James Sulikowski, from the Shark and Fish Conservation Lab at the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences at Arizona State University, was one of the scientists who captured the seven foot porbeagle (鼠鲨) shark in the Atlantic.
In a Facebook post, the lab said the shark had been growing for years with a plastic strap around its gills. “Photos ... show the female shark’s head was slowly being sliced off by the unyielding strap,” it said. “The piece of circular plastic had become lodged around her neck when she was younger. As she grew, it began to cut through her skin into her muscle, if we had not removed it, she surely would have died.”
In a message to Newsweek, Sulikowski said the strap was probably one that would normally go around a bait box. “The box went overboard, and the porbeagle shark, when younger, ate the fish in the box,” he said. “While doing so, [the] strap got wrapped around the sharks head. As the shark grew, the strap dug into the shark’s flesh. If we didn’t remove it, the shark would have surely died.”
The photos of the shark being strangled follow the discovery of a dead minke whale that had been killed by a piece of fishing line. The male minke whale was found on a beach in Dennis, Massachusetts. The fishing line had become “wrapped around its head and through its mouth, creating a bridle,” the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) said in a Facebook post.
The IFAW said the initial autopsy (验尸) suggests the whale died from injuries caused by the entanglement. It also said there were signs of possible infection. “The entanglement likely contributed to the cause of death, though additional lab results are pending.”
The problem of plastic pollution in the ocean is getting worse. It is thought there is currently over 150 million metric tons of plastic in the world’s oceans, and more and more is entering every year. A report published earlier this year estimated the amount of plastic entering the ocean every year will have doubled by 2040, amounting to 600 million metric tons.
More than one million seabirds and 100,000 marine animals are killed every year by plastic waste. “Plastic in all forms are an issue,” Sulikowski said. “We need more research to understand the extent of the long term effects of this type of pollution.”
1. What do you know about the shark?| A．Her head was sliced off. |
| B．The strap cut through her skin when she was younger. |
| C．She was in more danger as she grew. |
| D．Scientists had not removed the strap. |
| A．the entanglement. | B．a piece of fishing line. |
| C．infection. | D．not decided. |
| A．The present amount of plastic in the ocean is about 300 million tons. |
| B．The next 20 years will see an increase of 450 million tons of plastic in the ocean. |
| C．More than 150 million metric tons of plastic is going into ocean every year. |
| D．About 300 million tons of plastic is going into ocean every year. |
| A．Scientists saved a shark whose head was being sliced off. |
| B．The death of a whale and a shark worried IFAW. |
| C．Plastic pollution is threatening certain animals’ lives. |
| D．Plastic pollution is getting worse and worse. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Teak is a large tree that grows in tropical(热带的) forests. It’s often used for outdoor furniture, since it’s more resistant to the elements than other types of wood. When untreated, it tends to fade to a grayish color, so it is often stained(着色). Before being able to stain teak furniture, you’ll need to sand and smooth the wood first.
Wipe dirt and dust off. You can use a dry paper towed or a cloth to brush any dirt off. If there are more tenacious spots to clean off, you can use a wet rag to rub them clean. Sand rough spots with 120 grit sandpaper. After that, use 220 grit sandpaper on the whole surface. Wipe any wood dust off with a dry rag before continuing.
Paint on a layer of sanding sealer(底漆). This will make the surface smoother and will get the wood stain better attached. Once the sealer has started to dry, use a clean cloth to wipe off any sealer that’s still pooled at the top of the wood. This will prevent spots from forming on the wood. Let the sealer dry completely. It should only take a few hours for the sealer to dry completely. You should sand the surface a few times before continuing to smooth out any spots where the sealer might not have dried evenly.
When painting on a layer of stain, a brush will do fine. Apply an even coat all over. Wipe off any stain not absorbed by the wood. Use a clean dry rag to wipe off extra stain. Let the wood stain dry. The amount of time it takes for the stain to completely dry will depend on how thick of a layer you used. Avoid touching the stain too much if it’s still wet. After the first coat has dried, take a moment to see if you’re satisfied with the color. If you want your furniture to be darker, you can add another coat of wood stain, right on top of the previous layer, following the same process.
