The Time Travelers' Handbook Read online

  CONTENTS

  WELCOME TO TIME TRAVEL

  HOW TO BEAT THE MAYAN AT BALL

  HOW TO BEAT THE SPANISH ARMADA

  HOW TO MAKE SILK IN ANCIENT CHINA

  HOW TO HUNT A MAMMOTH

  HOW TO MAKE PAPYRUS IN ANCIENT EGYPT

  HOW TO BE EVACUATED IN WORLD WAR II

  HOW TO JOIN THE AMERICAN GOLD RUSH

  HOW TO SWEEP A VICTORIAN CHIMNEY

  HOW TO COMPETE AT THE ANCIENT OLYMPICS

  HOW TO PAINT A CAVE

  HOW TO PULL OFF THE GREAT ESCAPE

  HOW TO DEFEND A MEDIEVAL CASTLE

  HOW TO ACT IN A SHAKESPEAREAN PLAY

  HOW TO FIGHT WITH THE SAMURAI

  HOW TO BUILD A VIKING LONGSHIP

  HOW TO TACKLE A TYRANNOSAURUS REX

  HOW TO WALK ON THE MOON

  HOW TO GRADUATE FROM GLADIATOR SCHOOL

  HOW TO PUT OUT THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON

  HOW TO LEAP A MINOAN BULL

  HOW TO MAKE AN EGYPTIAN MUMMY

  HOW TO MAKE A FLINT AXE

  HOW TO SURVIVE THE BLITZ IN BRITAIN

  HOW NOT TO SINK WITH THE TITANIC

  HOW TO SURVIVE A VIKING RAID

  HOW TO WRITE IN HIEROGLYPHS

  HOW TO TRAVEL ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

  HOW TO INVENT WRITING WITH THE SUMERIANS

  HOW TO SURVIVE THE BLACK DEATH

  HOW TO ROAST A RODENT WITH A ROMAN

  HOW TO FOLLOW THE OLD SILK ROAD

  HOW TO GO WILD IN THE WEST

  HOW TO FLY IN A HOT-AIR BALLOON

  THE TIMELINE

  Welcome to Time Travel

  Welcome. Your very first journey through time is about to begin.

  This is your time travel (TT) handset. It’s an amazing and essential piece of equipment for all time travelers. In this book, you are going to use its LEAP button, which will catapult you back to specific points in time and places in the world. When you arrive, check the handset’s screen to find out what year you have landed in.

  Time Travel Dos And Don’ts

  To help you get the most out of your time travels, here are some dos and don’ts:

  • Do take very good care of your TT handset. When not in use, keep it in a secure pocket or, even better, attach it to your belt. If you lose it, there is NO WAY BACK HOME. The handset is state-of-the-art technology, so it is pretty unlikely you will be able to pick up a new one in Ancient Egypt.

  • Don’t worry if you feel a bit strange or dizzy upon landing the first few times. It’s perfectly normal. Not everyone enjoys the sensation of whizzing through time right away. Like most things, time travel gets easier each time you do it.

  • Do treat any people you meet on your travels with respect. They may not have computers, or even metal tools, but that doesn’t mean they’re stupid—they’re just living in an earlier time than you. Asking them if they like football or hip-hop, or even if you can borrow their cell phone will make you very unpopular, and they will probably think you are totally crazy.

  • Don’t hesitate to hit the large red EJECT button in the center of your handset any time you feel threatened or scared. Don’t hang around—the past can be a dangerous place.

  Activating the EJECT button will shoot you out of harm’s way, then fast-forward you back home.

  Unfortunately, the EJECT button will only send you back to the present day. It won’t get you out of hot water if your parents have just discovered a mess in your bedroom. You will have to deal with that yourself.

  • Do speak normally. Your handset is equipped with a state-of-the-art program called BlabberSpeak. BlabberSpeak automatically adjusts to the language of the time and place you land in. With BlabberSpeak enabled, you will be able to both understand and speak to the people you meet on your travels as long as you are holding the handset, or it is attached to your belt.

  • Don’t panic. Your clothes will travel through time with you. You won’t find yourself stark naked and chatting to Henry VIII.

  * * *

  Warning

  Do not try to change the course of history, no matter how tempting it is. Time travel is not to be used for personal gain, other than for gaining knowledge.

  Going back in time to buy a lottery ticket after finding out this week’s numbers is strictly forbidden. Your TT handset will know about it and take immediate action by transporting you back to Victorian times and setting you to work as a chimney sweep. It will not return you home until it is convinced you have seen the error of your ways.

  * * *

  • Do breathe freely. The TT handset is equipped with an ImmunoShield. This helps protect you from catching the bugs of the past, and also keeps you from giving modern coughs and colds to people you meet on your travels.

  • Do consult this book before you go, and keep it with you during your visit. It will provide you with top tips and essential time-tourist information, highlighting must-see sights and things that are in your best interests to avoid.

  Now you’re ready to go.

  Take a deep breath and press the LEAP button.

  Good luck, and enjoy your travels!

