annexed his kingdom, and took Croesus hostage.

GUNSLINGERS

Portuguese traders took guns to Japan in 1543, but 100 years later the government banned them. The traditional sword became the sole weapon of the warrior, or samurai. Ordinary citizens were forbidden to carry any weapons at all. Only in 1853, when U.S. warships under Commodore Matthew Perry forced Japan to open its ports to foreign traders, were guns allowed into the country again.

ATISHOO

Paper tissues have been used by the Japanese for more than 300 years. An English traveler in 1637 wrote,”The Japanese blow their noses with a certain soft and tough kind of paper which they carry about them in small pieces, which, having used, they fling away as a filthy thing.”

WINDS OF DEATH

World War II suicide pilots who crashed their bombladen planes into enemy ships named themselves kamikaze, meaning “divine wind”. The namehad been given first to sudden, providential typhoons that helped to destroy  the seaborne invading forces of Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor, in 1274 and again in 1281. The 1281 storm wrecked the enemy fleet after almost 2 months of fighting, and the stranded invaders were massacred. Not until 1945 did another invading army set foot on Japanese soil.

ROCKS OF AGES

One of the world’s oldest stone gardens was laid out at the Zen temple of Ryoanji in Kyoto in 1490. The garden contains just 15 large stones, set apparently at random in a walled area about 70 feet by 30 feet on fine gray-white  gravel.The garden is designed to represent nature in the abstract: the stones symbolize islands or mountains; the gravel stands for the sea or trees. The garden contains no plants at all, but the gravel is raked each day.