How do you prefer to contact 1 .......(distance) friends? Mobile phone, instant messenger, email perhaps? Well, take your pick, because one thing is for sure - it's never been easier! But how did people get messages to one another in the past? Well, they didn't have modern technology, but they certainly had 2 ........... (create !
Did you know that a pigeon will return to its loft, no matter how far or long it is separated from its home? Or that until the 19th century the pigeon (which can travel up to 60 miles an hour) was the fastest means of 3 .... (communicate ? Since the ancient Greeks used pigeons to announce the 4 ........... (win) of the Olympic games to the Athenians, pigeons have been used throughout history to deliver news about wars, battles and even the latest stock prices! In fact, probably the world's first regular air mail service was Mr Howie's Pigeon Post Service which started in New Zealand in 1896. Later on, during World War I, one particularly 5 ........... (hero) pigeon
was even awarded a medal for delivering twelve important messages, despite being shot once!
North American Indians used smoke signals to send messages. After lighting a fire on a hill, they would cover it with a blanket and then remove it, causing a puff of smoke to rise up into the air. They managed to change the number, size, shape and colour of the puffs and also the time between them in order to convey 6 ........... (differ) messages such as 'Attention!', 'All's well!' or 'Danger!'. The messages could be seen from up to fifty miles away! The Indians, however, are not the only ones to have used fires to send messages. The Greeks learnt that the city of Troy had fallen in the 12th century BC, by using fires to signal from mountain peak to mountain peak and from island to island, until the message was carried nearly four hundred miles!
For crying out loud!
The ancient Egyptians, Romans and Greeks all used a highly efficient system involving a messenger running or riding to a 'station' with a message and then shouting or passing it on to another waiting 7 ...........(message) and so on, until the message reached its 8 ....... (destined . A 9 ...............(vary) on this system was a network of people shouting their message from field to field and from farm to farm! Or how about whistling to get your message across? On the island of La Gomera in the Canary Islands, Spain, before the 10 ..........(arrive) of roads or telephones, the islanders discovered that whistles carried much further than shouting - up to 2.5 miles, in fact! This system became so popular that it developed into a whole language. A study in 1940 identified more than 3,000 different words!