  How To Beat The Mayan At Ball

  The roar of a crowd brings you to your senses and you find you are standing in the middle of what looks like some kind of ball court. You are in the area of the world now known as Southern Mexico and Guatemala, and the roaring crowd are all Mayan—an Indian people famed for their buildings, astronomy, and ball games. The good news is a Mayan ball game is about to begin. The bad news is that this game is much more than just an exciting team sport—it can be very dangerous. The outcome of the game can determine whether the players live or die.

  Let’s Play Ball

  The ball court you are standing in is shaped like a capital letter I, with high sides decorated with elaborate carvings. The high sides help to keep the ball in play.

  For the game itself, you are going to need to put on some equipment to protect you from injury. The ball is made of solid rubber. It can weigh almost nine pounds and is hard enough to break your bones. So make sure you strap on some padded shin, knee, and forearm protectors made from animal skin. Think yourself lucky though—the ball was sometimes made from a human skull wrapped in strips of rubber to make it bounce well.

  Put on your feathered headdress and you are ready to play ball. You look a-Maya-zing—as do the other members of your team who enter the court wearing their finest animal skins, feather headdresses, and jewelry.

  Mayan Rules

  Now this is the tricky part: Historians aren’t exactly sure how this game was played. So, you are going to have to keep your wits about you. What previous time travelers do know, however, is that you should try really hard to help your team win, because the losers are often sacrificed to the gods.

  Take a look at the end of the court. You will notice that there is a stone ring, just large enough for the ball to fit through. It is probably a wise move to aim for that. Make sure you are whacking the ball in the right direction—own goals aren’t good no matter which century you are in.

  Get In Some Practice

  You will need:

  • an open space • shin pads/elbow pads/any kind of helmet • a soft soccer ball or beach ball • two hoops or buckets

  Put a hoop at each end of your playing area about eight yards apart. If you don’t have hoops, place a bucket at each end.

  Get a group of friends together and divide into two teams with at least two players on each side. Then put on your protective gear (you shouldn’t really need this if your ball is soft enough, but it will help you get into the spirit of the game if you do). Jaguar-skin skirts are optional!

  The aim of the game is to get the ball into y
our bucket. So, decide which team is going to aim for which goal. Then, determine with the toss of a coin which team will start the game. The winner of the toss starts with the ball.

  It is thought that the Mayan players were not allowed to use their feet to move the ball. They had to whack it with their knees, arms, or hips. You are not allowed to kick, catch, or throw the ball, other than with clenched fists. To begin, the ball can be headed, punched, kneed, or chested to a player on the same team. The team with the most goals after 10 minutes wins.

  * * *

  Warning

  If you do accidentally kick the ball, or hit it with the palm of your hand, the ball is given to the other team.

  * * *

  How To Beat The Spanish Armada

  The wind is blasting your ears, and you are swaying back and forth like part of a circus act. You’ve landed in the crow’s nest of an English warship. Unfortunately, a crow’s nest is a little lookout platform three-quarters of the way up the ship’s mast.

  All around you other ships are racing through the waves. Your ship is part of an English fleet chasing the mighty warships of a fleet known as the Spanish Armada away from the English coast.

  Top Tactics

  You’re spotted, and the sailors suspect you of being a stowaway. They take you to the commander, Sir Charles Howard. Unfortunately, he has been known to keelhaul rebellious sailors, having them dragged beneath the ship by a rope. They would be cut to ribbons by the barnacles below. Luckily, he’s in a good mood. After months of fierce fighting, the Spanish are on the run. So, he’s quite happy to quaff a tot of rum and tell you his tactics:

  • Sir Charles is using fast, nimble ships. The Spanish galleons are much bigger, and when it comes to turning, they are a lot slower.

  • The English crews are experienced sailors, whereas the Spanish have packed their ships with soldiers. The Spanish plan is to get close to the enemy ships and board them, but the English sail their ships too well to let the Spanish get near.

  • Sir Charles is making good use of cannons. The English go in really close, attack the Spanish from the sides, and fire at short range. They have better long-range guns, too, which means they can fire more accurately at the Spanish from farther away.

  • Sir Charles’s commanders have had a brainstorm. One night, they set eight of the oldest ships afire. The wind blew them into the Spanish fleet and the Spanish were forced to sail off up the coast to get away from them.

  Life Afloat

  Life on board seems so exciting, you decide to join the crew for supper. Unfortunately, first on the menu is salted meat and soggy crackers with little bugs called weevils in them. As night falls, a crew of 40 men eating, fighting, and sleeping in the same clothes for months on end does not make below decks smell good. After one night in the dark, damp, crowded, and smelly ship, you will never complain about sharing a room with your brother again.

  What ‘Knot’ To Do

  In the morning, a sailor tells you Sir Charles has insisted you earn your keep. He shows you how to tie some essential knots, including a bowline, which is used to attach a rope to a post or railing.

  1. Make a small loop a little way along the rope. It helps if you imagine the loop is a rabbit hole, the tip of the rope is the rabbit itself, and the rest of the rope is a tree.

