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
- facilitate
- field
- ashes
- greatest
- goldsmiths
- planted
- mouth
- thought
- volcanic
- piece
- 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
- absorption
- america
- ancient
- ashes
- break
- buildup
- built
- burnt
- calcium
- caribbean
- change
- civilization
- cloth
- coastal
- coca
- cocaine
- conquest
- descendants
- empower
- extraordinary
- facilitate
- feet
- feminine
- field
- fields
- goldsmiths
- gourd
- greatest
- head
- hydrochloride
- isolated
- leaf
- life
- limestone
- male
- massif
- measure
- men
- metaphorically
- mouth
- ph
- piece
- plain
- planted
- poporo
- powder
- put
- retreated
- sacred
- side
- simply
- soars
- south
- stick
- stroke
- tairona
- thought
- throw
- turn
- volcanic
- wake
- women