Potala Palace (布达拉宫) is the highest ancient palace in the world. The palace,
The Palace has two parts, the Red Palace as the center and the White Palace as two wings. The Red Palace is the highest part in the center that is completely devoted to
Zu Chongzhi was one of the greatest mathematicians (数学家) in ancient China. From a young age, Zu was
Zu was best known for his calculation of pi (π). According to the record, he did all the work
Zu was successful not only in math, but also in astronomy. He worked out that a year should be 365.24281481 days long and created the Daming Calendar. However, government officials at that time did not agree
The knot button (盘扣), in Chinese, is a distinctive feature of traditional Chinese clothing Eyen today, it is still
The history of knot buttons dates back to the prehistoric era, in
Knot buttons come in wide
Recent years
4 . Native people in the Amazon may have been creating fertile soil for farming for thousands of years. And what they learned could offer lessons for people concerned about climate change today.
The Amazon River basin covers much of central South America, across which are archaeological sites where ancient people left their mark on the land. And patches(小块) of strangely fertile soil dot the landscape at many of these sites. It’s darker in color than surrounding soils and richer in carbon.
The industrial world has long viewed the Amazon as a vast wilderness — one that was mostly untouched before Europeans showed up. One reason for this idea was that the soil there is nutrient-poor. But a large number of ancient finds in recent decades has been turning that idea on its head. Plenty of evidence now shows that people were shaping the Amazon for thousands of years before Europeans arrived. Ancient city centers have been found in modern-day Bolivia, for instance.
To find out more, Perron, an Earth scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, became part of a team that reviewed interviews with Kuikuro people, who reported making dark Earth using ash, food scraps and controlled burns. They call the product eegepe.
The researchers also collected soil samples and found that there were “striking similarities” between dark Earth samples from ancient and modern sites. Both were far less acidic than the soils around them and also contained more plant-friendly nutrients.
The soil samples also revealed that on average, dark Earth holds twice as much carbon as the soil around it. Infrared(红外线的) scans in one Brazil region suggest the area holds many pockets of this dark Earth, which may store up to about 9 million tons of carbon that scientists have overlooked, Perron’s team says. That’s about as much carbon as a small, developed country emits per year.
‘Figuring out the true amount will require more data,’ says Antoinette Winkler Prins, a geographer working at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md. Still, ‘the new research could offer insights into the Amazon’s past and future.’
1. What was previously believed about the Amazon River basin?| A．It was a vast wilderness untouched by humans. |
| B．It was a highly developed region with large cities. |
| C．It was an uninhabitable region with nutrient-rich soil. |
| D．It was a moderately fertile region occasionally farmed by natives. |
| A．It was made using advanced agricultural techniques. |
| B．It was fertile and contained more carbon than surrounding soils. |
| C．It was highly acidic and nutrient-poor. |
| D．It was only found at ancient archaeological sites. |
| A．It offers insight into ancient agricultural practices in the Amazon. |
| B．It is evidence of a highly advanced civilization that lived in the Amazon. |
| C．It can be used to grow crops in the nutrient-poor soil of the Amazon. |
| D．It has the potential to reduce carbon emissions from the region. |
| A．Ancient Amazonians created fertile soil for farming using advanced techniques. |
| B．The Amazon River basin was inhabited and cultivated by ancient people. |
| C．The discovery of dark Earth in the Amazon could have significant implications for climate change. |
| D．The Kuikuro people have developed sustainable farming practices. |
Located in Changping District, Beijing, Juyongguan is of great military importance since ancient times. The two strategic
In the center of stylobate (柱座), there arranges the doorway through
An overall repair was conducted to architectures in Juyongguan in 1992, restoring
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.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
When I grow up, I want to be an archaeologist (考古学家).
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
7 . Try to picture the world before refrigerators. That may be difficult!
One advanced method of food storage arose in Persia around 400 BC. People there stored food in structures called Yakhchal, which were buildings made from mud brick to keep ice frozen during even the warmest summer months. During the Middle Ages, people stored meat by salting or smoking it.
Later, buildings called ice houses or ice pits were built upon the idea of the Yakhchal. Such ice houses were very common by the 1800s. At the end of the 19th century, many people kept their food fresh in iceboxes made of wood.
By the 1930s, many people were using electric refrigerators to keep food fresh.
| A．They would also dry many foods, including grains. |
| B．These containers held large blocks of ice to keep food cool. |
| C．No one knows for sure how people first learned to store food. |
| D．After all, kids today are used to grabbing a snack from the fridge after school. |
| E．Since then, growth in technology has led these machines to become more advanced. |
| F．With no means to store food, ancient people often went hungry or even died. |
| G．Actually, people found different ways to keep their food fresh thousands of years ago. |
In the 19 century, an outbreak of cholera hit Europe, causing millions of
No doubt, one of the most admired Chinese paintings of all time is the Qingming Shang He Tu. The painting is on a silk scroll (卷轴) that is 24.8cm wide and 528.7cm long,
After its appearance, this amazingly detailed painting quickly
The theme celebrates the festival spirit and prosperous street scene at the Qingming Festival,
The painting
10 . Four Historic American Theatres
Today, theatres remain a key part of a city’s lifeblood. The following are four historic theatres in America.
Pantages Theatre, Minneapolis, MN
The Pantages Theatre, which now seats 1,014, opened in 1916 as part of Alexander Pantages’s well-known group of theatres. It was designed by the local firm Kees and Colburn. In 1922, the theatres was rebuilt by Scottish theatres architect Benjamin Marcus Priteca. After going through several owners, in 1984, it was closed and remained unopened until 1996. Some theatre supporters had it repaired and improved, resulting in its reopening in 2002.
Saenger Theatre, New Orleans, LA
New Orleans’s Saenger Theatre was built two years before the Great Depression, in 1927, and cost a then unheard-of $ 2.5 million. It was designed by Emile Weil, featuring a 15th-century Florentine courtyard and gardens, and Greek and Roman statues. Although the theatre was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, after a $ 53 million renovation (修葺), it reopened in 2013.
Thalian Hall, Wilmington, NC
Thalian Hall has been in almost continuous use since its opening in 1858. It is the only surviving theatre designed by John Montague Trimble, one of America’s foremost 19th-century theatre architects, and originally housed the town government, a library, as well as an “Opera House”, seating 1, 000 people. Some repairs in 1909 led to the removal of the side balconies and the installation of electric stage lights.
Providence Performing Arts Center, Providence, RI
It was originally opened as a movie palace in 1928, and the silent movies it showed were accompanied by a $ 90, 000 Robert Morton organ. After several decades, the theatre suffered from the increased popularity of television, as well as damage by two hurricanes. Over the past decade and a half, it has undergone extensive renovations and modernization.
1. What can we know about the Pantages Theatre?| A．It has a seating capacity of 1, 916. | B．It will be turned into a movie house. |
| C．It was designed by Alexander Pantages. | D．It was once shut down for over a decade. |
| A．Pantages Theatre. | B．Saenger Theatre. | C．Thalian Hall. | D．Providence Performing Arts Center |
| A．They went through major renovations. |
| B．They were hit by terrible natural disasters. |
| C．They were built by American theatre architects. |
| D．They belong o Alexander Pantages’s group of theatres. |