1. What do we know about teak?| A．It is not easy to be damaged. |
| B．It bears an ugly original color. |
| C．It is made into the best furniture. |
| D．It grows in the hot and dry areas. |
| A．Huge. |
| B．Obvious. |
| C．Stubborn. |
| D．Colorful. |
| A．to get rid of increasing sport |
| B．to help the sealer dry completely |
| C．to get the wood stain better stuck |
| D．to make sure the surface is smooth |
| A．Wipe dirt and dust off again. |
| B．Paint on a layer of stain once more. |
| C．Paint on a layer of sanding sealer twice. |
| D．Repeat the whole process of coloring teak. |
【推荐2】Dog training is a broad specialism, and the types of training vary just as much as the trainers themselves.
Not all dog training is basic obedience (服从), as the likes of agility training are popular too. This requires specialist equipment to allow your dog to jump, balance and run through tunnels.
Unless you choose 1:1 training, there will be other dogs in the class. This can be good to owners as it gives you a chance to see how your pet is progressing compared with other dogs.
In an ideal world, your dog would learn everything in just a handful of training sessions. Dog ownership is a duty lasting many years, and not all behaviors can be stopped in the bud just like that.
To sum up, dog training classes give your dog the best chance at learning obedience. They are incredibly versatile and can learn various skills. The training then needs to continue at home and for the rest of the dog’s life in some form or another.
| A．The location must be puppy proof and free from danger. |
| B．It helps you cope with your dogs better with dog trainers’ help. |
| C．It’s important to find a professional and experienced dog trainer. |
| D．Thus, choose the dog training classes with a complete set of equipment. |
| E．Be mindful though that your dog gets less individual attention in larger classes. |
| F．Rather, dog training needs to continue at home and be helped by the whole family. |
| G．So the facility should agree with the type of training you want to put your dog through. |
【推荐3】Ever wondered if dogs can learn new words? Yes, say researchers as they have found that talented dogs may have the ability to learn new words after hearing them only four times.
While previous evidence（以前的证据）seems to show that most dogs do not learn words, unless very well trained, a few individuals（个体） have shown some extraordinary（不一般的） abilities, according to a study published in the journal Scientific Reports.
“We wanted to know under which conditions the talented dogs may learn new words,” said researcher xuekw Claudia Fugazza from the Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary（匈牙利）. For the study, the team involved（包含）two gifted dogs, Whisky and Vicky Nina. The team exposed（暴露）the dogs to the new words in two different conditions.
In the exclusion-based（基于排除的）task, presented with seven known toys and one new toy, the dogs were able to select（选择）the new toy when presented with a new name. Researchers say this proves that dogs can choose by exclusion（排除）when faced with a new word, they selected the only toy which did not have a known name.
However, this was not the way they would learn the name of the toy. In fact, when they were presented with one more equally（同等地）new name to test their ability to recognize the toy by its name, the dogs got totally confused and failed.
The other condition, the social one, where the dogs played with their owners who pronounced the name of the toy while playing with the dog, proved to be the successful way to learn the name of the toy, even after hearing it only 4 times. “The rapid learning that we observed seems to equal children’s ability to learn many new words at a fast velocity around the age of 18 months,” Fugazza says. “But we do not know whether the learning mechanisms（机制）behind this learning are the same for humans and dogs. ”
To test whether most dogs would learn words this way, 20 other dogs were tested in the same condition, but none of them showed any evidence of learning the toy names, confirming（确认）that the ability to learn words rapidly in the absence（缺乏）of formal training is very rare（少） and is only present in a few talented dogs.