  2. Feed the rabbit up through the hole as shown.

  3. Pass the rabbit around the back of the tree.

  4. Pass the rabbit down into the hole.

  5. Pull it tight.

  How To Make Silk In Ancient China

  Yuck! All around you are wooden trays packed with pale, grayish, squishy-looking worms. There are millions of them—munching on leaves and wriggling about in their own droppings.

  You’ve landed in Ancient China, right in the middle of a silkworm farm. Beside you, a girl is fishing a silkworm out of one of the trays. Her name is Mei Ying and she tells you that the worms are not actually worms at all, but caterpillars of the silk moth. The caterpillars are eating mulberry leaves, and have been eating nonstop for about six weeks. They hatched from tiny little eggs and have shed their skin four times to become the fat caterpillars they are now.

  Mei Ying picks one up to show it to you up close. It is shooting what looks like little threads out of its mouth and she tells you that this is silk. The caterpillar is making a cocoon.

  Mei Ying puts the caterpillar into a wooden frame next to lots of others that have already finished their cocoons. She says that the silk is actually the caterpillar’s hardened saliva, or spit. Each caterpillar wraps itself in more than a half mile of silk. She holds up a finished cocoon and explains the caterpillar inside is busy turning itself into a moth. Unfortunately, none of these caterpillars is ever going to be a moth.

  She leads you to a large pan of boiling water that contains lots of the cocoons bobbing about like white cotton balls. When the cocoons are thrown in, the caterpillar inside dies, and the thread softens and is easier to work with. Mei Ying says the cocoons are ready for her mother to work on. She gets some chopsticks and starts fishing cocoons out of the pan and putting them in a basket. This looks very easy, but when you try, they keep dropping back in.

  Mei Ying hears a noise and asks you to hide—she will be in great danger if she is found talking to you. The process of spinning the caterpillar silk into thread and weaving it into cloth is a closely guarded secret. The Chinese are the only people in the world who know how to do it, and they make lots of money from trading their fine cloth all over the world. Revealing the secret is punishable by death. From your hiding place, you see Mei Ying’s mother come in. She takes a cocoon from the basket and sits at a kind of spinning wheel. She examines the cocoon, looking for the end of the silk thread. When she finds it, she uses a silk reel to unravel the cocoon.

  As you watch, you find it hard to believe that little fat caterpillars can produce so much thread. Mei Ying has told you that even though a single caterpillar can produce more than a half mile of thread, the thread is so fine that it can take up to 100 cocoons to make a single scarf.

  Next, Mei Ying’s mother twists 10 to 12 silk threads together to form a stronger thread. These can then be dyed different colors and used for embroidery or woven into cloth. The wonderful silk cloth produced will be packed and transported along a route known as the Old Silk Road.

  How To Hunt A Mammoth

  Traveling thousands of years back in time can be a bumpy ride. You find yourself crash-landing right in the middle of a group of muscular, hairy people. What’s more—they’re all armed! Every single one of them is holding a wooden spear with a pointed tip that looks very sharp. These hairy people are called Neanderthals—a species of primitive human.

  Resist the temptation to push EJECT on your TT handset. It’s not you the hairy hunters are after—it’s a mammoth. Mammoths are a type of hairy elephant with long curved tusks that are extinct today. You’ve landed in one of the top Neanderthal mammoth-hunting teams. So, get ready for your first mammoth hunt.

  A Mammoth Task

  One of the guys hands you a spear, and points to the ground. There’s a trail of enormous footprints on the ground, and an enormous pile of steaming mammoth poop—sure signs a mammoth is nearby.

  When it comes to hunting, a mammoth has all the advantages except one—you and the team have bigger brains. There are various ways to outwit a mammoth. You could build a huge pit, disguise it with leaves and branches, and then herd the mammoth into it. Or, if you find a weak mammoth, you could use spears, stones, or poisoned darts to finish it off.

  Today, your team is hoping to use the mammoth’s own size against it. They plan to drive it into a nearby swamp. Mammoths can grow to over 10 feet tall and weigh more than 15,000 pounds! Their tusks are sharp and can be 10 feet long. This much mammoth is a lot easier to kill once it’s floundering in swampy water!

  First, the team quietly and stealthily surrounds the mammoth, leaving just one gap for it to escape through—right into the muddy swamp. Then, at
the team leader’s signal, you all charge at the mammoth, shouting, yelling, and swinging flaming sticks.

  Be careful to keep your footing so you don’t get trampled. The panicking mammoth will look for a way out, and if it sees a gap, it will make a run for it.

  Hunting Hints

  Mammoth hunting is risky and difficult, but there are things you can do to give you and your team a greater chance of success:

  • Always make sure to stay downwind of a mammoth. That way, you can smell the mammoth (and a mammoth is easy to smell), but the mammoth can’t smell you.

  • Make as little noise as possible when moving in on a mammoth. Move slowly and tread very carefully. Keep your weight on your back foot while you use your front foot to check for sticks or anything else that might make a noise. Only move your weight onto your front foot when you’re sure you can do so quietly and without tripping.