On Feb 8, 2001, workers at a construction site in Jinsha village, Chengdu, found many pieces of ivory and jade and the hidden ruins of the capital of the ancient Shu Kingdom were brought     1    light by archaeologists. Among the over 5,000 precious relics     2    (excavate)from the ruins, the most eye-catching is the Golden Sun Bird. It is made from delicate gold foil(箔), just one     3    (five)of a millimeter thick. It has two sections: The center is a sun pattern with 12 rays     4    (indicate)the rotation(自转)of the sun and around the sun are four birds flying anticlockwise. According to archaeologists, the four birds symbolize four seasons, while the 12 rays     5    (mean)to represent 12 months of the year. Hence, it could be inferred that over 3000 years ago ancient Shu people possessed     6     good knowledge of astronomy and nature. Furthermore, this masterpiece is believed to be an illustration of an ancient Chinese myth recorded in the classic The Legends of Mountains and Seas,     7     was written about 2,500 years ago. According to the book, ancient people believed the sun was carried up     8    down by birds daily.

In 2005, the pattern was     9    (successful)selected as the symbol of China’s cultural heritage to showcase the ancient Chinese people’s     10    ( wise)and aspirations.

More than 3,000 stone tools have been unearthed during the latest work at the Piluo site, a large-scale Paleolithic site     1     can date back to more than 200,000 years ago in Daocheng county, Southwest China’s Sichuan Province, reported by the Sichuan TV on Monday.

The Piluo site,     2     (locate) at the southeastern foothills of the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau at an altitude of about 3,750 meters,     3     (reveal) more than 15,000 stone artifacts, including hand axes (斧头) and thin-blade axes, since the beginning of the archaeological excavations (考古挖掘) in April 2021.

The latest stage, kicking off in July, was the third of its kind and covered about 150 square meters,     4     (provide) archaeologists with crucial materials to comprehend the stratigraphic accumulation, artifact distribution and stone tool making across     5     (difference) regions of the site.

According to     6     same report, during this year’s excavation, archaeologists found out that some areas had layers (层) which were     7     (little) than a meter thick, while others had layers as thick as seven to eight meters. This variability allowed them     8     (construct) a time framework spanning from 200,000 years ago to tens of thousands of years ago.

The     9     (discovery) at Piluo site have been listed     10     one of China’s top 10 archaeological revelations of 2021, recognized by the National Cultural Heritage Administration.

Foreign guests from     1     (participate) countries of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) spoke highly     2     Chinese cultural relics, after they     3     (pay) a visit to the Sanxingdui Museum in Sichuan Province on Sunday. The guests,     4     are also representatives of the first Silk Road Global News Awards winners, agreed on promoting     5     (culture) exchanges in future cooperation.     6     (discover) in the late 1920s, the Sanxingdui site was considered as the     7     (large) ancient kingdom site from the pre-Qin period in Southwest China. In 1986 and 2019,     8     total of eight sacrificial pits were discovered at Sanxingdui. They held     9     (near) 20,000 precious cultural relics     10     they made the site one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in modern times.

A skull of the dinosaur, named Guemesia ochoai, was discovered in Argentina. Researchers said it likely belongs to a meat-eating, or carnivorous, group of dinosaurs     1     (call) abelisaurs. These dinosaurs walked on two legs and had very short arms, even     2     (short) than those of North America’s Tyrannosaurus rex. The short arms may have forced Guemesia     3     (depend) more on its powerful skull and jaws.

“Guemesia is so different     4     other meat-eating dinosaurs, which allows us to understand that we’re dealing with a     5     (total) new species,” said Agnolin Federico, the lead writer of a study on the dinosaur that was published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

The animals existed for a few million years before     6     asteroid (小行星) hit what is now Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. That event, about 66 millions years ago, led to a series of     7     (disaster) that killed all the dinosaurs and many other animals. In total, about 75 percent of Earth’s species     8     (destroy) as a result of the asteroid.

Scientists believe abelisaurs lived on what is now Africa, South America and India. Several abelisaurs have been dug up in Argentina in the past but almost all of them were in southern Patagonia, far from the site     9     Guemesia was found.

Guemesia takes its name from Argentine independence hero Martin Miguel de Guemes and Javier Ochoa, a museum worker who made the     10     (discover).