1. What was the purpose of the study published in Scientific Reports?| A．To better train dogs’ ability to learn new words. |
| B．To further make sure of previous evidence about dogs. |
| C．To confirm the dogs can learn words. |
| D．To find out suitable conditions for gifted dogs’ new-word learning. |
| A．Slow to understand. | B．Quick to learn. |
| C．In puzzlement. | D．In surprise. |
| A．Learning through playing applied to most dogs. |
| B．The social condition helped dogs learn new words. |
| C．Dogs’ new-word learning turned out to be less effective. |
| D．Dogs shared similar learning mechanisms with children. |
| A．speed | B．quality |
| C．time | D．journey |
【推荐1】The fertile land of the Nile delta is being eroded (侵蚀) along Egypt’s Mediterranean coast at an astonishing rate, in some parts estimated at 100 metres per year. In the past, land washed away from the coastline by the currents of the Mediterranean Sea used to be replaced by sediment (沉淀物) brought down to the delta by the River Nile, but this is no longer happening.
Up to now, people have blamed this loss of delta land on the two large Aswan dams in the south of Egypt, which hold back almost all of the sediment that used to flow down the river. Before the dams were built, the Nile flowed freely carrying huge quantities of sediment. But when the Aswan dams were constructed to provide electricity and irrigation, and to protect the huge population centre of Cairo from annual flooding and drought, most of the sediment with its natural fertilizer accumulated up above the dam in the southern upstream half of Lake Nasser, instead of passing down to the della.
Now, however, there turns out to be more to the story. It appears that the sediment-free water picks up sand as it erodes the river bed and banks on the 800-kilometre trip to Cairo. Daniel Jean Stanley of the Smithsonian Institute noticed that water samples taken in Cairo indicated that the river sometimes carries more than 850 grams of sediment per cubic metre of water — almost half of what it carried before the dams were built.
International environmental organizations are beginning to pay closer attention to the region, partly because of the problems of erosion and pollution of the Nile delta, but mainly because they fear the impact this situation could have on the whole Mediterranean coastal ecosystem.
But there are no easy solutions. In the immediate future, Stanley believes that one solution would be to make artificial floods to flush out the delta waterways, in the same way that natural floods did before the construction of the dams. He says, however, that in the long term an alternative process such as desalination (脱盐) may have to be used to increase the amount of water available.
1. What stopped the sediment coming down to the delta?| A．The Mediterranean Sea. | B．The River Nile. |
| C．The Aswan dams. | D．Lake Nasser. |
| A．To flush out the river beds. |
| B．To offer electricity and protection. |
| C．To make the water in the River Nile clean. |
| D．To keep the soil in the region nearby nutrient-rich. |
| A．There is no need to worry about the delta. |
| B．The methods of measurement need improving. |
| C．Whether the situation is good or not remains to be seen. |
| D．The dams’ consequences are beyond people’s expectation. |
| A．Difficulties to be settled. |
| B．Rewards for the challenge. |
| C．Severe influence of the situation. |
| D．Possible solutions to the problem. |
【推荐2】Hardware in general, and smartphones in particular, have become a huge environmental and health problem in the Global South' s landfill sites(垃圾填埋场).
Electronic waste(e-waste) currently takes up 5 percent of all global waste, and it is set to increase rapidly as more of us own more than one smartphone, laptop and power bank. They end up in places like Agbogbloshie on the outskirts of Ghana's capital, Accra.It is the biggest e-waste dump in the world, where 10,000 informal workers walk through tons of abandoned goods as part of an informal recycling process.They risk their health searching for the precious metals that are found in abandoned smartphones.
But Agbogbloshie should not exist. The Basel Convention, a 1989 treaty aims to prevent developed nations from unauthorized dumping of e-waste in less developed countries. The E-waste industry, however, circumvents the regulations by exporting e-waste labelled as “secondhand goods” to poor countries like Ghana, knowing full well that it is heading for a landfill site.
A recent report found Agbogbloshie contained some of the most dangerous chemicals.This is not surprising: smartphones contain chemicals like mercury(水银), lead and even arsenic (砷 ) Reportedly, one egg from a free-range chicken in Agbogbloshie contained a certain chemical which can cause cancer and damage the immune system at a level that's about 220 times greater than a limit set by the European Food Safety Authority(EFSA), Most worryingly, these poisonous chemicals are free to pollute the broader soil and water system. This should concern us all, since some of Ghana's top exports are cocoa and nuts.
