1 . These days, Fred’s huge skeleton (骨架) is exhibited in the Indiana State Museum. His tusks (长牙) were recently the subject of a research study tracing the life 13,000 years ago of mastodons, distant relatives of modern elephants.
By analyzing the chemical compounds (化合物) in Fred’s tusks, a team of researchers could construct a detailed account of his seasonal migration patterns. Josh Miller, a paleoecologist (古生态学家) at the University of Cincinnati, is one of the researchers studying Fred. “He has beautifully preserved bones and tusks, which provides a great opportunity for our research on his seasonal migration patterns,” Miller said.
Mastodons’ tusks generally grow in distinct layers, similar to the tree rings. As a result, the nutrients that build the layers of their tusks can tell us a lot about what they experienced. The team particularly focused their analysis on the variations in two elements in the layers: strontium (锶) and oxygen. The former is the key to understanding where Fred spent his life, while the latter tells us the season he was in any particular region. Then, with some statistical modeling, Miller and his team gained insight into the daily record of Fred’s behavior over ten thousand years ago.
The result indicated that Fred would have grown a lot when he was young. But there’s a year when his growth is reduced. “Probably like the modern male elephant, a male mastodon is just really obnoxious when growing up to be a bother and often arouses family members’ anger. At that point, the mom and aunts will essentially kick him out of the family.” Miller predicted.
After Fred set off to attend to himself, his tusks reflected where he travelled around. Based on the analysis, Fred would return to mate every summer in Northeastern Indiana, because his tusks started to show signs of injuries around this time. When competing for mates, mastodons get into huge battles with their own natural weapons sharp tusks. And that was exactly what brought Fred’s story to an untimely end.
1. What did Miller’s study mainly focus on?| A．Effective ways of tusk preservation. | B．Inner structure of Fred’s skeleton. |
| C．Possible tracks of Fred’s migration. | D．Special functions of mastodon tusks. |
| A．By analyzing nutrients in Fred’s bones. |
| B．By reviewing statistical records of previous studies. |
| C．By modeling data of chemical elements in Fred’s tusks. |
| D．By referring to the growth of tree rings to study Fred’s tusk layers. |
| A．He was killed by his opponents. | B．He reunited with his family later. |
| C．He was drawn to cross-species fights. | D．He was weak in living independently. |
| A．Geology. | B．Culture. | C．Education. | D．Science. |
Archaeologists have made a stunning discovery of more than 80 stone carvings and building units, dating back about 1,300 years, at the Leigutai caves of the Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang, Henan province. The Longmen Grottoes Research Institute,
The relics, unearthed during renovation inside the west wall of the south cave of Leigutai, are believed to have been used as materials
“This is the first time archaeologists
Lu said the relics inside the wall
Luoyang was the national capital during Empress Wu’s reign. Many members of the royal family and aristocracy then held the belief
In November 2000, the Longmen Grottoes were included on the UNESCO World Heritage list,
Chinese scientists recreated the face of 6th Century monarch Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou using DNA
Emperor Wu was a ruler of the Northern Zhou dynasty in ancient China, who was
Archaeologists discovered Emperor Wu’s tomb in north western China in 1996. They found his bones, a nearly complete skull
The research team said Emperor Wu died at the age of 36, and his son also died at a young age with no clear reason. Some archaeologists say Emperor Wu died of illness,
The finding is in
4 . Every day people joined archaeologists and artists in finding some of the year’s most dramatic discoveries. Below are some examples of 2023.
“Naughty pupils” — ancient punishment method resurfaces
Archaeologists discovered 18,000 ink-carved pieces of pottery — known as “ostraca” — at the site of Athribis early this year, and among them were hundreds of fragments (碎片) with a single symbol repeated front and back.
Those scribbles (潦草的文字) are evidence of “naughty pupils” being made to write lines, according to researchers at Germany’s University of Tuebingen. The fragments also included receipts, school texts, trade information and lists of names.
Van Gogh peers out in hidden portraits
There is one more known Van Gogh’s self-portrait in the world, and it was hidden behind a painting of a peasant woman. People made the discovery when they took an X-ray of one of his portraits from 1885 and discovered-the artist’s own image behind layers of cardboard and glue. While X-rays often reveal how artists changed their compositions, the full self-portrait of Van Gogh came as a huge surprise, who was known to reuse canvases (画布) to save money.
Another treasure collection from Sanxingdui
The Sanxingdui archaeological site has produced thousands of relics. The latest discovery, reported by Chinese state media in June includes 3,155 objects, a turtle shell-shaped box and a sacrificial altar among them. A team has been digging six places of the site, turning up more than 13,000 objects so far. Last year, the relics they uncovered included a golden mask, ivory artifacts (手工艺品) and a jade knife. The Sanxingdui culture still remains mysterious, as it left behind no written records or human remains, though many believe it to be part of the ancient kingdom of Shu, which ruled along the upper stream of the Yangtze River until it was conquered in 316 BC.
