1 . In April 2018, a group of Canadian scientists flying in a helicopter (直升飞机) discovered something they didn't expect to see — a huge, unknown cave with an opening the size of a football field.

The cave was discovered in the northern part of Wells Gray Provincial Park, in a wild, faraway area of Canada's Cariboo Mountains. The area is hard to get to and even harder to travel through. It is covered with snow for much of the year.   

The group told Catherine Hickson, a scientist who studies rocks, about the cave. Dr. Hickson got a team of researchers together to study it. In September, they went for a closer look after most of the snow melted (融化). The cave is one of the largest in Canada. Not only is the opening to the cave larger than a football field, the cave is also deep. The team couldn't measure (测量) all the way to the bottom, but they think it may be more than 180 meters deep. The cave is tens of thousands of years old. But the rock in the cave is made of used to be at the bottom of an ocean (海洋). It is hundreds of millions of years old.

A small, but fast river of melting snow leads into the cave on one side, creating a waterfall near the top and a river at the bottom. The water comes out again a long way away. The exit (出口) is about 2.1 kilometers away and about l/2 kilometer lower down.

The cave will have to wait to get an official name. For now, the cave is being called "Sarlacc's Pit "because it looks similar to the home of the Sarlacc, a person in the Star Wars movie Return of the Jedi.

For Dr. Hickson, there's a lesson to be learned from the cave. "It shows you that you don't know everything, "she says." There are things yet to be discovered."

2 . Considered one of the greatest archaeological finds of mankind in the 20th century, the Sanxingdui Ruins site in Sichuan province has continued to amaze the world. Since May, more than 500 cultural relics have been found at the site. 

Some of the bronze artifacts  (工艺品) discovered during the current excavation have never been seen before, according to experts. They were beyond “our previous understanding of bronze wares and posed great challenges to our research”, said Xu Feihong, a lecturer at Shanghai University.

A unique bronze artifact from the No 3 pit features a man carrying a bronze vessel known as a zun that has a round rim (边沿) and a square body, said Ran Honglin, a researcher with Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute.

Three bronze figures, with their palms pressed together and their heads twisted to the right, have been excavated from the No 4 pit.

These three bronze figures are a unique find among Sanxingdui items in terms of their shape and decorative pattern, and they provide further material for studying the bronze casting technology of the Shu people as well as their art, religious beliefs, social system and cultural exchanges with surrounding areas, Ran said. Shu was an ancient state in what is now Sichuan. 

Again, a gold mask is catching the world’s attention. 

It is the biggest of its kind unearthed at the site so far. It is 37.2 centimeters wide, 16.5 cm high and weighs about 100 grams. Another thing that makes it stand out is that it is complete. 

It was discovered in June at the No 3 pit. Earlier this year, a similar, but less complete gold mask was found at the No 5 pit.

Gold items were found at the Sanxingdui Ruins site as early as 1986, including gold foil (金箔) pieces that show how the precious metal was used by the ancient Shu people. The finding further illustrates the custom of the ancient Shu people to use gold items, experts said.

Radiocarbon dating (放射性碳年代测定) has shown that the No 3 and No 4 pits, at 3,000 to 3,200 years old, go back to the late Shang Dynasty (16th century-11th century BC), Xu said.

Excavation of the No 4 pit was completed on Aug 19, and digging at the No 3 pit will be completed in the next two months. What other treasures will the pit bring us? Only time will tell!

Archaeologists have uncovered a collection of 3,000-year-old handicrafts at Sanxingdui, Sichuan province. The researchers found more than 500 objects at the site in 2019, most of    1    were carved out of gold, bronze, jade and ivory.

Experts are unsure who made the handicrafts, but they guess that the creators belonged to the Shu state, a    2    (high) skilled civilization conquered by the neighboring state of Qin in 316 B.C. Because the people of Shu left behind few    3    (write) records, historians’ knowledge of their culture is limited.

A major highlight of the find is a 0.6-pound fragment (碎片) of a gold mask that may have been used    4    (wear) during religious ceremonies. About 84 percent pure gold, the piece likely weighed close to one pound in total,     5    (make) it one of the heaviest gold masks from that time period discovered in China to date.

Other    6    (discovery) made at the site included two kinds of silk. Silk has played    7    important role in China’s long history. As the statement points out, the silk was thought to serve    8    a carrier by the ancient inhabitants of Sanxingdui for communication between heaven, earth, man and god. The presence of silk at Sanxingdui     9    (indicate) that the ancient Shu Kingdom is one of the important origins of silk in ancient China. All these findings enrich and     10    (deep) our understanding of the Sanxingdui culture.