Some governments have started to take responsibility for their consumers' waste.For example, Germany has started a project that includes a sustainable recycling system at Agbogbloshie, along with a health clinic for workers.However, governments cannot solve the problem alone, as there is am almost limitless consumer demand for hardware, especially when governments’ green policies are focused on issues like climate change.
Only the manufacturers can fix this.A more economically sustainable and politically possible solution is through encouraging hardware manufacturers to make the repair, reuse and recycling of hardware profitable, or at least cost-neutral.
1. What can we infer from paragraph2?| A．Electronic products need improving urgently. |
| B．Electronic waste is too complex to get fully recycled. |
| C．Electronic waste requires more landfill sites across Ghana. |
| D．Electronic pollution is a burning question in Agbogbloshie. |
| A．Tightens |
| B．Abolishes |
| C．Avoids |
| D．Follows |
| A．The violation of EFSA’s standard |
| B．The lack of diversity in Ghana s exports. |
| C．The damage to chickens immune system |
| D．The threat of polluted food around the world |
| A．Manufacturers' developing a sustainable hardware economy. |
| B．Governments' adjusting their green policies about e-waste. |
| C．Reducing customers' demands for electronic products. |
| D．Letting governments take on the main responsibility. |
【推荐3】Fireworks have been enjoyed by countless people ever since they were invented in China during the Tang Dynasty hundreds of years ago. From small family gatherings (团聚) to huge global celebrations, there isn’t a party that couldn’t be made more fun with a few fireworks. But it seems that there’s a big price to pay for some brief beauty and fun.
It’s been discovered that fireworks contain metals such as copper (铜) and lead, in addition to other pollutants like perchlorates (高氯酸盐). According to the Environmental Protection Agency, perchlorates can form naturally or be made. They are an industrial chemical used in rocket fuel and explosives (炸药), and are soluble (可溶解的) in water.
This is a reason for concern because perchlorates negatively affect the thyroid gland (甲状腺), which influences important bodily functions like blood pressure and heart rate.
Furthermore, a study conducted by Terry Gordon, a professor at New York University, examined the emissions(排放物) whose sizes were big enough to enter the lungs. They concluded that these emissions may lead to various dangerous conditions like cancer, heart attacks, and strokes (中风).
It is worth noticing, however, that no studies have proven the connctions between these conditions and the dangerous chemicals in fireworks.
However, the negative effects of firework emissions can be observed in birds. Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds warns against setting off fireworks close to wildlife areas as they may cause confusion among birds.
In 2010, an incident involving 5,000 red-winged blackbirds falling out of the sky on New Year’s Eve in Arkansas, US supported this idea. A fireworks display held at a nesting ground for blackbirds led to the birds’ night sight being affected, causing them to fall to their deaths.
Arguably (可以说), the use of fireworks during celebrations may be because people don’t realize how they pollute our environment. Companies and researchers could take this cue (线索) and find other new, eco-friendly ways.
After all, for all the beauty fireworks bring, there’s no better beauty than that of our planet’s.
1. According to the article, perchlorates contained in fireworks ______.| A．do harm to the thyroid gland |
| B．raise the risk of cancer |
| C．are dangerous when put in water |
| D．are made from copper and lead |
| A．fireworks are directly connected with lung cancer |
| B．the waste from fireworks could threaten our body |
| C．chemicals in fireworks could increase our blood pressure |
| D．our body is strong enough to fight against the pollutants in fireworks |
| A．Positive. | B．Negative. |
| C．Indifferent. | D．Neutral. |
【推荐1】I don’t know about you, but I used to hate school.
However, there’s a school in Penang that makes learning so enjoyable that its students look forward to attending classes every day. Some students even threatened their parents they’d run away from home if they missed any of the school activities! And it’s all owing to the school principal. Who is this legend, you might ask?
