1 . Inspired by Greek art, many Roman artists designed sculptures, which were placed all throughout the country.
The Romans appreciated the idea of realism.
A.The Romans loved paintings as well. |
B.So their art actually reflected real life. |
C.Why did the Romans paint on their walls? |
D.But why did they enjoy showing their individual beauty? |
E.This helps to provide us with a clear picture of life in ancient Rome. |
F.Sculptures decorated homes, businesses, parks, and all other areas of Rome. |
G.These busts give us an idea of what kind of looks were preferred in ancient Rome. |
2 . A bridge is a structure constructed to connect two places without blocking the way beneath it. Below are four famous bridges in the world.
Bridge of Sighs
The Bridge of Sighs is in Venice, Italy, which was designed by Antonio Contino. The bridge’s construction was begun in 1600 and completed in 1603. The bridge was supposed to be the last view for prisoners, who would sigh at the beauty of Venice, before being taken to prison. That is why it is called the Bridge of Sighs.
Tsing Ma Bridge
The bridge is named after the two islands it connects-Ma Wan and Tsing Yi in Hong Kong. It has both a roadway and a railway and is the longest suspension bridge (悬索桥) with two decks. The bridge is 4518 feet long and 676 feet tall, which was designed by Mott MacDonald. The construction was begun in 1992 and completed in 1997.
Tower Bridge
The Tower Bridge is situated in London, which is a combination of the drawbridge (开合桥) and suspension bridge. Designed by Horace Jones and John Wolfe Barry, it was built between 1886 and 1894. The bridge stretches across the River Thames near the Tower of London. The drawbridge is drawn about 1,000 times a year.
Golden Gate Bridge
The Golden Gate Bridge joins the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, whose chief designer was Jbseph Strauss. The bridge has been named the most beautiful and most photographed bridge in the world. It is 8,981 feet long, 746 feet tall and 90 feet wide. Construction of the bridge was begun in 1933 and completed in 1937. In 1987, the bridge was named a California historic landmark.
1. Which bridge has the longest history?A.The Bridge of Sighs. | B.The Tsing Ma Bridge. |
C.The Tower Bridge. | D.The Golden Gate Bridge. |
A.It was named by its designer. | B.It was named by the government. |
C.It got its name because of its length. | D.It got its name from the two islands it connected. |
A.It links two oceans. |
B.It is the longest bridge in the world. |
C.It is a historic landmark in California. |
D.It is a combination of the drawbridge and suspension bridge. |
The early 1400s was a glorious era in Chinese history. During this time, the Yongle Emperor wanted to develop
In 1405, on behalf of the emperor, Zheng He sailed the oceans
The Silk Road was a network of trade routes
Many merchants along the Silk Road were involved in relay trade,
The Silk Road established
5 . In 1547, the king of Spain sent a coded (编码的) letter to his ambassador in France. Now, after nearly 500 years, researchers have finally cracked(破解) the code and can read the letter. It turns out that the king was worried someone might be trying to kill him.
Charles V was the king of Spain from 1516 to 1556. But his power went far beyond Spain. As the “Holy Roman Emperor”, Charles V controlled lands across Europe. In spite of his great power, he had to manage many threats.
Three years before the letter was written, Charles V had made a peace deal with King Francis I of France. But there was still a lot of information he didn’t want to share with the king of France.
At the time, the only way to communicate across long distances was to send letters. But letters weren’t secure. So Charles V used a complicated code to send information that needed to be kept secret.
Cecile Pierrot is a cryptographer- -an expert in codes. She and a team of other cryptographers set out to figure out what the letter said. The code was harder to crack than Ms. Pierrot had expected. But as the researchers studied the three-page letter, they began to notice some patterns.
Some symbols stood for just one letter. Others stood for several letters combined. And a few of the symbols stood for whole words. To make things more difficult, some symbols meant nothing at all and were only included to make the code harder to crack.
After three years of efforts, the experts finally cracked the code. The team says the decoded letter tells them a lot about tensions in Europe at the time. The discovery opens a door to even more history. There are hundreds of similar letters all over Europe. Now that the code is broken, historians will have a much easier time learning what Charles V was thinking about during his time as a leader.
