Odysseus And The Cyclops | Exploring Greek Mythology

Kalimera and hello to all. Today I'm climbing around the rocks and looking at the cliffs that are here on this beautiful island of Amorgos. Now at the moment, as you can see, there are not many people around and that always makes me wonder about who has stepped exactly where I have stepped. In fact, this whole area reminds me of a Greek myth. It's about a hero called Odysseus. Him and his men find a cave where a cyclops lives. Now in today's lesson, we're going to be using that myth to understand different scientific concepts and we're going to be talking about what it would be like to have one eye. But first of all, let's hear the myth. Odysseus and his men had been sailing the sea and were ready for some time on dry land. They came across an island that had a large cave opening. Being as brave as they were, they did not stop to think of who lived in the cave. The men ate the food and drank the liquids in the cave. They lay their heads down for a rest. As they were asleep, in came a large cyclops named Polyphemus leading his flock of sheep. He rolled the giant rock to cover the doorway. When he turned to find the men in his cave, he grew angry and rather hungry. So he picked up two of the men, bashed their heads together and had them in one bite. Then Polyphemus fell asleep. Odysseus and his men had nowhere to go. They could not move the stone. In the morning, Polyphemus woke up, had two more of the men for breakfast, rolled open the door and took his sheep outside. Odysseus had nowhere to go. Odysseus came up with a plan. Him and his leftover men took a large bit of wood that was used as furniture and made a sharp point. When the cyclops came back that evening, Odysseus offered him some of their strong wine that they'd brought from them off their ship. Because Polyphemus had never drunk this wine before, it made him act quite silly and then he got very sleepy. He fell asleep straight away. Just before he fell asleep, Polyphemus asked Odysseus what his name was. Being the sneaky man he was, Odysseus replied, no man. Then Polyphemus fell into a deep, deep sleep. The men took the sharpened wood and put the point into the fire until it was bright red. With all the strength that the men had, they took that point and shoved it right into Polyphemus's eye. Polyphemus jumped up, screaming and shouting. All the other cyclopses around the island came running to see what was happening. They asked him, Polyphemus, who did this to you? And he replied, no man. So the other cyclopses laughed and left him to be. The next morning, Odysseus and his men tied themselves to the bottom side of the sheep. Polyphemus awoke and walked his sheep outside as he always did. Now that he had no sight, he felt the tops of the sheep to make sure there was no one riding on top of it. Odysseus and his men had a lucky escape and were able to make their way back to their ship. Once Odysseus and his men had reached the ship, they called out to Polyphemus. It was not no man that did that to you. It was in fact Odysseus that had blinded you. Now, I'm not sure about how you feel about that story, but the cyclops was just minding his own business when Odysseus and his men came along and ate all his food. No, I don't believe that he should have eaten the men as punishment, but Odysseus and his men were in the wrong too. Tell the people next to you what you think. Should the men have blinded Polyphemus or not? Let's get into the zone of what it would feel like to be a cyclops. I want you to close one of your eyes and place your hand over that eye. Make sure you cannot see anything at all out of that eye. You can see out of this eye. What I want you to do is stare at an object that is not moving. Is anything different? How about you try taking a step forward? Is anything different to normal now? Now, how about you try walking very carefully and very slowly around the room that you're in. See if anything is different to how it would feel to normally walk around the room. How was that? Tell the people next to you how you felt about walking around with one eye and how different was it to when you walk with two eyes? Humans usually see through binocular vision. What that means is that both eyes are used together. When both eyes are working together, it allows us to see what is around us called our visual field. Because both eyes are facing forward, we cannot see what is behind our head. The best feature about having binocular vision is something called depth perception. This is how we are able to figure out how close or how far objects are from us. Because our eyes are a certain distance apart, they see everything slightly differently. Try this with me now. Close one of your eyes and hold your thumb up to cover something in the distance. Now, when you change the eye that is closed, it looks like your thumb has jumped or moved. When our two eyes see a slightly different image in our brain, it gets put together so we can see things in 3D. Otherwise, everything would look flat. Some animals have different vision to us. They have their eyes on either side of their head. The eyes are working separately and that is called monocular vision. This lets them see wider areas than we can. Some birds have a 360 degree view without having to even move their necks. How handy! If we were just like our friend Polyphemus and only had one eye, we would lose our ability to perceive depth. That means that catching a ball or trying to run away from something quickly would become quite difficult. Activity time! For this activity, you are going to become a cyclops. No, don't worry, you don't have to eat any humans for this activity. What you need to do is make an eye patch that fits perfectly over one eye and so you can see out of the other one. Then you need to complete a simple task. Throwing and catching a ball, building a tower out of some blocks, trying to walk in a really long straight line or something similar to that. Then when you have done that activity, you need to fill in your scientific progress sheet. You can find that in the resources for this lesson. And you can talk about everything that you experienced in that activity, only having one eye. Now you have fun with that and I will see you later. Bye! Thanks for watching! Why not continue learning by clicking on one of these lesson videos? And make sure to click that subscribe button. Happy travels!