He’s S. Sangga, a 57-year-old headmaster at SJK (T) Sungai Ara, Penang. The school started adopting the fun learning approach since Sangga was transferred to the school in 2011. A few floors in the school had been painted with games like snakes and ladders, as well as teng teng. Not only that, there are particular reading corners as well as computers set up just for the students to discover and learn about new things! Since then, the students have been arriving extra early at 6: 30 a. m., just to have some fun before classes start at 7: 40 a. m!
If you think that’s all, you’re wrong.
Mr Sangga is an supporter for environmental protection and preservation. The school takes the students for walks in the surrounding areas every Friday, and they’ll take them to collect garbage in selected areas every Saturday. The students have since become responsible “anti trash heroes” by making a stand for our environment. The school has also banned the use of plastic, as well as fast food and junk food. Not only do the students practice this at school, but they start to take their knowledge home to educate their family!
Sadly, Mr Sangga will retire in three years, and he hopes that the students and teachers would continue their practice.
1. Why did some students threaten to leave home?| A．Because they hate attending school. |
| B．Because they are not allowed to go to school. |
| C．Because they have to do a large amount of housework. |
| D．Because they possibly lose the chance of participating in school activities. |
| A．Strict. | B．Happy. | C．Boring. | D．Arbitrary. |
| A．To have fun. | B．To identify trash. | C．To build up body. | D．To collect garbage. |
| A．A news report. | B．A book review. | C．A government report. | D．A science magazine. |
【推荐2】Northwestern University engineers have added a new capability to electronic microchip: flight.
About the size of a grain of sand, the new flying microchip does not have a motor or engine. Instead, it catches flight on the wind — much like a maple tee’s seed — and spins like a helicopter through the air toward the ground.
By studying maple trees and other types of wind dispersed (风散的) seeds, the engineers designed the microflier’s aerodynamics (空气动力特性) to ensure that it falls at a slow rate in a controlled manner. This behaviour stabilizes its flight, making it ideal for monitoring air pollution and airborne (空气传播的) disease.
As the smallest-ever human-made flying structures, these microfliers also can be packed with ultra-miniaturized technology, including sensors, power sources, wireless communication and data storing.
The original goal was to add winged flight to small-scale electronic systems, with the idea that these capabilities would allow them to distribute highly functional, miniaturized electronic devices to sense the environment for pollution and disease monitoring.
“We were able to do that using ideas inspired by the biological world. Over the course of billions of years, nature has designed seeds with very complex aerodynamics. We borrowed those design concepts, adapted them and applied them to electronic circuit platforms,” said John A. Rogers, who led the device’s development. Yonggang Huang, the Jan and Marcia Achenbach Professor of Mechanical Engineering at McCormick, led the study’s theoretical work.
1. Where does the microchip get its power to fly?| A．From a motor. | B．From an engine. | C．From wind. | D．From sunlight. |
| A．Data storing. | B．Wireless communication. |
| C．Weather forecasting. | D．Pollution and disease monitoring. |
| A．Nature has a long history. | B．They got inspired by nature. |
| C．Nature is the best designer. | D．They created the design concepts. |
| A．A short story. | B．A diary. | C．A travel guide. | D．A news report. |
【推荐3】Is Apple the shining knight when it comes to privacy collection, as it wants us to believe?
A different business model from Facebook and Google gives it some ground to claim a tighter tower around your data. But that’s not the whole story, and some changes are coming.
With the release of the news that nearly 90 million Facebook users’ information was passed on to political ad targeting firm Cambridge Catalytic without their permission, tech companies are defending themselves. Consumers and lawmakers want to know how much their favorite apps have collected of their choices and movements and what they do with this personal information.
Apple has made a point of trying to distinguish its approach to consumers’ information. On its website, it notes that it collects less data about us than the other big tech companies and then ensures the security by scrambling it so it doesn’t identify who it comes from. Additionally, it says it keeps most of the data on our devices, as opposed to Apple servers, and that it’s encoded on those devices and only accessible via your pass code.
