The Maritime Silk Road Museum of Guangdong (MSRMG) in Yangjiang, South China’s Guangdong Province, is China’s first museum to focus
“Unlike many other Chinese museums that contain
Ye Daoyang, the deputy director of MSRMG’s Underwater Archaeology and Technology Department, said that the Nanhai I will
Apart from the ship itself, the museum is home to many china
“The entire body of the Nanhai I
Discoveries made during the latest excavation of Pit No.1 at the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor, have allowed Chinese archaeologists to gain more insight into
According to a recent report archaeologists
“The Terracotta Warriors used a very special mechanism to connect pieces together. Such
Through excavations, Chinese researchers have established the types and arrangement of weapons
3 . Scientists have uncovered a series of 3,000-year-old items at Sanxingdui in China’s Sichuan province since 2019 and identified that the creators belonged to the Shu state, a highly developed civilization united by the neighboring state of Qin in 316 BC.
One of the major finds is a 0. 6-pound gold mask that may have been worn by a churchman during religious ceremonies. About 84% pure gold, the whole piece likely weighed close to one pound in its entirety, making it one of the heaviest gold masks from that time period discovered in China to date.
Other discoveries made at the site included two kinds of silk. Silk has played an important role in China’s history. As the researchers point out, the ancient people of Sanxingdui probably wore silk clothes during religious ceremonies. The silk was thought to serve as a means of communication between heaven, earth, man and god. Besides these religious ceremonies, silk was also used to make fine clothing, fans and wall hangings. Civilizations across the ancient world, from Rome, Persia, Egypt to Greece, similarly treasured Chinese silk. Traders were sent along the Silk Road to China to obtain the highly sought-after material. The presence of silk at Sanxingdui indicates that the ancient Shu state was one of the important origins of silk in ancient China.
Other important discoveries included bronze animals and carvings that bear distinct similarities to objects found along the Yangtze River and in Southeast Asia, suggesting that the Shu civilization engaged in broad exchanges with many areas.
Since 1929 when a local farmer accidentally found Sanxingdui, researchers have uncovered more than 50,000 ancient items at the site. For example, more than 1,000 items, including well-kept bronze masks, were unearthed in 1986 alone.
1. What can we say about the gold mask found at Sanxingdui?| A．It is not made of pure gold. | B．It is the heaviest ever uncovered. |
| C．It weighs close to one pound. | D．It might be used during festivals. |
| A．The Shu people used silk just for decoration. |
| B．The Shu people brought silk to the other countries. |
| C．The Shu state was far more developed than Europe. |
| D．The Shu state might be one of the earliest silk producers. |
| A．The discoverer of Sanxingdui. | B．The timeline of the discoveries at Sanxingdui. |
| C．The long history of Sanxingdui. | D．The achievements of Sanxingdui unearthing. |
| A．To promote an attraction in Sichuan province. | B．To report the important discoveries at Sanxingdui. |
| C．To explore the relationship between Shu and Qin. | D．To evaluate the ancient civilizations in the world. |
One of the best-preserved fossils (化石) yet discovered has revealed that the young dinosaur used the same technique as baby birds
Since the 1990s scientists
In modern birds such postures are critical for
5 . In 1879, an 8-year-old girl made a discovery that would rock our understanding of human history. On the walls of Altamira cave in northern Spain, she spotted amazing drawings of wild cows, painted in vivid red and black. More striking even than the images was their age: they were made thousands of years ago by modern humans’ supposedly primitive ancestors. Today, nearly 400 caves across Europe have been found decorated with hand stencils (模板), strange symbols and beautiful images of animals created by these skillful artists.
The discoveries led to the view that artistic talent arose after modern humans arrived in the region some 40,000 years ago, as part of a “cultural explosion” reflecting a flowering of the human mind. But more recent evidence has blown this idea out of the water. For a start, modern humans might not have been the first artists in Europe. What’s more, a collection of cave paintings emerging in Indonesia has dismissed the idea that Europe was the centre of creativity.
Local people have long known that the caves of the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia, contain many painted images. Modern humans are thought to have reached the region some 65,000 years ago, but nobody imagined the art could be very old because ancient paintings seem unlikely to survive in the environment of high temperatures. A team of researchers led by Maxime Aubert, now at Griffith University in Australia, upended this idea using a technique that is shifting our understanding of cave art. Using this technique in seven caves, they found a hand stencil was at least 39,900 years old, making it the oldest known hand stencil at that time.
This opened a floodgate to new discoveries in Indonesia. These included a hunting scene created at least 43,900 years ago, and by far the oldest descriptive artwork. “When we found that image, we were absolutely delighted, but when it turned out to be that old, we were almost jumping with joy,” says Adam Brumm, also at Griffith University.