1. What made the researchers link the discovery with an ancient punishment?| A．Hundreds of fragment. | B．The repeated symbol. |
| C．The mark of ink. | D．Lists of names. |
| A．It was hidden behind a peasant woman. |
| B．The X-ray discovered the composition of the cardboard. |
| C．Van Gogh hid his self-portrait in this way to save money. |
| D．Van Gogh in the self-portrait looks outside. |
| A．An artificial altar. | B．A jade knife. |
| C．Human remains. | D．A turtle shell-shaped box. |
1.人物事迹简介；
2.给我们树立的榜样。
注意：1.写作词数应为80个左右；
2.题目自拟。
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The Silk Road was a network of ancient trade routes,
1. What did Spanish merchants take to the Americans?
| A．Corn. | B．Wheat. | C．Potatoes. |
| A．He saw the Pacific Ocean. | B．There were many jungles. | C．Panama was so narrow. |
| A．In 1513. | B．In 1524. | C．In 1533. |
| A．Wildlife. | B．Rocks. | C．Gold and silver. |
In China, 2024 is the Year of the Dragon, or “loong,” as is known in Chinese. This creature appears on many cultural artifacts
Unlike Western dragons,
For thousands of years, the Chinese have respected the loong,
At a historical site in Liaoning Province, a stone sculpture of a loong was discovered in 1994.
9 . Before humans stored memories as zeroes and ones, we turned to digital devices of another kind — preserving knowledge on the surface of fingers and palms.
When Mogao Caves was uncovered in 1900, an aging drawing was lifted from a trove of religious manuscripts. The drawing illustrates a mnemonic (助记符号) system, a way of projecting knowledge onto the hands so it can be studied, memorized, and stored in a pocket. Around the same time this mnemonic was made, a monk named Bede halfway around the world was developing a different system of manual knowledge. These two systems are perhaps the earliest examples of manual mnemonics.
Beginning roughly twelve hundred years ago, we started using the hand itself as a portable (便携的) place of knowledge, a place to store whatever tended to slip our mental grasp. The hand became an all-purpose memory machine.
In different times and places, hands provided mnemonic maps of sound. As early as the thirteenth century, Chinese scholars were projecting syllable charts (音节图表) onto the palms and fingers. The so-called “Guidonian hand” owes its name to the eleventh-century Italian music teacher, Guido d’Arezzo. Arranging the different pitches in a scale onto the joints, he developed this technique to help students learn “unheard melody most easily and correctly”. Other thinkers in Europe, perhaps inspired by Guido, developed systems for learning the sounds of language.
Then questions arise. First, what makes the hand so popular as a mnemonic prop? A large part of the answer, surely, involves portability. The hands are always, well, ready to hand. A further advantage stems from how hand mnemonics offer both visual and kinesthetic (动觉的) routes to memory: They are both seen and felt.
It’s also hard to determine when and why hand mnemonics faded out. Hand mnemonics are still used to teach the “right-hand rule” in physics classrooms and remain especially popular in medicine. Today, we increasingly store our “thoughts” in virtual realms (领域), but we sometimes still reach for that original “digital” repository (存储库) in our pockets.
1. What do we learn about the two earliest examples of mnemonics?| A．Bede made a hand mnemonic in Mogao Caves. |
| B．They are the same system of manual knowledge. |
| C．The drawing was uncovered on the fingers and palms. |
| D．The drawing from Mogao Caves illustrates a mnemonic system. |
| A．Human hands mapped sound charts. |
| B．Human hands played a role in sound mnemonics. |
| C．Guido helped his students learn unheard melody. |
| D．Scholars projected syllable charts onto the palms and fingers. |
| A．The hand is always available for use. |
| B．The hand can feel what people memorize. |
| C．Fingers can easily be marked with characters. |
| D．Hand mnemonics help memorize visible things. |
| A．Positive. | B．Pessimistic. | C．Uncertain. | D．Indifferent. |
Roujiamo is closely associated with the north-central city of Xi’an in Shaanxi Province. Since 210BCE, Xi’an has been both the eastern terminus of the Silk Road and the capital for 13 more-or-less Chinese
The meat preparation used to make the filling for roujiamo traditionally
Every family has its own roujiamo recipe, but there are some constants (不变的事物). First comes the lazhi, which includes a list of spices: ginger, star anise, cassia and so on. A special importance
To be sure, roujiamo is far