It also promises that it will make it easier to track the information the company collects about us,and to download or delete it, later this year. However, getting the data back form Apple currently is complex and slow. The new tools are to follow new privacy rules, called General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which go into effect in the European Union in late May. In brief, the rules look to give the user more controls over how their data is used.
Apple insists that it “doesn’t gather your personal information to sell to advertises or other organizations.” Such a statement only goes so far-Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a point by saving Facebook doesn’t sell users’ data to advertisers, either. What the social network sells is advertisers access to users, whose brands can target with all the information it’s gathered from their activity.
1. What makes the major lech companies defend themselves?| A．The privacy information leak of Facebook users |
| B．The different business models used by other companies |
| C．The release of the General Data Protection Regulation |
| D．The competition between tech companies for more users |
| A．It collects more user data than other companies |
| B．It keeps most of the user dala on Apple servers |
| C．It sells users’ personal information to advertisers |
| D．It ensures that the user data is pass word-protected |
| A．Analyzing carefully. | B．Mixing randomly |
| C．Improving quickly. | D．Obtaining easily |
| A．Apple’s new privacy rules went into effect recently |
| B．Apple provides safer protection against data theft |
| C．Apple’s data collection system is actually doubtful |
| D．Apple servers are able to track consumers’ choices |
【推荐1】Suppose you are about to complete high school and are thinking about attending a college or university. After doing some research, you find a school you would like to attend, but have questions about the application process. So you go to the school’s website in the hope of finding a few answers.
Time goes by and you, a student, still do not have the answers. You almost feel like giving up. But today, as you can see, artificial intelligence is so advanced. You find a message appears on your computer or personal electronic device. It says something like: ''How can I help? '' Writing back to the website, you try to explain your problem. You possibly get a few questions to clarify what your concerns are. Then, almost immediately, the person with whom you are in contact provides the information you are seeking.
In fact, you are not actually communicating with a school official. You are not even dealing with a human being. You are in contact with a computer program, or chatbot. It is using artificial intelligence, AI for short, to understand and communicate with you. This might sound strange. But chances are that this would not be the first time you have communicated with a computer program without knowing it. In recent years, chatbots have become a common tool for banks and large companies around the world.
Having human beings available to answer people’s questions and complaints can be costly, requiring many workers. And in most cases, employees can only work for several hours in a day, increasing customers’ waiting time for a response, but the chatbot can work around the clock. So not only companies, but a growing number of universities have also begun using the chatbot technology.
Australia's University of Adelaide noted a major improvement in its service to student after employing a chathot to deal with application questions in 2018. It said that students received responses 13 times faster, and students’ approval of the quality of service increased by 60 percent. And just the speed of reacting to questions is the chatbot's major strength.
1. How does the author introduce the topic of the text?| A．By assumption. | B．By comparison. |
| C．By definition. | D．By data. |
| A．To tell time and tide wait for no man. |
| B．To advise students should clarify their questions. |
| C．To present the communication convenience brought by Al. |
| D．To show the phenomenon that students are addicted to computers. |
| A．Its low cost. | B．Its ease of use. |
| C．Its short working hours. | D．Its quick response. |
| A．Artificial intelligence is developing rapidly. |
| B．Robots are gradually replacing human services. |
| C．Employees chat with robots without knowing them. |
| D．More universities use chatbots to communicate online. |
【推荐2】In the first days after a team of 25 delivery robots landed on George Mason University's campus in January,they appeared to cause curious glances and many photos but not much else.
It was clear,officials said,that more time and more data would be necessary to understand whether the robots would change the campus culture or become forgettable.Two months later,an extra 1,500 breakfast orders have been delivered autonomously,according to the technologists of Sodexo,a company that manages food service for GMU and works closely with the robots.
Research has shown that up to 88 percent of college students skip breakfast,primarily because of lack of time,but that number is starting to turn around when delivery robots arrive on campus.They're constantly seen making the 15 minute trip from campus restaurant to a handful of nearby dorms,as well as to other buildings across campus,where students meet them.Two months later,breakfast has replaced dinner as the go-to meal for robot delivery.
