--- title: Olympiad: spot the anachronism ★★★ — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Olympiad: spot the anachronism ★★★», a lesson of the history course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Films, cartoons and games are full of them, and spotting them is a favourite olympiad puzzle. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/) / Olympiad: spot the anachronism ★★★ # Olympiad: spot the anachronism ★★★ Lesson 87 of the history course of Mova's primary school: 19 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/). - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/1/) — Films, cartoons and games are full of them, and spotting them is a favourite olympiad puzzle. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/2/) — To catch one, ask two questions: when does the scene happen, and when did this thing first appear? - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/3/) — If the thing is younger than the scene, you have found an anachronism. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/4/) — The trap is that some things are older than you think. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/5/) — Columbus really did carry a compass, Queen Victoria really did ride on trains, and Abraham Lincoln and Taras Shevchenko really did sit for photographs. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/6/) — Food is a great clue: potatoes, tomatoes, maize and chocolate came from the Americas, so a Roman or a Viking eating them is wrong, and tea only reached Europe in the 1600s. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/7/) — Sophie in Bristol watches a Roman film: «Gurt lush, but why's the centurion wearing a wristwatch?» (in the West Country gurt means very and lush means lovely). - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/9/) — An anachronism is something that belongs to another time, such as a Roman soldier with a wristwatch or a Viking with a smartphone. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/10/) — Potatoes, tomatoes, maize and chocolate reached Europe only after Columbus's voyage of 1492, and horses, which had died out in the Americas long ago, came back only with the Spanish. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/11/) — Tea reached Europe in the early 1600s, so no Viking, Roman or medieval knight ever drank a cup of tea. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/13/) — The magnetic compass was used by Chinese sailors by about 1100 and by European sailors by about 1200, so Columbus did have one, but the telescope was made only in 1608. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/14/) — Photography began in the 1820s and 1830s: Napoleon, who died in 1821, was never photographed, but Abraham Lincoln and Taras Shevchenko, who lived on into the 1850s and 1860s, were. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/15/) — Queen Victoria first rode on a train in 1842 and saw Bell show her the telephone in 1878, but television came only in the 1920s, long after she died in 1901. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/16/) — Winners at the ancient Olympic Games got a crown of olive leaves; gold, silver and bronze medals at the modern Olympics began in 1904. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/17/) — Prince Volodymyr of Kyiv, who died in 1015, never saw a printed book: books then were copied by hand, and one of the first printed books in Ukraine, the «Apostol», came out in Lviv in 1574. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/18/) — Vikings did not wear horned helmets in battle; the horns come from costumes made for an opera in 1876. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/19/) — Passenger railways began in the 1820s and 1830s, the first cars in 1885–1886, and the first powered aeroplane flew in 1903. - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/20/) — Pocket watches appeared in Europe in the early 1500s and glasses for reading in Italy around 1290, so a knight of 1100 had neither. - [21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/21/) — Words can be anachronisms too: «OK» was first printed in America in 1839, so a knight or a Roman saying «OK» in a film is out of time. - ← previous: [Olympiad: cause and effect chains ★★★](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/) - ↑ back to [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/)