Music is in the corners of everyday life. It is said to be beneficial
There are many ways to make music. For example, if you blow into bamboos or shells,
Now music can be found in every known culture, and even the most distant groups have a certain form of music.
2 . While most people don’t think much about garbage, trash (垃圾) is beloved by archaeologist (考古学家). A favorite site for study is a midden (贝丘), an old trash or garbage heap (堆). A midden might contain damaged stone or metal items, which tell us about the weapons and tools people used. Softer materials such as wood, cloth, leather, and baskets are sometimes preserved. They may tell us what people wore, how they carried things, or the kind of toys used by children. Historic household trash heaps often contain broken pottery pieces and even traces of the food they once held.
Most people no longer keep a trash heap by the kitchen door. Instead, garbage is hauled off to landfills (垃圾填埋池). These landfills can still attract archaeologists. The Garbage Project collected information from landfills from 1987 to 1995. Student archaeologists measured tons of garbage from 15 landfills across the United States and Canada. This garbology, the study of garbage, research led to a better understanding of how people have changed what they consume during this period of time. The findings also led to a better awareness of how quickly various items rot. This helped with city planning for garbage disposal and recycling efforts.
Some found objects that may clearly be of archaeological interest, such as arrowheads and spear points. It is typically against the law to collect these on public lands, so they should be left in place. If you take a photo and note the location, you can notify the state archaeologist or the government branch that is in charge of the land, such as the National Park Service or the Bureau of Land Management.
Everyone is responsible for protecting archaeological resources, which is a concept known as “archaeological stewardship.” Sometimes this even means protecting old garbage.
1. Why is old trash important according to archaeologists?| A．It can teach us about the past. |
| B．It might help us locate metal mines. |
| C．It can contribute to modern material industry. |
| D．It might encourage us to protect our environment. |
| A．They conducted a study on modern trash. |
| B．They recycled waste from some landfills. |
| C．They offered some creative city planning ideas. |
| D．They compared ancient trash heaps with modern landfills. |
| A．Donate it to public collections. |
| B．Take it to proper authorities. |
| C．Leave it in a safe place. |
| D．Mark the place of it. |
| A．Past or Future? | B．Trash or Treasure? |
| C．Protection of Damage? | D．Problem or Resource? |
3 . Discoveries at the famous Sanxingdui ruins in Southwest China show that the region’s ancient Shu Kingdom Civilization shared similarities with the Maya.
The Sanxingdui ruins belonged to the Shu Kingdom that existed at least 4,800 years ago and lasted more than 2,000 years, while the Mayan civilization built its city-states around 200 AD.
The bronze-made remains of tress unearthed at the ruins of the Shu Kingdom resemble the sacred ceiba tree, which symbolized the union of heaven, earth and the underworld in the Mayan civilization. “They are very important similarities,” says Santos, a Mexican archaeologist (考古学家) stressing that “the representations of tress in both cultures provide a symbolism that is very similar”.
The findings at the Sanxingdui ruins, considered one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century, also show a new aspect of Bronze Age culture, indicating the ancient civilization already had technologies that were thought to have been developed much later.
While the lime span between the Shu kingdom and the Mayan culture is great, the findings highlight the closeness between the two civilizations. They developed in areas with comparable climates and reflected their worldview through related symbols. “In the end, man is still man, independent of time and space. What we have is that, at this latitude (纬度), both the Shu people and the Mayans looked at the same sky and had the same stars on the horizon,” the expert says.
One notable feature of the recent discoveries at Sanxingdui was the cross-subject work and technology applied by teams of Chinese archaeologists, which allowed the unearthing of artifacts as fragile as silk remains, which other types of less careful digging methods would not have been able to register.
Cooperation between Chinese and Mexican archaeologists could benefit projects in the Mayan world, where the rainy climate and humidity are problematic for the conservation of ruins.
“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,” says Santos.