1. What did the girl find in the cave?| A．Wild animals. | B．Ancient images. |
| C．Painting techniques. | D．Recording artists. |
| A．It can be traced back to Europe. |
| B．It reflected the flowering of human minds. |
| C．Modern humans led to its rise in Indonesia. |
| D．Modern humans might not have been real artists. |
| A．Proved. | B．Strengthened. | C．Overturned. | D．Overemphasized. |
| A．The amazing discoveries. | B．The researchers’ expectations. |
| C．The benefits of the technique. | D．The description of the cave art. |
The remains of an incomplete gold mask was among the 3,000-year-old items found at Sanxingdui, an archaeological site in Guanghan, Sichuan Province.
A large number of ancient artifacts
Items found at the site have helped scientists learn more about Sanxingdui and
7 . While DNA from animal bones or teeth can cast light on an individual species, environmental DNA enabled scientists to build a picture of a whole ecosystem.
A core of ice age sediment (沉积物) from northern Greenland has yielded the world’s oldest sequences of DNA. The 2 million-year-old DNA samples revealed the now largely lifeless polar region was once home to rich plant and animal life — including elephant-like mammals known as mastodons (乳齿象), reindeer, hares, lemmings, geese, birch trees and poplars, according to new research published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
The finding is the work of scientists in Denmark who were able to detect and restore environmental DNA — genetic material drop into the environment by all living organisms — in tiny amounts of sediment taken from the Copenhagen Formation, in the mouth of a strait in the Arctic Ocean in Greenland’s northernmost point, during a 2006 expedition.
They then compared the DNA pieces with libraries of DNA collected from both extinct and living animals, plants and microorganisms. The genetic material revealed dozens of other plants and creatures that had not been previously detected at the site based on what’s known from fossils and pollen records.
“The first thing that blew our mind when we’re looking at this data is obviously this mastodon and the presence of it that far north, which is quite far north of what we knew as its natural range,” said study co-author Mikkel Pedersen.
The mix of temperate (温带) and Arctic trees and animals suggested a previously unknown type of ecosystem that has no modern equivalent — one that could act as a genetic road map for how different species might adapt to a warmer climate, the researchers found.
Love Dalen, a professor at the Centre for Palaeogenetics at Stockholm University, said the finding “pushed the envelope” for the field of ancient DNA. “Also, the findings that several temperate species (such as relatives of spruce and mastodon) lived at such high latitudes are exceptionally interesting,” he added.
Further study of environmental DNA from this time period could help scientists understand how various organisms might adapt to climate change. “It’s a climate that we expect to face on Earth due to global warming and it gives us some idea of how nature will respond to increasing temperatures,” he explained.
1. What can we know about environmental DNA from the passage?| A．It makes it easier to understand individual species. |
| B．It is a collection of DNA from all kinds of living things. |
| C．It includes DNA of mammals living 2 million years ago. |
| D．It was first discovered in sediment from northern Greenland. |
| A．By looking at the data of mastodon. |
| B．By detecting DNA samples at the site. |
| C．By analyzing fossils and pollen records. |
| D．By comparing the newly-found DNA with existing ones. |
| A．broke the limit | B．laid a foundation |
| C．raised a new question | D．attracted wide attention |
| A．Northern Greenland faces species extinction |
| B．Oldest DNA reveals a solution to global warming |
| C．Northern Greenland faces increasing temperatures |
| D．Oldest DNA reveals a 2 million-year-old ecosystem |
8 . An individual from an unknown hominid (原始人类) species walked across a field of wet, volcanic ash in what is now East Africa around 3.66 million years ago, leaving behind a handful of footprints.
Those five ancient footprints, largely ignored since they were partly unearthed at Tanzania’s Laetoli site in 1976, show features of upright walking by a hominid, a new study finds. Researchers had previously considered them hard to classify, possibly produced by a young bear that took a few steps while standing. But the latest analysis refutes that suggestion.
McNutt, DeSilva, who started the new investigation as a Dartmouth College graduate student, and their colleagues fully dug out and cleaned the five Laetoli footprints in June 2019. Then they measured, photographed and 3-D scanned the ancient tracks. McNutt’s group focused on two footprints that were particularly well-preserved. Foot shapes, sizes, and walking characteristics of the Laetoli individual differed in various ways from those of other hominid individuals at the same site. The prints also didn’t match those from modern black bears and modern chimps (黑猩猩) walking upright.
The Laetoli individual possessed a wider, more chimplike foot than humans, the researchers say. Its big toe stuck out slightly from the second toe (脚趾), but not to the degree observed in chimps. On one step, the Laetoli individual’s left leg crossed in front of the right leg, leaving a left footprint directly in front of the previous track. People may cross-step in this way when trying to regain balance. And bears and chimps assume a relatively wide standing due to knee and other bone arrangements that prevent them from walking like the Laetoli individual and probably from cross-stepping, the scientists say.
Given that only two of the ancient footprints are complete enough to analyze thoroughly, the possibility that a chimp other than a hominid made the Laetoli footprints can’t be ruled out, says William Harcourt Smith, a scientist at Lehman College. But evidence of cross-stepping is enough to prove that it was a hominid track maker, he says.
