Who were the Dacians and what did they do for entertainment?
December 1, 2009
Culture clips always fascinate me…they invite and inspire for discussions and projects and presentations and OMG I just love them:).
Enterprise 4 offers these culture clips at the back of the book: there’s one about Maya civilization and one on some Canadian tribes. A loose question-pack hanging grinning and toothless at the far right end of the page: Who are your ancestors? How did your people form? Talk about your people’ traditions that come from ancient times.
Here we are, on shaky grounds: I had to tell my students that our former president’s formula was a more of a blunder rather than a joke; i.e. he said (and this is accurate believe me) The Romanians come from the Ducks (read: DAKS) and from the Trucks – meaning The Dacians and Tracians. Students know the blunder and laugh.
Now what do we still keep from old times? I uttered some words which are still used: branza (cheese), manz (foal/colt), balaur (ogre) etc. And then I asked them to think what kind of people were the Dacians and also think of some traditions we have from Dacian times.
They mentioned the heavy drinking habit of the Dacians, the God of Thunder and other gods they used to worship and kneel to, the tall funny wooly hats they are fashionable nowadays too, also the fact that they lived in houses made of a mixture of manure…erm, the fact that the Romans came to teach the Dacians how to wash themselves by building the viaducts and introduced the first water sewages in Dacia…all in all everybody agreed that the Dacians were cool because they drank and danced in front of bonfires like we do now on school camps.
Back to traditions: one of them said “Mos Nicolae” (Saint Nicholas), Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Halloween…. (why not Thanksgiving??!) No, not that! I said with my pointer. They gaped into a class murmur and I simply stilted through their rumours of no-know-how… Maybe eating sausages and mamaliga! A girl blasted her answer in a trimphant hand-up style…No, well, not that Ana…That is just what we do on 1st of May.. A jadded boy replied.
To be honest, it was me who said Martisor (the 1st of March red and white thread) and then they came up with Babele (The Old Ladies – when in the first 9 days of March you choose your Baba and see what your year will be like)…and to save the day, I set this as homework.