1. What is a similarity between the Shu Kingdom and Maya civilization?| A．Their starting time. |
| B．Their historical origins. |
| C．Their cultural symbols. |
| D．Their ceremony traditions. |
| A．silk was a common clothing material then |
| B．some technologies were developed much earlier |
| C．the Bronze Age started earlier than previously assumed |
| D．the Shu Kingdom and the Mayan world had close contact |
| A．Damp weather. | B．Positioning of ruins. |
| C．High latitude. | D．Language barriers. |
| A．The future of the China-Mexico cooperation. |
| B．The benefits of speaking a different language. |
| C．The importance of the exchange of cultural knowledge. |
| D．The increasing sisterhood in culture between China and Mexico. |
4 . A hungry badger (獾) searching for food seems to have uncovered what turned out to be hundreds of Roman coins in a Spanish cave, according to a new study.
Archaeologists (考古学家) first discovered several coins laying on the ground at the entrance to a small cave in the woodlands outside Grado in northern Spain in April 2021. The researchers suspect that the coins were unearthed by a badger from a nearby den (兽窝) after a heavy snow which made it harder for animals to find food. The hungry badger probably got into the cave looking for food but came across the coins instead.
After fully exploring the cave, researchers collected 209 coins dating to between the third and fifth centuries A.D. “To date, this is the largest amount of Roman coins found in n cave in northern Spain,” the researchers wrote in their paper. They described the discovery as an “exceptional find”.
In the late 1930s, a collection of 14 gold Roman coins, known as the Chapipi treasure, was also found in the same woodlands. The researchers believe that local people may have buried their coins to keep them safe during a period of intense political instability in the region. The most recent coin in the newly-discovered Grado collection dates to A.D. 430, which was after the Suebi—a group of Germanic people originally from modern-day Germany and the Czech Republic—pushed the Romans out of Spain in A.D. 409, according to El Pais.
The researchers suspect that the newly-discovered coins are part of a vaster treasure and will return to the cave for further exploration to look for more coins and evidence that the cave may also have been the home of displaced Roman people. “We want to know if it was a one-off hiding place, or if there was a group of humans living there,” lead researcher Alfonso Fanjul Peraza told El Pais.
1. Where did the researchers find the first few coins in 2021?| A．Near a Spanish cave. | B．On a Spanish playground. |
| C．At the entrance to a woodland. | D．In a badger’s den. |
| A．It’s dangerous. | B．It’s timely. | C．It’s meaningless. | D．It’s unusual. |
| A．The Romans. | B．The coins. | C．The woodlands. | D．The researchers. |
| A．More information may be revealed by the coins. |
| B．The ancient Roman people had a unique lifestyle. |
| C．The researchers doubt the former guess of the coins. |
| D．The researchers will return the coins to the Roman people. |
ZHENGZHOU—Pingdingshan University in Central China’s Henan province has found more than1,000 ceramic (陶瓷) balls used in a golf-like ball game in ancient China. The university make the
The relics are related to an ancient game called “Chuiwan” in Chinese,
Most of the balls arc about 5 centimeters in diameter. The relics date back to as early as the Tang Dynasty,
“This is the first time that China
Come and see the Terracotta Army: more than 8,000 statues were made in the third century BCE
The first emperor of China, Qin Shihuang, is remembered for the many things he did during his rule.
Today, the soldiers in Xi’an’s terracotta museum are light brown, but they weren’t always this color. They began as an army of red, blue, yellow, green, white, and purple.
New
8 . 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. |
9 . Six “sacrificial pits（祭祀坑）”. dating back 3,200to 4,000 years. were newly discovered in Sanxingdui Ruins site in Guanghan. Southwest China's Sichuan province. Over 500 artifacts. including gold masks. bronze wares. ivories. jades. and textiles. were unearthed from the site.
Sanxingdui site. first found in 1929. is generally considered as one of the most important archaeological（考古）sites along the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. However. the work of excavation on the site only began in 1986. when two pits—widely believed for sacrificial ceremonies—-were accidentally discovered.
