1 . Human faces cut into stone up to 2,000 years ago have again been found on a rocky area along the Amazon River in northern Brazil. The stone carvings (雕刻品) appeared as a result of a big drop in water levels because of dry weather in parts of northern Brazil. The water level had dropped to the lowest level in the history of the river.

“People had reported some of the stone carvings before during periods when water levels were low. But now a greater number have been identified. That will help researchers establish the history of the carvings, and more secrets of historical relics will come to light,” researcher Jaime de Santana Oliveira said recently.

One area shows smooth marks in the rock thought to be where natives once sharpened their tools such   as arrows and spears before European settlers arrived.

“The carvings are prehistoric, or precolonial (殖民地时期前的). We can’t be sure of their precise date but based on the evidence of human living places of the area, we believe they are about 1, 000 to 2, 000 years old.” Oliveira said.

The rocky area is on the north shore of the Amazon River near the place where the Rio Negro River joins it.

Oliveira said the carvings were first seen in 2010, but this year’s drought has been more serious than earlier dry periods. The Rio Negro’s levels have dropped 15 meters since July, uncovering large areas of rocks and sand where there had been no beaches.

“This time we found not just more carvings, but the statue of a human face cut into the rock,” said Oliveira, who works for the Brazilian government’s National Historic and Artistic Heritage Institute. The organization watches the care of historic places in Brazil.

2 . Nearly 13,000 cultural relics have been unearthed from six pits (坑) of the Sanxingdui Ruins site, including many objects and statues never seen before, and they help present a more complete view of the culture of the ancient Shu Kingdom.

The digging work mainly aimed at the sacrificial (献祭的) area of the ruins and six newly discovered pits. From 2020 to 2022, a total area of 1,834 square meters was explored in the sacrificial area, which covered a total area of nearly 13,000 square meters.

The significant discoveries include thousands of cultural relics made of different materials such as bronze, gold and jade and unearthed in six new pits, ruins of architecture, time of building the pits and the proof of exchanges between the ancient Shu Kingdom and the Central Plains in the Shang dynasty. Among the cultural relics newly unearthed, archaeologists found 3,155 comparatively complete relics.

“All cultural relics have significant meanings for archaeological research. If I have to choose one, I want to select the crowned bronze statue with a snake’s body,” said Ran Honglin, director of the Sanxingdui Cultural Relics and Archeology Research Institute. He noted that the relics prove the diversity of Chinese culture and offer another powerful example of Chinese civilization’s unity in diversity, because the bronze statue’s shape melted cultural factors of different areas in China during ancient times.       

Researchers used Carbon-14 dating to confirm that nearly 200 samples unearthed in different pits were made from 1131 BC to 1012 BC, so they concluded that in addition to the fifth and sixth pits appearing later, the rest of the pits should have been built in the late Shang dynasty, dating from 3,000 to 3,200 years ago. The discovery has solved an argument over the age of sacrificial pits found in the past three decades.

“The digging and research work is continuing. There will be more discoveries with further work.” Ran said.

3 . That dinosaurs ate the mammals (哺乳动物) that ran beneath their feet is not in doubt. Now an extraordinary fossil newly described in Scientific Reports, unearthed by a team led by Gang Han at Hainan Vocational University of Science and Technology in China, shows that sometimes the tables were turned.

The fossil -dated to about 125 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period-was formed when a flow of boiling volcanic mud swallowed two animals seemingly locked in a life-and-death fight. The one on top is a mammal. This animal is a herbivorous species closely related to the Triceratops (三角恐龙). Animal interactions such as this are exceptionally cam e in the fossil record.

One possibility is that the mammal was eating something already dead, other than hunting live prey. These days it is uncommon for small mammals to attack much larger animals. But it is not unheard of. And Dr. Han and his colleagues point out that those mammals which eat dead bodies typically leave tooth marks all over the bones of the animals. The dinosaur’s remains show no such marks. There is also a chance the fossil could be a fake. More and more convincing fake s have emerged, as this one did -though Dr. Han and his colleagues argue that the complexly connected nature of the skeletons (骨骼) makes that unlikely, too.

Assuming it is genuine, the discovery serves as a reminder that not all dinosaurs were enormous during the Cretaceous and not all mammals were tiny. From nose to tail, the dinosaur is just 1.2 meters long. The mammal is a bit under half a meter in length. Despite being half the size, the mammal has one paw firmly wrapped around one of its prey’s limbs, and another pulling on its jaw. It is biting down on the dinosaur’s chest, and has ripped off two of its ribs. Before they were interrupted, it seems that the mammal was winning.

In Diaoyu city, an ancient castle in Southwest China’s Chongqing, a special tour was conducted recently with a focus on damaged walls, old stones and ordinary-looking locations, rather than the photogenic spots     1     (normal) favored by tourists.

Ten people from four     2     (family) were invited to the new archaeology-themed study tour,     3     was organized by Chongqing’s institute of cultural relics (文物) and archaeology. The tour was designec     4    (bring) the cultural relics more vitality (生机) and develop the interest of participants in study ins history and archaeology     5     (office) data shows that Chongqing has about 26,000 immovable cultural relics and over 1.48 million movable ones. By the end of 2021, there had been 108 million state-owned cultural relics.     6     total number of world heritage sites in China had reached 56,     7     (rank) second in the world.

Other than the study tour, Chongqing has promoted the charm of history and culture, such as opening the country’s first archaeology-themed café     8     starting an immersive (沉浸式的) and theatrical experience in a historic structure.

Chongqing     9     (bring) 10 more historical sites into the range of archaeological tourism in the future. These tourist attractions     10     (expect) to inspire the interest of teenagers in history and archaeological culture.