Talking Walls is a beautiful children’s book written by Margy Burns Knight and illustrated by Anne Sibley O’Brien. It provided the inspiration for this PowerPoint presentation.

Talking Walls

The Lascaux Cave in France was discovered by four boys in 1940. The boys stumbled upon beautifully painted tumbling horses, charging bison and antelope. Wall paintings such as those in the Lascaux Cave are more than seventeen thousand years old. The pictures of animals were drawn on the cave walls for special hunting and religious ceremonies.

The Lascaux Cave

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The Great Wall of China wasBuilt during the Ch’in dynasty, about 214 B.C. The emperor Shih Huang Ti ordered this 1400 mile wall built to keep the nomadic tribes from entering China’s northern border. In most places the wall is 25 feet tall and 15 feet thick. Millions of people built the Great Wall by hand and thousands of workers died due to the harsh conditions of forced labor.

Great Wall of china

These are cliff dwellings of the Sinagua people of the area we know as Arizona. They made their multi-storied homes in the red rock cliffs of Arizona between 100 and 1400 A.D. The Sinagua people disappeared before the Spanish conquest and settlement of this region, however many of their buildings remain. In other parts of the Southwest, such as Taos, New Mexico, people have lived in adobe homes for over 800 years.

Cliff Dwellings

The Aboriginal people of Australia have created pictures on cliffs and cave walls for over 30,000 years. They have the oldest tradition of art in the world. Today, descendants of Australia’s first people continue to paint pictures of such subjects as fish, kangaroos and humans. These pictures tell of their people’s history. Each year the Aborigines restore the pictures of animals in the hopes of a good hunting season.

Aboriginal Paintings

The carved animals of the rock wall in Mahabalipuram, India were sculpted around 600 A.D. It is the world’s longest wall containing bas-relief carvings. The elephants, monkeys, bulls and other animals shown in the wall are sacred to the various religions of India. Buddhists, Hindus and Jains believe in reincarnation. When any living thing dies it is reborn again as a new creature.

The Mahabalipuram

The Inca people built the huge stone walls for their “City of the Sun” in the 1300’s. The huge stones are three or four times the size of a human. They were transported many miles with the use of levers. The Spanish captured the city of Cuzco, Peru in the 1500’s and stole much of the gold embedded in the walls. Nevertheless, the walls still stand and descendants of the Incas visit them every year.

Walls of Cuzco

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The Great Zimbabwe was built by the Shona people of southeast Africa in the 13th century. The Great Zimbabwe, which means “stone enclosure,” has an oval shaped tower 30 feet tall and walls almost as thick. It may have been a fortress or a storage area. Inside the walls of the city of 20,000 were palaces, religious buildings, markets and clay houses.

The Great Zimbabwe

The Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial is a black granite wall in Washington D.C. It was completed in 1982 with the names of 58,156 Americans who died or went missing as a result of the Vietnam War. The 494 foot wall was designed by a 21 year old architecture student named Maya Lin. It is an emotional place to visit, especially for the friends and families who lost someone during the Vietnam War.

The vietnam Wall

Every year, Muslims travel from around the world to visit the Ka’aba shrine in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Within the walls of this holy place, Muslims pray and walk around the sacred stone. Mahamad, the founder of Islam, was born in Mecca in 570 A.D. Muslims are asked to make a pilgrimage to his birthplace during their lifetime if they are able.

The Ka’aba

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Nelson Mandela spent 27 years behind prison walls for his opposition to apartheid (racial segregation) in South Africa. He entered Robben Island prison as a young man in 1964 for speaking out for equality and justice for his people. He was finally released from Pollsmore prison in 1990 as the nation began to end racial segregation. Nelson Mandela was elected President of South Africa in 1994. He served two terms in office.

Prison Walls

Huge murals are painted on public buildings throughout Mexico. Mural painting is an ancient art. However, Mexican muralists like Diego Rivera revived mural painting during the 1930’s. Each wall painting tells a story from a page of Mexican history. For example, this Diego Rivera mural shows Aztec life in the ancient city of Tenochtitlan. This city was built on the same site as Mexico City today.

Mexican Murals

The Western Wall of Jerusalem - also known as the Wailing Wall - was once the western wall of King Solomon’s temple. It was built in 961 B.C. and stands 59 feet high. Jews from all over the world visit the wall and leave handwritten Hebrew prayers in the wall’s crevices. The wall is also a holy place to Muslims and Christians because it is part of an important Islamic shrine and near the site of Jesus’ crucifixion.

The Western Wall

The Berlin Wall was built in 1961 to seal off West Berlin from East Berlin. The East German communists wanted to stop the flow of people and supplies to West Berlin. In 1989, the Berlin Wall was torn down and people from both Germanys were reunited. The fall of the Berlin Wall symbolized the end of communism in eastern Europe and a new era of peace.

The Berlin Wall

Where in the world

Are the walls located?

Mending Wallsby Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,That sends the froze-ground-swell under it,And spills the upper boulders in the sun,And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.The work of hunters is another thing:I have come after them and made repair where they have left not one stone on a stoneBut they would have a rabbit out of hiding,To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,No one has seen them made or heard them made,But at spring-mending time we find them there.I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again.We keep the wall between us as we go.To each the boulders that have fallen to each,And some are loaves and some are nearly ballsWe have to use a spell to make them balance:“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,One on a side. It comes to little more:

We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,One on a side. It comes to little more:There where it is we do not need the wall:He is all pine and I am apple orchard.My apple trees will never get acrossAnd eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonderIf I could put a notion in his head:“Why do theymake good neighbors? Isn’t it Where there are cows? But here there are not cows.Before I built a wall I’d ask to knowWhat I was walling in or walling outAnd to whom I was like to give offense. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,That wants it down. “I Could say “Elves” tohim,But it’s not exactly, and I’d ratherHe said it for himself. I see him there,Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the topIn each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.He moves in darkness as it seems to me,Not of woods only and the shade of treesHe will not go behind his father’s saying,And he likes having thought of it so wellHe says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”