Like most high-school students, Tennessee-based Sergio Peralta started his high-school year nervous about fitting in. The 15-year-old boy was a new student at Hendersonville High School, located outside Nashville. Peralta was particularly concerned about his peers’ reactions regarding his right hand, which never fully formed since birth. But to his surprise, his new schoolmates supported him in a way he never could have imagined! Changing his life forever, the students of Hendersonville High School created a robotic hand for him.

The Life-Changing Proposal

While joining his new high school, a nervous Peralta felt like hiding his deformed right hand in his sleeve so that nobody would ever find out about it. But after a few days, Jeff Wilkins, the engineering teacher of the school, informed him that his classmates might be able to help him. They offered to build him a prosthetic hand, which Peralta never expected “in a million years.” Three engineering students teamed up and started planning, using their access to online models of prostheses. Then, they used a 3D printer to make a structure. After a month, their project was fruitful, and Peralta got his new robotic hand.

The Vision

Leslie Jaramillo, one of those three engineering students from Henderson High, told local media that this project was special for them because it captured the spirit of everything they were taught in class. In engineering class, the students are inspired to be creators by solving issues and coming up with new ideas. The high school’s principal Bob Cotter told the media that the teachers in his institution encourage the students to turn their concepts into reality. According to him, Peralta’s new robotic hand was a testament to this practice, envisioned by engineering teacher Jeff Wilkins and his bright and empathetic students. And thanks to them, Peralta was able to catch a baseball with his right hand, for the first time in his life!

The 2500-year-old temple was used by cult followers of the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, passion, and procreation – Aphrodite has been recently found in western Turkey.

The Goddess Temple Found on the Urla-Çeşme Peninsula

The team of researchers found a piece of a statue depicting a woman and a figure of a terracotta female head in the remains of the temple, above ground on the Urla-Çeşme peninsula. Around the temple, the team found an inscription reading “This is the sacred area” and research leader Elif Koparal believes that the remains found date to the fifth century B.C.

Koparal said that Aphrodite was a very common cult at that time, and with all the other remains that were found, the team deduced that the ruins were of a temple dedicated to the Greek goddess Aphrodite.

Hesiod is an early Greek poet who once wrote that Aphrodite was born from the white foam produced by the severed genital of Uranus, the personification of heaven after his son Cronus threw them into the sea. This explains why Aphrodite is also worshiped as a goddess of the sea and even war, although she was primarily associated with love and fertility.

The Peninsula Was Already Known for Ancient Settlements

Archeological surveys have been taking place in the area since 2006, and Koparal and her team first discovered traces of the goddess temple back in 2016. It was a very rare find as surface surveys involve walking over the ground while recording, mapping, and collecting artifacts encountered.

During their surface survey of more than 17,000 square feet, the team has found 35 prehistoric human settlements, including 16 that dated back to the Neolithic age. Koparal shares that thanks to these findings, a significant social and economic network was discovered. This is why it’s so important to protect the findings from modern-day treasure hunters and urbanization.

Koparal’s team is already cooperating with the local people to help guard the goddess temple and the rest of the archaeological treasures.