1 . MEXICO CITY, April 1（Xinhua）——Discoveries at the legendary Sanxingdui ruins in southwest China show that the region’s ancient Shu state civilization shared similarities with the Maya, according to the director of the Chichen Itza archaeological site, Marco Antonio Santos.

The Sanxingdui ruins, located in the city of Guanghan, about 60 kilometers from Chengdu, belonged to the Shu Kingdom that existed at least 4,800 years ago and lasted more than 2,000 years. China announced on March 20 that archaeologists uncovered gold, ivory and jade objects dating back about 3,000 years in six sacrificial pits.

Santos told Xinhua that the bronze-made remains of trees buried at the ruins of the Shu Kingdom recall the Maya’s sacred ceiba tree, which symbolized the union of heaven, earth and the underworld for the civilization that flourished in Mesoamerica. “They are very important similarities.” said Santos, stressing that “the representations of trees in both cultures provide us with a symbolism that is very similar”.

“One notable feature of the recent discoveries at Sanxingdui was the interdisciplinary（跨学科的）work and technology applied by teams of Chinese archaeologists.” said Santos. “The technology allowed the unearthing of artifacts as fragile as silk remains, which other types of less careful excavation methods would not have been able to manage.” he said. “Cooperation between Chinese and Mexican archaeologists could benefit projects in the Maya world, where the rainy climate and humidity are problematic for the conservation of objects.” said Santos.

“Every time our cultural knowledge increases, regardless of whether we speak one language or another, what it shows us is that we continue to be sister cultures, and, therefore, the exchange of such knowledge is fundamental.” said Santos.

3 . It’s hard to overstate just how much Writer’s Digest has survived to make it to its centennial. The Great Depression. World War II. The many wars and societal revolutions of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. The technological revolution and the creation of the internet. The shift from being family-owned business to a corporation with investors. And most recently, global pandemic(流行病).

It is because WD survived all that, that I view this anniversary issue as a love letter to every single person who has contributed to keeping WD alive over these amazing, and tough, and change-filled 100 years. Thank you to the Rosenthal family for starting a magazine—a community—like this. To the publishers, editors, and all the other behind--the-scenes folks who made sure each issue over the many decades was the best it could be, thank you for your hard work and long hours. To the absolutely incomparable list of writers who shared their wisdom, insights, and encouragement: This magazine was made better by your contributions.

But most of all, this is a love letter to our readers. You give the magazine purpose and the motivation to keep going. Without you, WD wouldn’t exist, so on behalf of all the current and former WD staffers, we offer our sincerest thanks.

You’ll see a collection of new columns coming in 2021. We are thrilled to have Bryan Washington, award-winning author of the short story collection Lot and the new novel Memorial, as our first guest columnist. The WD team started planning this issue more than a year ago and putting it together has been a joy. We hope you find as much pleasure and inspiration in reading it as we found in creating it. See you in year 101.

4 . In the world of Chinese archaeology (考古学), a sign of a dig's importance is the sight of Zhou Mingsheng at work. A field technician who has worked at archaeological sites all around China. Master Zhou is credited with the gentlest touch in his profession. Born into a farming family, he is a “national-level craftsman” with a talent for using simple tools to get relics (遗物) that would crumble in other hands, says his current boss, Wang Xu, director of an archaeological site at Shuanghuaishu, a Neolithic (新石器时代的) settlement near the Yellow River in the central province of Henan.

It is not beauty that attracts visitors to Shuanghuaishu. At 5, 300 years old, the settlement is the work of a culture too simple to have left behind many buried treasures. The single most precious find, to date, is a finger-length sculpture of a silkworm. Nor is the setting lovely: an area surrounded by deafening insects, between a highway and two power stations. Rather, the site's importance is historical. For since the birth of Chinese archaeology in the 1920s, it has been inseparable from claims that China has the oldest unbroken civilisation on Earth.

Leading archaeologists say that the site has the right combination of location, age and distinctive cultural elements to be the capital of an early Chinese kingdom. That would make it a bridge between China's written history and the era of the Yellow Emperor, who is said to rule over these central plains almost 5,000 years ago, though many foreign scholars doubt his existence. Chinese media call the site proof of China's 5,000 years of history.

Foreigners complain about a lack of written records, Mr Wang notes. Perhaps they are missing symbols that will one day be understood, for instance in patterned pottery. Outsiders "can't keep using Western standards to apply to Chinese ruins," he argues.

5 . In the magnificent range of mountains of northern California, 42 radio telescopes point towards the stars, scanning for signs of life. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence （SETI） Institute has been listening for a signal here since it was founded in 1984. Jill Tarter, its co — founder, says the programmed aim is not just to communicate with remote civilisations. It is also to remind human beings of its own modest, fragile （脆弱的）place in the universe. Thus, for the first time, SETI is cocking its ear towards Earth to look for a signal that can be sent into space to represent the species.

Felipe Perez Santiago, a Mexican musician and composer, has an idea of what might work.Since songs, like the human voices, are common to all languages and nations, he and Ms. Tarter have designed the “Earthling Project”-a call to people everywhere to upload extracts （精华）of song that he plans to melt into a collective human chorus. An initial composition will be launched into space this summer, recorded on a virtually indestructible disk. Future plans and dreams include an eventual landing on Mars.

