New discoveries suggest that trade between Europe and Asia along the Silk Road probably began many centuries earlier than once thought. The findings add a fascinating new page to the epic(史诗) of the Silk Road, which spread far and wide in no time.
The latest and most surprising discovery is pieces of silk found in the hair of an Egyptian mummy(木乃伊) from about l,000 BC, long before regular traffic on the Silk Road and at least one thousand years before silk was previously thought to be used in Egypt. Other researches may extend human activity along this road back even further, perhaps a million years to the moving of human ancestors into eastern Asia.
The official origin of East-West trade along the road is usually placed in the late 2nd century BC when an agent of the Chinese Emperor Wu-di returned from a dangerous secret task across the desert into the remote high country of Central Asia. The agent, Zhang Qian, traveled as far as Afghanistan and brought back knowledge of even more distant lands such as Persia, Syria and a place known as Lijien, perhaps Rome. Historians(历史学家) have called this one of the most important journeys in ancient times. His journey opened the way for what have been thought to be the first indirect touches between the ancient world’s two super-powers, China and Rome. Chinese silk, first traded to Central Asia for war horses, was soon finding its way to the markets of Rome through a network of businessmen.
But the new discoveries show that Chinese silk apparently existed in the West long before the Han emperor started to organize trade over the Silk Road. The research could change thinking about the early history of world trade and provide comprehension into the mystery(谜) of just how and when Europe first realized the glorious culture at the other end of Eurasia.
| Title: New Discovery of the Silk Road | |
| Introduction | New findings about the |
| Discovery | ☆The silk thread found in the hair of an Egyptian mummy from about 1,000 BC makes all feel greatly ☆The discovery suggests the trade along the Silk Road may |
| Zhang Qian’s | ☆Being accepted as official ☆Opening the way for the first ☆ ☆Making Chinese silk |
| Summary | ☆Show the ☆Change thinking about the early history of word trade. ☆Help to solve the puzzle of Europeans’ first realizing |
相似题推荐
The Internet has opened up a whole new online world for us to meet, chat and go where we’ve never been before.
But just as in face to face communication, there are some rules of behavior that should be followed when on line.
For anything you’re about to send: ask yourself, “Would I say this to the person’s face? If the answer is no, rewrite and reread.
If someone in the chat room is rude to you, your instinct (本能 ) is to fire back in the same manner. But try not to do so.
A. Everyone was new to the network once.
B. If you do decide to tell someone about a mistake, point it out politely.
C. It’s unusual that there are some people who speak rudely or make mistakes online.
D. The basic rule is simple: treat others in the same way you would want to be treated.
E. You should either ignore the person, or use your chat software to block their messages.
F. When you send short messages to a person online, you must say something beautiful to hear.
G. Repeat the process till you feel sure that you’d feel comfortable saying the words to the person’s face.
【推荐2】Many people think a telephone is a necessity. But I think it is a pest (有害的事物) and a time waste. Very often you find it impossible to escape from it. If you have a telephone in your own house, you will admit that it tends to ring when you least want it to ring; when you are asleep, or in the middle of a meal or a conversation or when you are just going out, or when you are in your bath. Are you strong-minded enough to ignore it? You are not. You think there may be some important news or message for you. I can assure you that if a message is really important it will reach you sooner or later. Have you ever rushed crippling from the bath, or chewing from the table, or dazed from the bed, only to be told that you are a wrong number?
But you will say, you need not have your name printed in the telephone directory, and you can have a telephone which is only usable for outgoing calls. Besides, you will say, isn’t it important to have a telephone in case of sudden emergency—illness, accident, or fire? Of course, you are right, but here in a thickly populated country like England one is seldom far from a telephone in case of dreadful necessity.