1. Whom did Charles V send the letter to?A.An ambassador. | B.Roman Emperor. | C.King Francis I. | D.Cecile Pierrot. |
A.He liked playing with codes. | B.It was his writing style. |
C.It was a rule at the time. | D.The letter involved secrets. |
A.The process of the work. | B.The patterns of the code. |
C.The importance of the letter. | D.The information about the experts. |
A.The code will become more popular. |
B.It will be easier for people to create codes. |
C.There will be more discoveries in the future. |
D.People will get more information about all leaders. |
A. alternative B. capacity C. characteristic D. extinct E. exclude F. identity G. increasingly H. interacting I. measuring J. narrative K. restore |
The earliest storytellers
A stunning cave painting discovered in Indonesia may be the earliest evidence of storytelling. The artwork is at least 43,900 years old, and shows that humans were depicting scenes tens of thousands of years earlier than previously thought.
The painting is a 4.5-metre-wide hunting scene, discovered by Maxime Aubert of Griffith University, Australia and his colleagues. It depicts at least eight small human-like figures hunting two pigs and four dwarf buffaloes with spears or ropes. “It’s a(n)
“It’s really an exciting discovery,” says Genevieve von Petzinger at the University of Victoria, Canada, “It shows a (n)
The cave painting gives us a glimpse into the minds of the people who created the Indonesian art, but we don’t yet know whether they were modern humans or one of our
One possible group is the Denisovans, who may also have lived in Asia at this time. Earlier this year, while studying a site in China thought to have been home to Denisovans, a team of researchers revealed artistic engravings on a piece of bone.
“We can’t completely
The discovery comes as archaeologists
Getting to know a little bit about British history will help you understand why the UK
In the 16th century, Wales was joined to the Kingdom of England. In the 18th century, Scotland was joined to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. In the 19th century, Ireland
The four countries that belong to the United Kingdom work together in some
In the history of the UK, there are four important groups of people
London is a great place to study the history of the UK. If you keep your eyes open, you will be
8 . Qingming Shang He Tu
No doubt, one of the most admired Chinese paintings of all time is the Qingming Shang He Tu, or Along the River During the Qingming Festival.The painting is on a silk scroll that is 24.8 cm wide and 528.7 cm long, bearing Emperor Huizong’s name.It was painted by Zhang Zeduan, who was a court painter during the Northern Song Dynasty.
This amazingly detailed painting quickly became a national treasure. Over the centuries that follow hundreds of copies of it were made, many of which became national treasures themselves. Although the original painting was lost for some time, it is now proudly placed in the Palace Museum in Beijing.
The painting is exhibited for only brief periods every few years. However using computer animation, the painting has been remade into an animated digital version for all to enjoy. It contains moving characters and objects, showing life along the Bian River during the Qingming Festival, a time when Chinese people visit their ancestors’ graves.
Flowing from right to left, the painting begins by showing the countryside outside Bianjing City, the capital of China at that time. There are a few houses and a few people traveling back to Bianiing. The scene soon becomes more crowded. The road beside the river becomes packed with restaurants, and the river becomes full of boats. Then we see the Rainbow Bridge arching over the river. On both sides of the bridge are people selling food nd drink, while travellers pass by. Soon, the city begins to emerge. We see temples, inns, and large houses. The roads are now filled with people travelling on foot, and in carts and sedan chairs. Then we come to the first city. Then we come to the first city gate.Through the gate is passing a line of camels carrying goods. In the city, there are butcher shops, doctor’s clinics, hotels, inns, houses, and fabric shops. The streets are still crowded with people,but most of them are relaxing and taking it easy.
The painting ends here, but the scroll does not. About half of the scroll has the seals of its previous owners, along with poems praising the painting’s beauty. There is also a note which gives a short biography of Zhang Zeduan. These seals and poems,along with the note,are the reasons why many experts claim this to be the original painting.
The Qingming Shang He Tu is not only a true work of art, but it also gives us a rare insight into daily life in ancient China. So often, history only contains the stories of emperors, generals, and important events. This painting’s great appeal is that it provides us with a look into ordinary people’s lives in the Song Dynasty.
1. Who painted Qingming Shang He Tu?2. What can we see in the painting?
3. What makes the painting a national treasure?
4. What values of the painting do you think can be uncovered?.
I love digging in the back garden. Sometimes, I’d dig for pottery and stuff, but I’ve always wanted to find a fossil (化石). I like finding out about the past. At school, my favourite subject is history. I’ve been watching Andy’s Prehistoric Adventures since I was three. I knew I had a good chance of finding a fossil, because my house was built on a muddy, limestone substrate (石灰岩基质), in Walsall, which means millions of years ago, my garden wasn’t my garden at all—it was a coral reef (珊瑚礁).