Investigation in the area around No.1 and 2 pits was relaunched in October 2019. and No. 3 pit was found in December 2019. according to Lei Yu. a researcher of Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute who heads the ongoing excavation. Thirty four research universities and research institutes have cooperated in this project. He said the new discoveries will help to better understand many unexplained findings in 1986. More excavation followed institutes have cooperated in this project. He said the new discoveries will help to better understand many unexplained findings in 1986. More excavation followed in March 2020, and five more pits were found last year. And detailed research began in October. Excavation capsules with hi-tech equipment were set up in the pits in order to prevent the site from further damage.
Sanxingdui site covers an area of 12 square kilometers, and its core zone of an ancient city covers nearly 4 square kilometers. According to the National Cultural Heritage Administration, studies of Sanxingdui site will become a crucial project in an ongoing program Archaeology China, which tries to explain the origins of Chinese civilization and how diverse cultures communicate and come together.
1. How did archaeologists protect the Sanxingdui site?| A．By dividing the task of excavation into several parts. |
| B．By cooperating with research universities and institutes. |
| C．By conducting more experiments around the site. |
| D．By using excavation capsule armed with hi-tech equipment. |
| A．The size of the core zone is about 1/3 of Sanxingdui site. |
| B．The discovery of Sanxingdui site only began in 2019. |
| C．There are 6 sacrificial pits discovered in Sanxingdui site in all. |
| D．All sacrificial sites were discovered in the meantime. |
| A．Sanxingdui discoveries tell us more about ancient China. |
| B．Sanxingdui Site needed to be protected. |
| C．Sacrificial pits were unearthed in Sanxingdui Site. |
| D．Hi-tech helped to exploreSanxingdui Site. |
10 . The Sanxingdui Ruins site is one of the greatest archaeological (考古学的) discoveries of the 20th century in the world. It is located near the Yazihe River at Guanghan City, Sichuan Province and as Sichuan is where the ancient state of Shu (蜀国) was located, it is believed that Sanxingdui was the capital of the ancient “Shu culture”.
The site was originally discovered in the 1920s by a farmer. A huge surprise came in 1986 when two sacrificial pits (祭祀坑) filled with more than 1,000 cultural relics, including gold masks, bronze sacred trees, bronze ware, jade ware and ivory, were discovered by local workers excavating (挖掘) clay for bricks.
On March 20, 2021, officials announced that they had discovered six new sacrificial pits at the Sanxingdui Ruins site and have found nearly 500 important cultural relics to date. The finding quickly gained attention worldwide.
During about a year of hard work, nearly 2,000 cultural relics were unearthed in these six newly discovered sacrificial pits. In September, officials held another media briefing and announced the discovery of 1,771 cultural relics from the number three and number four pits, of which 557 relics were relatively complete and the rest are fragments.
Among the items, the gold mask is the most impressive. It was found in June. After restoration, it turned out to be the biggest complete gold mask found at the site, with fine texture and quality. Three bronze figures (雕像) with their palms pressed together and their heads twisted to the right, were also a unique find among Sanxingdui items in terms of their shape and decorative pattern.
Experts said that these new discoveries provided further material for studying the bronze casting (铸造) technology of the Shu people as well as their art, religious beliefs, social system and cultural exchanges with surrounding areas.
1. Who was the first to have discovered the Sanxingdui Ruins?| A．An official. | B．A farmer. | C．A worker. | D．An archaeologist. |
| A．Large items. | B．Broken pieces. | C．Good qualities. | D．Impressive looks. |
| A．The religious symbols. | B．The fine texture and quality. |
| C．Their size and material. | D．Their shape and decorations. |
| A．The importance of the new discoveries. | B．The further studies of Sanxingdui Ruins. |
| C．The casting technology of the Shu people. | D．The cultural exchanges with other countries. |