I think perhaps I had better try to justify (证明是有理的) myself by trying to prove that what I like is good. I admit that in different circumstances—if I were a wealthy and powerful businessperson, for instance, or badly ill and had to lie in bed, I might find a telephone a necessity. But then if I were a taxi-driver I should find a car as necessity. Let me put it another way: there are two things for which the English seem to show particular talent: one is mechanical invention, the other literature. My own business happens to be with the use of words but I see I must now stop using them, for I have had just been handed a slip of paper to say that somebody is waiting to speak to me on the telephone. I think I had better answer it. After all, one never knows, it may be something important.
Title: The | ||
Different | Many people | It is |
The author | It can | |
Not everyone, | ||
I don’t need it because my job is writing. | ||
It always seems to ring when one is doing something else or doesn’t want it to ring. | ||
Almost | ||
One | ||
【推荐3】“HELL is a city much like London,” said Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1819. Modern academics agree. Last year Dutch researchers showed that city dwellers (居民) have a 21% higher risk of suffering from anxiety disorders than do their calmer rural countrymen, and a 39% higher risk of suffering from mood disorders. But exactly how the inner workings of the urban and rural minds cause this difference has remained unclear—until now. A study just published in Nature by Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg of the University of Heidelberg and his colleagues has used a scanning technique called functional magnetic-resonance imaging (机能性磁共振成像，简称fMRI) to examine the brains of city dwellers and countrymen when they are under stress.
In Dr Meyer-Lindenberg’s first experiment, participants lying with their heads in a scanner took maths tests that they were bound to fail (the researchers had designed success rates to be just 25-40%). To make the experience still more embarrassing, the team provided negative feedback through headphones, all the while checking participants for indications of stress, such as high blood pressure.
The city people’s general mental health did not differ from that of the rural countrymen. However, their brains dealt with the stress caused by the experimenters in different ways. These differences were noticeable in two regions: the amygdalas (杏仁核) and the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (前扣带皮层，简称pACC).
People living in the countryside had the lowest levels of activity in their amygdalas. Those living in towns had higher levels. City dwellers had the highest. In the case of the pACC, however, what mattered was not where someone was living now, but where he or she was brought up. The more urban a person’s childhood, the more active his pACC, regardless of where he was dwelling at the time of the experiment.
The amygdalas thus seem to respond to the here-and-now while the pACC is programmed early on, and does not react in the same, flexible way as the amygdalas. Second-to-second changes in its activity might, though, be expected to be connected with changes in the amygdalas, because of its role in regulating them. fMRI allows such connections to be measured.
In the cases of those brought up in the countryside, regardless of where they now live, the connections were as expected. For those brought up in cities, however, these connections broke down. The regulatory mechanism of the native urbanite, in other words, seems to be out of order.
Dr Meyer-Lindenberg and his team conducted several more experiments to check their findings. They asked participants to complete more maths tests—and also tests in which they were mentally ups and downs—while investigators scolded them about their performance. The results matched those of the first test. They also studied another group of volunteers, who were given stress-free tasks to complete. These experiments showed no activity in either the amygdalas or the pACC, suggesting that the earlier results were indeed the result of social stress rather than mental effort.
As is usually the case in studies of this sort, the sample size was small and the result showed an association, rather than a definite, causal relationship. That association is, nevertheless, interesting. Living in cities brings many benefits, but Dr Meyer-Lindenberg’s work suggests that Shelley and his fellow Romantics had at least half a point.
Title: Do urban brains behave differently from rural ones?
Purpose of the research | The research was conducted to explain why city dwellers are more likely to | |
Process of the research | Design of the research | The researchers made the participants take difficult maths tests and provided negative feedback, which served as the source of Meanwhile the researchers scanned their brains and got indications by a scanning technique called fMRI . |
Findings of the research | The activity level in the amygdalas is highest in city dwellers, The activity level of a person’s pACC, regulating the amygdalas, is The association between the amygdalas and the pACC depends on a person’s living | |
Several more experiments were carried out with | ||
Conclusion of the research | It is the social stress rather than mental effort that leads to mental disorders, so living in cities also brings some | |
