1 . Researchers in Norway say they have found what they believe is the world’s oldest runestone (符文石)—a stone with ancient writing on it.

Runes are the characters in several Germanic letters. These characters were used in northern Europe from ancient times until the change to the Latin letters. The origin of runic writing is unclear. The Norwegian researchers say the writing on the runestone could be up to 2,000 years old.

The runestone is square and flat. The runes carved into it may show the earliest example of recorded words in Scandinavia, the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo said. It said it was “among the oldest runic writings ever found” and “the oldest runestone ever found in the world”.

Kristel Zilmer is a professor at University of Oslo, of which the museum is part. Zilmer said, “This find will give us a lot of knowledge about the use of runes in the early Iron Age. This may be one of the first attempts to use runes in Norway and Scandinavia on stone.”

Runes have been found on stones and on home goods. Older runes have been found on other objects, also, but not on stones. The oldest known runic writing is on a hair tool made from bone. Zilmer said that the ancient writer might have used a knife or needle to make the runes.

Measuring 31 centimeters by 32 centimeters, the stone has several kinds of writings. Not all of them make sense. Eight runes on the front of the stone read “idiberug”—which could be the name of a person or family but not sure.

There is still a lot of research to be done on the rock, named Svingerud stone after where it was found.

The Museum of Cultural History is going to hold a public showing of the runestone for a month. The museum holds Norway’s largest collection of historical objects, from ancient times to the modern day.

4 . A seven-word sentence was discovered on a 3,700-year-old comb (梳子),which is likely the oldest known sentence written in letters,according to a new study. The sentence is in Canaanite (迦南语),which is the source (来源) of later letter systems in European languages.

The comb was first discovered in 2016 in Israeli. However,it wasn’t until 2021 that a researcher from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem first noticed the words when checking the photo of the comb. The researchers were not able to directly date the comb. They believed it dated from around 1700 BC based on comparison of the letters with those on pottery (陶器) with a known age.

Garfinkel,a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,said,“The Canaanites invented the letters. Nowadays every person in the world can read and write using the letter system. This is really one of the most important achievements of humankind. When you are writing in English,you’re really using Canaanite.”

Small groups of Canaanite letters discovered on broken pieces of pottery before did not leave much room for further research on the lives of the Canaanites. But this find of a sentence written in the first letter-based language opens up the debate about the history during the ancient time period.

Garfinkel said,“The sentence was found on an ivory comb in the ancient city’s palace and temple area,which could suggest that only wealthy men were able to read and write.” The earliest writing system started around 5,000 years ago,which relied on hundreds of pictographs (象形文字) to represent words,ideas and sounds. Canaanites were the first to use letters in their writing system. “It shows that even in the most ancient times there were full sentences,which further suggests that Canaanites stood out among the early civilizations in their use of the written word.”

URUMQI-After packing some naan bread and    1     dented water bottle, Shan Zhizheng and his wife start up their motorcycle and head off to a cultural relic site,     2     (break) the silence that envelops the valley.

It’s a round trip of around 150 kilometers and    3     (they) starting point is the pastoral and farming landscape of Wenquan county in Bortala,Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region(维吾尔自治区).

    4     (know) as “a museum without walls”, Wenquan county is home to nearly 260 cultural relic sites under    5     (variety) levels of protection, including tombs, cliff paintings and    6     (ruin),    7     provide materials for researching the history of ancient northern nomads and tribes, according to the county cultural relic protection bureau.

Shan and his wife, Yuan Qin, are responsible for protecting one particular relic site that    8     (cover) about eight square kilometers. Once a week, the couple patrols more than 200 ancient tombs dating back     9     between the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) and the Han Dynasty (202 BC-AD 220).

Their relic protection routine usually includes walking around the site to look for footprints and motorcycle tracks, keeping records of the tombs,     10     updating the local cultural relic authorities in a timely manner.

A great number of artifacts from eight tombs    1     (unearth) from an archaeological site in Hunan province several months ago. According to the provincial institute of heritage and archaeology, these artifacts, including pottery pieces and bronze    2     (knife), are believed    3     (date) back as early as the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220).

Six Eastern Han Dynasty tombs are brick tombs, three of    4     might have had owners from the same family, said Chen Bin,     5     member of the archaeological team of the tomb complex under the institute.

It is also the first time that archaeologists    6    (discover)a trench(战壕)4.5meters west of the back chamber of the largest tomb,     7     (measure) about 0.9 meters in width,     8     (approximate)15 meters in length and about 0.1 meters in depth.

“This excavation(挖掘)is    9     great significance to further understanding the funeral customs of people in southern Hunan, as well as the levels of    10     (economy)development and cultural exchanges during the period,” Chen said.

9 . Scientists have solved a puzzle about modern humans, after research showed that a famous skull of a human ancestor found in South Africa is a million years older than experts thought. This discovery has changed what we know of human history.

The skull, which scientists have named “Mrs Ples”, is from an ape-like human relative from a species called Australopithecus africanus (南方古猿). It was found near Johannesburg in 1947 and, based on evidence from its surroundings, was thought to be between 2. 1 and 2. 6 million years old. This puzzled scientists, because although Mrs Ples looks like a possible early ancestor of early humans, the first true humans had already evolved by the time she apparently lived. For this reason, scientists had decided that Australopithecus afarensis, a similar species from East Africa that lived about 3.5 million years ago, was our most likely ancestor instead.

To get a more accurate age for Mrs Ples, a team led by Professor Darryl Granger of Purdue University in Indiana, US, used a new method to date the sandy rocks where the skull lay. They measured the amount of certain chemicals in rocks, which form at a steady rate when they are exposed to cosmic rays (宇宙射线) on Earth’s surface. Once rocks are buried, these chemicals stop forming and slowly disappear;the surviving amount reveals how much time has passed since the rock (or bones) were on the surface.

The new study shows that Mrs Ples and other australopithecine bones nearby are between 3.4 and 3.7 million years old. This means they lived at the same time as their East African relatives, so that either group could have given rise to modern humans. However, team member Dr Laurent Bruxelles pointed out that over millions of years, at only 2,500 miles away, these groups had plenty of time to travel and to breed with each other. In other words, the groups could quite easily have met, had children together and both been part of the history of modern humans.

10 . People all around the world have enjoyed noodles for thousands of years.     1     People first started growing wheat and making flour in the Middle East around 10,000 years ago. But no one had ever found a prehistoric noodle —until 2002.

Archaeologists discovered an upside-down clay bowl in the ruins of an ancient Chinese village.     2     This “mummy” noodle was made from millet. Traders brought wheat to China about the time this ancient noodle was cooked.

Some people claim that Marco Polo brought pasta to Italy. The tale says that when he visited China, he tried noodles for the first time and liked them so much that he took the recipe home.     3     In fact, it was likely made up by an American magazine to try to get Americans to eat more pasta.

    4     The oldest written mention of pasta outside China comes from the Middle East, about 1,600 years ago. The text describes how to eat dried noodles, a popular travel food in the Middle East and Central Asia. Dried noodles were perfect for long trips.     5     Some historians believe that dried noodles spread out from the Middle East or Central Asia. Traders packed their noodles and travelled to other parts of the world. Wherever they got the recipe, Italians were eating pasta long before Marco Polo.

So who REALLY invented noodles? We may never know—the history of noodles is as twisted as a bowl of spaghetti. But whoever invented them, we’re sure glad they did!