4 . When archaeologist(考古学家)Zahi Hawass and his team set out to excavate an area near the Egyptian city of Luxor in September 2020, all they were hoping to find was King Tutankhamun's mortuary temple. Instead, the archaeologists came across the largest ancient city ever found in Egypt. Hawass, who exposed the discovery on April 8, 2021, believes the extremely large, well-preserved city is the "So'oud Atun", or the "Rise of Aten".

"The discovery of this lost city is the second most important archaeological discovery since the tomb of Tutankhamun," Betsy Bryan, an Egyptology professor at Johns Hopkins University and member of the team, said in the statement.

The city dates back 3, 400 years to the times of Amenhotep III, one of Egypt's most powerful pharaohs(法老), who ruled Egypt from 1391 to 1353 BC. The ninth pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty ruled during a time of peace, allowing him to accumulate large amounts of wealth. While archeologists suspected the pharaoh had used some of his riches to build what Hawass refers to as "the golden city", they'd never been able to find it.

The researchers believe that his son, King Akhenaten, briefly lived in So'oud Atun before founding the city of Amarna about 250 miles away. Historians think the pharaoh and his followers left to escape the priests(祭司)who were unhappy about his decision to give up all other deities(神抵)in favor of the sun god Aten. Following Akhenaten's death, his son, Tutankhamun, moved to Thebes, which also served as Ancient Egypt's capital. The scientists aren't sure if So'oud Atun was ever occupied again.

So far Hawass and his team have unearthed thousands of amazing artifacts(手工艺品). Among them are rings, amulets, and pottery vessels. They also found a well-preserved bakery, cooking, and food preparation area, complete with ovens and storage vessels. Due to its size, the researchers believe it may have been a commercial operation. Hawass, who says the team has only explored about a third of the lost city so far, believes there're a lot more surprises to be found.

5 . An ancient tomb was recently discovered in southern Siberia in which there may be treasure, priceless objects, and the 3, 000-year-old remains of an ice mummy.

Swiss scientist Gino Caspari with the University of Bern was looking carefully at the pictures of the area in the Russian Tuva Republic, when he came across what appeared to be a tomb. It is a tomb of the Scythians, an ancient group of Eurasians.

This summer, together with researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Hermitage Museum, a dig at the site not only proved Caspari's idea, but told us the site is the largest and oldest of its kind ever discovered in what's increasingly known as the “Siberian Valley of the Kings.”

While any discovery dating back to a period between the Iron Age and Bronze Age is exciting, it's the nature of this site that makes scientists want to begin carefully clearing away the layers of rock and earth. First, the tomb appears to have never been dug, because it is in a Siberian wetland faraway from the nearest place where people live. Second, and most important, is its possible resting place under a thick layer of permafrost.

“There's permafrost in the area,” Caspari said. “There are really only a handful of permafrost tombs and very few that have not been damaged, where there have been ice mummies in good condition, and all the things in the tomb are untouched.”

While not as large, other tombs discovered in the area have produced fantastical treasures and objects, including thousands of gold objects and other things about the past. By studying all these tombs, researchers hope to have a better understanding of the Scythian people.

Caspari said his team is in a race against time to uncover the tomb and find out its secrets. “We now have to act fast,” he said, “because with the rising temperatures, the permafrost could melt and damage all the things in that tomb. And these are things that are over 3,000 years old, that look like new, like they were put there yesterday.”

Since Chinese archaeologists(考古学家)     1    (make) public some of the newly unearthed artifacts from the Sanxingdui Ruins site on Saturday, a gold mask has caught most of the attention from experts and     2     public alike.

Recognized as one of the most important ancient     3    (remain) found in the 20^th century, the 3000-year-old Sanxingdui in southwest China’s Sichuan province is a treasure house     4    (bury) with a collection of pottery, jade, bronze and gold wares.     5     astonished the archaeologists most about this gold mask is its large size. 23 centimeters wide and 28 centimeters high. Although only about half of the gold mask was unearthed, it’s so far the     6    (large) of its kind found in the primary stage of the Chinese civilization, weighing 280 grams.

It     7    (estimate) that the whole mask could weigh more than 500 grams. This lightweight mask is made of gold foil(箔), featuring a raised nose with a sharp edge at the tip. It’s     8    (basic) the same size as the head sculptures from the same pit. Thus, archaeologists believe it was originally attached     9     the face of a head sculpture.

The masks’ eyes and eyebrows are delicately hollowed out,     10    (create) a sense of seriousness and dignity. They most likely represent authorities or top-level figures at that period, according to archaeologists.