A water system from more than 3,600 years ago     1     (discover) in Central China’s Henan province so far. This find will improve people’s understanding of the city design back then. According to local archaeologists (考古学家), one of the sections was built on a natural river channel, while the remaining two     2     (be) entirely artificial. About 540 meters of ditches (沟) were unearthed，with a     3     (wide) of about 12 meters at the widest point, and a depth of roughly four meters at     4     (it) deepest point. Ruins of the city covered about 25 square kilometers, and it is believed to be a former Shang capital     5     (construct) by Emperor Tang, the first emperor of the Shang Dynasty.

In one of the ditch sections, archaeologists found artificial open channels and stone facilities for water diversion,    6     (indicate) that in the early Shang Dynasty, there had already been complex functional design of the water system.    7     (remain) of handicraft workshops for copper (铜) casting and making bone objects were also found. The ditches were connected with ponds and gardens in the northern parts of the city,    8     means that water in the system supplied not only production and life in the city, but was also used for landscaping of the city.

Discovery of this water system enhanced our understanding of     9     layout of the ancient city, which is     10     great significance for in-depth study of city planning and functional zones division in the early Shang Dynasty capital.

A stone tablet(牌匾)    1    (date) back to the year 1693, which falls within the Qing Dynasty(1644—1911), was discovered in Daming County, north China’s Hebei Province, said local authorities.

The tablet,    2     (find) in Jindong Village, measures 1.4 meters high, 0.61 meters wide, and 0.14 meters thick. Made of bluestone, it has     3     total of 307 characters on it.

The inscription(碑文)recorded the process of building the King of Medicine Temple in the county during the reign of Emperor Kangxi and     4     (describe) the grand occasions of temple fairs and humanistic stories at that time.

According to the inscription, after the     5     (complete) of the temple, the local medicine expert meeting     6    (organize) here on April 28 in most years of the Qing Dynasty, during     7     all kinds of talented people performed, and the vocal music lasted for more than ten days, said Wang Jianping, an expert in literature and history of the county.

This stone tablet is     8     (relative) well preserved with clear characters, which is significant for studying cultural and economic     9    (activity) in the southern part of Hebei during the Qing Dynasty. It also provides evidence     10     the researchers about the development of local pharmacies(制药), Wang said.

More than 500 items were discovered at Sanxingdui Ruins site in southwest China’s Sichuan Province. These items, including remains of a gold mask,     1    (dig) in one of China’s     2    (significant) excavations(n. 发掘) ever.

Sanxingdui is believed to have sat at the heart of the Shu state,     3     historians know relatively little about due to rare     4    (write) records.     5    (discovery) made at the site date from the 12th and 11th centuries BC, and many of the items are now on show at an on-site museum. The site has changed experts understanding of     6     civilization developed in ancient China.

Archaeologists(考古学家) realized they had just got     7     excellent chance to study ancient culture     8    (date) back between 3,000 and 5,000 years.     9     particular, evidence of a unique Shu culture suggests that the kingdom     10    (develop) independently of neighboring societies in the Yellow River Valley, which was traditionally considered to be the cradle(摇篮) of Chinese civilization.

On the north bank of Fuxian Lake in Chengjiang County, Yunnan Province sits a straw-hat-shaped mountain     1     (call) Maotian Mountain,     2     a 512-hectare site is praised as a “world-class treasure trove of fossils” by the international scientific community. On July 1,1984, young paleontologists in China discovered a fossil of the arthropod (节肢动物化石) with a long tail in Maotian Mountain. “    3     we had studied in China were just shell of fossils. The arthropods, lifelike fossils with legs, which belonged to fossils of soft-bodied animals, are     4     game changer in the research of China’s paleontology (古生物学)”, Hou Xianguang, a paleontologist said.

Scientists have obtained a large number of research results on Chengjiang Fossil Site. The reason why Chengjiang fauna (动物群) is     5     great significance is that it is closely related to the emergence of the animal tree of life.

Up to now, more than 20 phyla and more than 280 species     6     (record)in the Chengjiang Fossil Site, of which, 80% are new species. On July 1, 2012, the Chengjiang Fossil Site     7     (be) inscribed on the World Heritage List by UNESCO,     8     (become) China’ s first World Heritage Site for paleontological fossils.

The UNESCO evaluation says the Chengjiang Fossil Site is one of the     9     (early) records of a complex marine ecosystem of the early Cambrian communities. The property displays excellent quality of fossil     10     (preserve). It presents an exceptional record of the rapid diversification of life on Earth during the early Cambrian period.