full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Wade Davis: The worldwide web of belief and ritual

Unscramble the Blue Letters

You can see the calcium buildup on the head of the poporo gourd. The gourd is a feminine aspect; the stick is a male. You put the stick in the powder to take the sacred asehs -- well, they're not ashes, they're burnt limestone -- to empower the coca leaf, to change the pH of the mutoh to fcltiiaate the asirootpbn of cocaine hydrochloride. But if you break a gourd, you cannot simply throw it away, because every stroke of that stick that has built up that calcium, the measure of a man's life, has a tuhoght behind it. Fields are planted in such an extraordinary way, that the one side of the filed is planted like that by the women. The other side is pteanld like that by the men. Metaphorically, you turn it on the side, and you have a pciee of cloth. And they are the descendants of the ancient Tairona civilization, the getearst goilsdtmhs of South America, who in the wake of the conquest, retreated into this isolated vcinloac massif that soars to 20,000 feet above the Caribbean coastal plain.

Open Cloze

You can see the calcium buildup on the head of the poporo gourd. The gourd is a feminine aspect; the stick is a male. You put the stick in the powder to take the sacred _____ -- well, they're not ashes, they're burnt limestone -- to empower the coca leaf, to change the pH of the _____ to __________ the __________ of cocaine hydrochloride. But if you break a gourd, you cannot simply throw it away, because every stroke of that stick that has built up that calcium, the measure of a man's life, has a _______ behind it. Fields are planted in such an extraordinary way, that the one side of the _____ is planted like that by the women. The other side is _______ like that by the men. Metaphorically, you turn it on the side, and you have a _____ of cloth. And they are the descendants of the ancient Tairona civilization, the ________ __________ of South America, who in the wake of the conquest, retreated into this isolated ________ massif that soars to 20,000 feet above the Caribbean coastal plain.

Solution

  1. facilitate
  2. field
  3. ashes
  4. greatest
  5. goldsmiths
  6. planted
  7. mouth
  8. thought
  9. volcanic
  10. piece
  11. absorption

Original Text

You can see the calcium buildup on the head of the poporo gourd. The gourd is a feminine aspect; the stick is a male. You put the stick in the powder to take the sacred ashes -- well, they're not ashes, they're burnt limestone -- to empower the coca leaf, to change the pH of the mouth to facilitate the absorption of cocaine hydrochloride. But if you break a gourd, you cannot simply throw it away, because every stroke of that stick that has built up that calcium, the measure of a man's life, has a thought behind it. Fields are planted in such an extraordinary way, that the one side of the field is planted like that by the women. The other side is planted like that by the men. Metaphorically, you turn it on the side, and you have a piece of cloth. And they are the descendants of the ancient Tairona civilization, the greatest goldsmiths of South America, who in the wake of the conquest, retreated into this isolated volcanic massif that soars to 20,000 feet above the Caribbean coastal plain.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
failed attempts 4
machu picchu 3
upper paleolithic 2
sacred geography 2
coca leaves 2
ancient tairona 2
cosmic balance 2
elder brothers 2
myriad voices 2
unique answers 2
ensuing millennia 2

Important Words

  1. absorption
  2. america
  3. ancient
  4. ashes
  5. break
  6. buildup
  7. built
  8. burnt
  9. calcium
  10. caribbean
  11. change
  12. civilization
  13. cloth
  14. coastal
  15. coca
  16. cocaine
  17. conquest
  18. descendants
  19. empower
  20. extraordinary
  21. facilitate
  22. feet
  23. feminine
  24. field
  25. fields
  26. goldsmiths
  27. gourd
  28. greatest
  29. head
  30. hydrochloride
  31. isolated
  32. leaf
  33. life
  34. limestone
  35. male
  36. massif
  37. measure
  38. men
  39. metaphorically
  40. mouth
  41. ph
  42. piece
  43. plain
  44. planted
  45. poporo
  46. powder
  47. put
  48. retreated
  49. sacred
  50. side
  51. simply
  52. soars
  53. south
  54. stick
  55. stroke
  56. tairona
  57. thought
  58. throw
  59. turn
  60. volcanic
  61. wake
  62. women