Motel of the Mysteries

The oldest students listened to a book at read aloud this fall called Motel of the Mysteries by David Macaulay. In this book, it is the year 4022 and all of the ancient country of Usa has been buried under many feet of junk mail from a catastrophe that occurred back in 1985.  The students thoroughly enjoyed how "wrong" the archeologist Howard Carson was when he decided, among other things, that the TV was a way to communicate with the gods and that the toilet was a "sacred urn" to be chanted into during a burial ceremony.  This led to a lively discussion on how we know what we know about Mesopotamia and if all that we think is true about their culture is really what it was like over 5000 years ago.