1. What does the underlined word “refutes” in Paragraph 2 mean?| A．Objects to. | B．Supports. | C．Puts forward. | D．Criticizes. |
| A．They are less chimplike. | B．They have toes sticking out. |
| C．They show relatively wide standing. | D．They possess features of cross-stepping. |
| A．It’s convincing. | B．It’s challenging. |
| C．It’s confusing. | D．It’s conflicting. |
| A．To describe a major event. | B．To share a new discovery. |
| C．To introduce an unknown species. | D．To settle a huge disagreement. |
9 . Four tobacco plant seeds found in an ancient Utah fireplace suggest early Americans might have been using the plant 12,300 years ago. The finding makes the first known use of tobacco some 9,000 years earlier than previously thought. Researchers believe hunter-gatherers in the Great Salt Lake Desert may have smoked wads of the plant. Until now, the earliest evidence of tobacco use was a 3,300-year-old smoking pipe discovered in Alabama.
Scientists discovered the millimetre-wide seeds at the Wishbone site, an ancient camp in the desert in what is now northern Utah. There, they found the rest of an ancient hearth (壁炉地面) that was surrounded by bone and stone artefacts (手工艺品).
Their findings suggest the native American hunter-gatherers may have consumed the tobacco while cooking or toolmaking, the scientists say in a paper published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.
The tobacco plant is native to the Americas and contains the psychoactive addictive substance nicotine (尼古丁). Tobacco was widely cultivated and spread around the world following the arrival of Europeans in the Americas at the end of the 15th century.
“The tobacco seeds were the big surprise. They are incredibly small and rare to be preserved,” said Daron Duke, a researcher of the Far Western Anthropological Research Group. “Today, the Great Salt Lake Desert is a large dry lake. But 12,300 years ago, the camp would have been on a vast marshland. We know very little about their culture. The thing that interests me most about this find is the social window it gives to a simple activity in an undocumented past. My imagination runs wild.”
1. What does the finding suggest in paragraph 1?| A．Americans prefer using smoking pipes. |
| B．Tobacco plants can easily be found around America. |
| C．Tobacco plants were introduced into America 9,000 years ago. |
| D．Americans have a longer history of tobacco use than we thought. |
| A．Some animal meat. |
| B．A rich farming land. |
| C．Small tobacco seeds. |
| D．A modern hunting tool. |
| A．Europeans contributed to the spread of tobacco. |
| B．Americans started learning to smoke in the 1500s. |
| C．Tobacco was first planted in America by Europeans. |
| D．People extremely cared about the effects of smoking. |
| A．Amazing. | B．Threatening. | C．Alarming. | D．Satisfying. |
10 . Scientists have uncovered a fast-food eatery (餐馆) in the ancient Roman town of Pompeii. The remains help with the understanding of foods of Pompeii’s citizens.
About 80 such fast-food eateries have been found at Pompeii. But the latest find means this is the first time such a hot-food-drink eatery—known as a thermopolium—has been completely unearthed. Pompeii was destroyed by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Part of the fast-food counter was dug up in 2019 during work to shore up Pompeii’s ruins.
Since then, archaeologists (考古学家) have kept digging, uncovering a multi-sided-counter, with typical wide holes on its top, not unlike these for soup containers put into modern-day salad bars. The front of the counter included works of art showing ducks and chickens. The images brightened the eatery and also likely advertised food. Another image of a dog with a rope around its neck may remind people to keep pets tied up.
Early studies confirm “how the painted works represent, at least in part, the foods and drinks effectively sold inside”, said Valeria Amoretti, an anthropologist at Pompeii. Amoretti noted small pieces of duck bones were found in a food container. Remains of goats, pigs, and fish were also found. At the bottom of a wine container were remains of ground fava beans.
Massimo Osanna added, “We know what they were eating that day.” He was talking about the day of Pompeii’s destruction. The food remains are examples of “what’s popular with the common folk”. He added that wealthy Romans did not eat at such street-food businesses. Successful restaurant owners know that a good location is important for business. Osanna noted that right outside the eatery was a small square with a fountain. Another thermopolium was nearby.
1. What can we know about the fast-food eatery?| A．It was the only thermopolium at Pompeii. | B．It was dug up by accident at the beginning. |
| C．It once was one of the most popular eateries. | D．It was the first hot-food-drink eatery unearthed. |
| A．They helped to beautify the countertop area. | B．The volcanic eruption damaged the counter. |
| C．They were used to hold containers for hot food. | D．Food could be stored for a longer time with them. |
| A．Reminders. | B．Decorations. | C．Records. | D．Advertisements. |
| A．The eatery reveals the locals’ dining preference. | B．Ancient Romans liked eating at eateries. |
| C．Street-food business was rare in ancient Rome. | D．Food of Pompeii’s citizens was similar to today’s. |