Sodexo officials have noted that college students are main users of food delivery apps and place a high value on convenience and multiple options when they dine.During the morning hours,restaurant experts say,there is generally more emphasis（强调）on speed than any other part of the day.Combine college students'love of food delivery with messy morning routines,and perhaps they have a perfect recipe for robots to deliver in the campus.
The robots also provide campus officials with valuable data showing how meal plans are being used,which could lead to changes in how the university serves students over time.Sodexo technologists also announced Monday that a new team of more than 30 robots is launching at Northern Arizona University
.
| A．They are on diets. |
| B．They have a tight schedule. |
| C．The food doesn't agree with them. |
| D．GMU doesn't offer delivery services. |
| A．College students. | B．Campus officials. |
| C．College professors. | D．Restaurant managers. |
| A．They make timely deliveries. |
| B．They were ignored at first. |
| C．They mainly carry dinner at present. |
| D．They have changed the whole campus culture. |
| A．Delivery services grow fast in college. |
| B．Breakfast in necessary for college students. |
| C．Robots help with GMU's campus management. |
| D．Delivery robots are changing students'eating habits. |
【推荐3】Landscapes are not only the setting for history; they are also a major source of our sense of history and identity. Read them right, and historical landscapes can be more informative than any other kind of source. This is even more the case with sacred landscapes, which were reflection of our ancestors’ beliefs about their relation to the cosmos and can still today seem to hold a spiritual influence.
Over the years, I’ve had the good fortune to have spent time in many historical landscapes, hoping to picture something of the spirits of the people who shaped them over the centuries. I still remember years ago walking along the Inca sacred lines around Cusco, Peru. In this ancient landscape, old sites that once belonged to Incan royals had become torn Spanish mansions. Or many years ago, before the Gulf Wars, I took a journey through south Iraq, the heart land of civilization, where the desert is still crossed by dried-up riverbeds of the Euphrates and canals that once sustained the world’s first cities.
Britain also has its own magical ancient landscapes. From the Mesolithic to the Bronze and Iron Ages, rich layers of the past are still present in the landscape surrounding Stonehenge, even as traffic rushes down the A303. It is the A303 that is the problem. As the main road to the south west from the home counties, the road runs right past Stonehenge. One of humanity’s most famous monuments, Stonehenge is an archaeological landscape without parallel in Europe, and perhaps the world. The first circle at Stonehenge was made 5,000 years ago, and the great stone circle itself in a round 2,500 BC — the age of the pyramids! And the mysteries of this amazing monument and the complex prehistoric societies that produced it are by no means exhausted, as new discoveries continue to show.
All the more worrying to me then, this unique landscape is currently at the centre of a projected plan by Highways England, which aims to relieve congestion on the A303 by creating a four-lane road with a 1.8-mile tunnel, and an expressway interchange 1.5 miles to the west. While the National Trust and English Heritage have offered qualified support for the plan, UNESCO has expressed its opposition. Meanwhile, the Stonehenge Alliance, a group of archaeologists and environmental campaigners, says the plan is based on inadequate and obsolete information. In the end, the argument is about the totality of an ancient landscape, and that includes the ancient astronomical alignment that was purposefully chosen by our ancestors, and that will, in my view, be wrecked by the expressway interchange. Time perhaps for a rethink in the name of future generations?
1. What can historical landscapes offer us?| A．Details of ancient lifestyle. | B．Sacred writings |
| C．Rich historical information | D．Breathtaking sights. |
| A．Different architecture. | B．His sense of belonging. |
| C．The rise of ancient cities. | D．The spirits of ancestors. |
| A．The first stone circle has a longer history than the pyramids. |
| B．New discoveries have solved the mysteries of the monument. |
| C．The ancient monument must have been the heart land of civilization. |
| D．The landscape surrounding Stonehenge has rich layers of the present. |
| A．He is for it because it will benefit the future generations. |
| B．He keeps cool but believes a better solution could be adopted. |
| C．It should be stopped because it will destroy the totality of the monument. |
| D．It is rather practical especially with qualified support from the government. |
