Medieval Living

Each fall here in Albuquerque, one of the local farms near the Rio Grande creates a maze in one of their corn fields. It’s always a popular attraction – people seem to enjoy being perplexed by the puzzle – kids scream and giggle, teens hold hands and try to find a “secluded” spot, parents search frantically for missing kids, and old folks either meander joyfully along the pathway or scoff at having agreed to participate in such foolishness! It’s a well known fact that mazes have been around for a few years . . . generation after generation have enjoyed solving them. I remember as a child, the story of the Minotaur living in the Cretan Labyrinth. The purpose of the labyrinth was to contain the Minotaur so that it would not pose any threat in the world. Later in the story, Theseus, the son of Poseidon, dispatches the Minotaur. But the use of the word “labyrinth” always puzzled me, as I thought it was somehow different then a “maze”.

I found an excellent site that deals with that very subject . . . entitled “Labyrinthos“, the site serves as a labyrinth and maze resource center . . . never knew there was such a thing! Anyway, it seems that the difference between a maze and a labyrinth is that, “to qualify as a maze, a design must have choices in the pathway,” while “labyrinths have one pathway that leads inexorably from the entrance to the goal, albeit often by the most complex and winding of routes.” So, now I know the difference.
I think making a maze or a labyrinth would be a fun summer project for the homeschool groups – maybe just use stones or some other “marker” to delineate the path. Maybe we could hold a competition between groups of students to see who can devise the most complicated maze. Then make the other teams walk through the maze to see who can solve them the fastest. Sounds fun!