Human music has been sent to the heavens in 1977. Distant beings can in theory already enjoy Peruvian panpipes, a Navajo chant, Bach, Beethoven and more. But no previous offering, and perhaps no composition undertaken anywhere, has tried to encompass the entire diversity of human song.

Mr. Santiago says he is thrilled about bringing together contributors from around the globe. Unlike other recordings sent into space, says Mr. Santiago, “Everyone's invited. You don't have to be one of the main composers of our history like Beethoven, just someone singing in their shower.” Download the “Earthling Project" app, sing up to three songs of 30 seconds each, and your voice will be sent into the sky.

8 . Large oceangoing vessels like oil tankers and cruise ships produce noise that travels long distances underwater. That audio pollution can disturb the sounds that marine mammals, fish and other animals use to communicate.

Emily Carter, a sensory ecologist from University of Exeter wondered whether ship noise might also be harmful to animals that don’t rely on sound for communication. For example, young shore crabs that use camouflage (伪装) to hide from predators. “So they can actually change their color to match whatever it is that they’re sitting on, basically to make it harder for predators to find them.” Carter explained.

She suspected that stress from ship noise might affect the change process. To find out, she and her colleagues collected shore crabs with dark shells and brought them back to the lab. They placed the crabs in tanks full of white small stones. An underwater speaker in each tank played quiet natural sounds at all times. One group of crabs also heard loud natural sounds every hour. But another group was subjected to hourly recordings of large ships.

Carter says shorebirds, which eat the crabs, can see UV light, so she used ultraviolet (紫外线) photography to determine how well the crabs blended into their new habitat over time.

“Through the eyes of a shorebird — so through bird’s perspective — were they camouflaged? Weren’t they camouflaged? How obvious would they be?”

After eight weeks, the crabs that heard only natural sounds had become much lighter and were well camouflaged. But the ones that were exposed to the ship noise didn’t change color as much. And then, as a result, they weren’t as camouflaged at the end of the experiment. So they’d be much more manifest to predator.

Carter says the stress caused by ship noise may affect hormones that regulate color change in crabs or destroy the energy needed to make the change efficiently. The research not only puts a spotlight on the unintended consequences of noise pollution, but is a reminder that too much stress isn’t just bad for people — it can also be deadly to wildlife that needs some peace and quiet.

9 . Norway aims to discover new resources beneath the sea, but its push into mining has raised environmental concerms.

Norway could license companies for deep-sea mining as early as 2023. That could place it among the first countries to harvest seabed metals. Copper, zinc and other metals are in high demand for electric vehicle batteries, wind turbines and solar energy centers. However, that could also place Norway on the front line of controversies over the environmental risks of mining the world’s unexplored seabeds.

Norway recently announced it was carrying out an environmental study needed to start mineral exploration and mining. Once that is completed, the govemment plans to have public comments on its environmental study and on a proposal to open areas for exploration and production by the end of 2022.

The demand for minerals is being driven by what are often called “clean” technologies. But the process of getting those minerals from the seabed could cause environmental problems.

Environmentalists including Britain’s David Attenborough have called for a temporary (暂时的) stop to deepseabed mining until more is known about how it affects sea life. The environmental group Greenpeace called for a total ban in a recent report. In another report, the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, known as the Ocean Panel, also called for greater knowledge about the effects of deep-sea mining. The Ocean Panel is cochaired by Norway and has 14 member states that want to shape policy on the world’s oceans.

Norway is known as a major oil producer. But, the country of 5. 4 million people wants to find something to replace its top industry that is better for the environment and can grow in the future.

The move toward deep-sea mining follows three years of expeditions(探险). The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, which carried out the work, said it found copper, zinc, cobalt, gold and silver. The expeditions also discovered large armounts of lithium and the rare earth metal scandium used in electronics and metal mixtures.

10 . At every turn in the Netherlands, the future of sustainable(可持续的) agriculture is taking shape—not in the meeting rooms of big companies but on thousands of modest family farms.

You can see it vividly on the farm run by Ted Duijvestijn and his brothers. At the Duijvestjns' 36-acre greenhouse near the old city of Delf, visitors wander among the deep green tomato plants, 20 feet tall. Rooted not in soil but in materials made from leaves and stalks, the plants are heavy with tomatoes—15 varieties in all—to suit the taste of the most demanding customers.

Since 2004, the Duijvestijns have declared resource independence on every front. The farm produces all of its own energy and fertilizer and even some of the packaging materials necessary for the crop's distribution and sale. The growing environment is kept at perfect temperatures year-round by geothermal heat(地热) that can be found under at least half of the Netherlands. Only rainwater is used for irrigation. Each kilogram of tomatoes from their plants requires less than 15 kilograms of water, compared with 61 kilograms for plants in open fields. Once each year the entire crop is regrown from seeds, and the old plants are processed to make packaging materials. The few pests that manage to enter the greenhouse are greeted by an army of fierce insects that shows no interest in tomatoes. The nutrition in the soil can be improved by growing plants that work with certain bacteria to produce their own fertilizer. In short. it's an entirely self-contained food system.

“Look at the island of Bali in Indonesia!” Ted explains. “For at least a thousand years, its farmers have raised ducks and fish within the same rice field. It's irrigated by the canal systems sculpted by human hands along mountains. They are our model.”