On 22 March, it was a sunny day. I came back from school. I asked Dad if I could dig in my favourite spot by the yellow bush near our house, where we had planted potatoes and onions, but he told me not to, because he’d just moved a tree there and it was establishing roots. I went to the back garden instead, taking Dad’s old brown wooden garden tools. I dug a big hole, about a foot deep, which didn’t take very long, where I found a ball of mud with something pointy sticking out the top. I ran into the kitchen screaming. I was so excited. I knew it was a fossil.
At first, I thought it might be a deer’s tooth or a goat’s claw. When Dad washed the mud off, we saw that it had lots of bumpy, wavy lines; we both thought it looked like one of the sea anemones, from the fish tank in his office, but with a horn(触角). Dad sent a video to the Fossil Finds UK Facebook group. A man calling himself an archaeologist (考古学家) replied saying it had the markings of a horn coral from the Palaeozoic era, which is the very beginnings of life on Earth. I had found one of the oldest fossils in England.
We looked in my books and online for more information. We typed our postcode into a British Geology Survey search where you can find out what you’re standing on—ours is the oldest substrate in the area, with lots of clay and limestone, but it’s unusual to find anything so close to the surface. Experts told us that my horn coral lived between 415 million and 480 million years ago. There weren’t even proper fish or sharks then.
注意:
1. 续写词数应为150左右;
2. 请按如下格式作答。
Before the horn coral, the only fossils I was familiar with were shark teeth that Dad got me.
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When I grow up, I want to be an archaeologist (考古学家).
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10 . On June 6, World War II veterans (老兵) and other visitors gathered in Normandy for the 78th D-Day anniversary (周年纪念日) in memory of soldiers who gave up their lives to bring peace and freedom to French people. Several thousand people joined a ceremony at the American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach in the French town of Colleville-sur-Mer.
US Air Force planes flew over the American Cemetery during the ceremony, in the presence of Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is the final resting place of 9,386 soldiers who died fighting on D-Day and in the operations that followed.
Ray Wallace, then 97, a former paratrooper, was among the World War II veterans attending the ceremony in the French town of Colleville-sur-Mer. According to him, on D-Day, his plane was hit and caught fire forcing him to jump earlier than expected. He landed 20 miles away from the town of Sainte-Mère-Église, the first French village to be liberated from Nazi occupation. Less than a month later, he was caught by the Germans. He was finally liberated after 10 months and returned to the U. S. Still, Wallace thought he was “lucky”. “I remember the good friends that I lost there. So, it’s a little emotional,” he said, with tears in his eyes. “I guess you can say I’m proud of what I did but I didn’t do that much.”
On D-Day, a large number of soldiers landed on the beaches, carried by 7,000 boats. On that single day, 4,414 soldiers lost their lives, 2,501 of whom were Americans. More than 5,000 were wounded. On the German side, several thousand were killed or wounded.
Wallace, who was using a wheelchair, was among about 20 World War II veterans who opened the parade (游行) of military vehicles on the eve of the D-Day anniversary in Sainte-Mère-Église with cheers from thousands of people, in a joyful atmosphere. He did not hide his pleasure, happily waving to the crowd as parents explained the stories of World War II heroes to their children. Many history lovers, wearing military clothes from the period, also came to the stage and celebrated the event.
1. What is the purpose of the D-Day anniversary ceremony in Colleville-sur-Mer?A.To call on people to treasure their lives. |
B.To remind people about the hard time. |
C.To connect peace lovers worldwide. |
D.To honor the dead soldiers on D-Day. |
A.His sadness at losing partners in war. |
B.His doubt about the result of the war. |
C.His pride in defeating the enemies. |
D.His fear of losing his life in war. |
A.Peaceful and quiet. | B.Serious and stressful. |
C.Warm and inspiring. | D.Surprising and amusing. |
A.Veterans’ stories took people closer to D-Day. |
B.People in France celebrated the success of D-Day. |
C.People worldwide held activities to remember D-Day. |
D.Veterans returned to mark the 78th anniversary of D-Day. |