Ball games are a big source of modern amusement. But they're nothing new. For instance, consider a 4,500-year-old ball     1    (find) in a child's tomb in Egypt or 3.600-year-old rubber balls from Central America-where the competitors were asked to play the balls with their hips(臀部）.

So far, researchers     2    (make) sure of a date of the oldest sporting balls in Europe or Asia: three balls, dug up from the tombs of horsemen in the deserts of northwestern China and crafted three thousand     3    (year) ago.

＂We are quite sure they were used in some sort of bat-and-ball game."Patrick Wertmann is an expert at the University of Zurich     4     analyzed the ancient sporting equipment. The balls are about three inches in diameter and filled     5    leather hair. “And then, also,     6    (look) at the Chinese character of "ball" itself, you'll find it quite     7    (interest) because this character is made up of the ideograms(表意文字）of hair and leather.”

As for how this ancient ball-and-stick game     8     （play)? “lt could be something like polo. But it could also be something like     9     early form of golf.

Since we don't have any textural evidence and we don't have any sticks from the same period, we don't really know     10    （exact).”

In Asia, especially the so-called “rice bowl” cultures of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, food is usually eaten with    1    (chopstick).

Chopsticks are usually two long, thin pieces of wood or bamboo. They can also    2     (make) of plastic or mental. Sometimes chopsticks are quite artistic.    3    (true) elegant chopsticks might be with Chinese characters. Skilled workers also combine various hardwoods    4    metal to create special designs.

Five thousand years ago, Chinese people probably cooked their food in large pots,    5    (use) branches to remove it. Food in small pieces could be eaten easily with branches     6    gradually turned into chopsticks.

Some people think that the great Chinese scholar Confucius, who lived     7    551 to 479 BC, influenced the     8    (develop) of chopsticks. Confucius believed knives would remind people of killings and     9    (be) too violent for use at the table.

Chopsticks are not used everywhere in Asia. In India, most people traditionally eat     10    their hands.

A group of students from England, who are interested in archaeology, have come to the Zhoukoudian caves for a visit. An archaeologist     1     (warm) gives them a brief introduction     2     the life and habits of the earliest people there.

Early people lived in caves and they made fires in the centre of caves     3     (keep) themselves warm, cook the food and scare their enemies away, such as tigers and bears. They might have kept the fire burning all winter because layers of ash almost six metres thick have been excavated.

Early people did wear clothes made from animal skins. They used sharpened stone     4     (tool) to cut up animals and remove their skins. Smaller scrapers     5     (use) to remove the fat and meat from the skin. Finally using needles     6     (make) of animal bones, they would sew the pieces together.

Early people also paid attention to their     7     (appear) and wore necklaces. Some of the necklace beads were made of animal bones but some were made of shells,     8     told us that all the fields around Zhoukoudian caves used to be part of     9     large shallow lake. They moved around, following the herds of animals. They didn’t grow their own crops, but picked fruit when it     10     (ripen) and hunted animals.