1 . New research into a little-known text written in ancient Greek shows that “stressed poetry”, the ancestor of all modern poetry and song, was already in use in the 2nd century CE, 300 years earlier than previously thought. It has been found sculpted on twenty precious stones and as a graffito (雕画) in Cartagena, Spain.
In its shortest version, the nameless four-line poem reads “They say what they like; let them say it; I dont care.” Other versions extend with “Go on, love me; it does you good.” The poem, unparalleled (绝无仅有的) so far in the classical world, consists of lines of 4 syllables (音节), with a strong accent on the first and a weaker on the third. This allows it to come into the rhythms of numerous pop and rock songs. So it became popular across the eastern Roman Empire and survives.
By comparing all of the known examples for the first time, Cambridges Professor Tim Whitmarsh noticed that the poem used a different form of rhythm to that usually found in ancient Greek poetry. As well as showing signs of the long and short syllables characteristic of traditional “quantitative” poem, this text employed stressed and unstressed syllables. The new study, published in The Cambridge Classical Journal, also suggests that this poem could represent a “missing link” between the lost world of ancient Mediterranean oral poetry and song, and the more modern forms that we know today. A lot of popular poetry in ancient Greek takes a similar form to traditional high poetics. This poem, on the other hand, points to a distinct and rich culture, primarily oral.
1. Where was the “stressed poetry” discovered?| A．In Greece. | B．In Spain. |
| C．In Britain. | D．In Mediterranean. |
| A．A syllable. | B．A strong accent. |
| C．The four-line poem. | D．The content of the poem. |
| A．A missing link between poems was found finally. |
| B．A lot of popular poetry in ancient Greek was then popular in the world. |
| C．The stressed and unstressed syllables distinguished the poem from others. |
| D．The ancient Mediterranean oral poetry and song was older than the poem. |
| A．Ancient Greek “pop culture” discovery rewrites the history of poetry and song |
| B．The unparalleled poem made ancient Greek culture more attractive |
| C．Ancient Greek poetry lay the foundation of modern culture |
| D．Four syllables are still popular in modern poetry and song |
When it comes to ancient civilizations, most people think of the Greeks and Romans. It’s understandable as both
The Jiahu settlement is located in the central plain of ancient China,
The settlement’s end came around 5700 BCE when the nearby rivers overflowed and flooded the area. It is assumed that the Jiahu people left their home
A Brief History of Silk
Comfortable to wear whether the weather is hot or cold, silk is as popular today as it was 5,000 years ago when it was first manufactured. However, the history of silk has not always been as smooth as the fabric (织物) itself.
Today’s basic silk-production process has changed very little since it first began. The fabric comes from silkworms which, although tiny when born, grow rapidly in size. Indeed, on a strict diet of mulberry leaves, it is estimated that they increase in weight by 10,000% over the first six weeks of their life. When they are fully grown, the silkworms create a cocoon—a protective shell made of silk. They then crawl inside in order to prepare for their next stage of development. However, for commercial silk production, these cocoons are then boiled, killing the worm inside, to ensure that the silk is not damaged. After this, the silk is gathered and prepared. A single cocoon can produce between 300 and 900 metres of silk thread.
Although today silk is both grown and worn worldwide, the original production of silk was restricted to China. Likewise, in the sixth century, two monks managed to take some eggs all the way back to their native Byzantium (modern-day Istanbul, in Turkey). This was an event of great importance, since Europe was form that point able to manufacture its own silk.
Before the monks’ success in bringing the silkworms out of China, Europeans were dependent on merchants bringing the fabric from East Asia across the mountain roads of Central Asia and the Middle East. Indeed, so much silk was transported that this trade route became known as Silk Road.
Although man-made fibres (纤维) are cheaper and easier to manufacture, the beauty of silk is difficult to match, and there is always likely to be a large international market.
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Fossil by fossil, the story of the birds becomes clearer. It is now well established that modern birds are actually a group of dinosaurs, which survived a crash between the earth and a small planet 66m years ago. This impact wiped out the rest of the dinosaur world, along with a lot of other creatures.
Recently a paper, published in Nature, has released the details of a fossil, which those studying it believe provides our earliest view of what modern birds were like during the initial stages of their evolutional history. The fossil in question is called Asteriornis maastrichtensis. As its name suggests, the rock containing it was dug from deposits(沉积层)found near Maastricht. These deposits are between 66.8m and 66.7m years old.
This particular rock interested palaeontologists(古生物学家)because it included visible leg bones that looked as though they belonged to a bird. Such ancient fossils are rare, so instead of chancing their arms by using physical or chemical methods to explore the rock for more remains,Daniel Field of Cambridge University and his colleagues employed a CT scan, a process more familiar to most people as a medical-scanning technique. The result, an image of the animal’s skull with false colours added to clarify which bits are which, can be seen in the picture.
Asteriornis maastrichtensis does indeed turn out to be a member of the modern birds. Specifically, it is part of the Galloanserae, which includes both land fowl(家禽),such as chickens and its relatives, and modern waterfowl, like ducks and the like. The skull of Asteriornis maastrichtensis exhibits features of both groups, so it most probably predates the division between them. And its discovery in Europe opens up the debate about whether modern birds originated in the southern part of the earth, as has been proposed.
As to what it looked like when alive, the animal’s left upper leg, its best-preserved bone besides those of its skull, suggests Asteriornis maastrichtensis was a long-legged creature that marched around. This, and evidence that the rock it was preserved in was originally part of a fossil shoreline,has led to reconstructions of modern waterfowl.
Asteriornis maastrichtensis shows that a single fossil can help to nail down previously uncertain dates. The age of the fossil, in fact, suggests that those previous estimates, based on so-called molecular clocks(分子钟),might have overestimated how early the modern birds arose.Based on the discovery of Asteriornis maastrichtensis, the smart money is now on the modern birds as a group being only a little older than the dinosaur-killing impact itself.
1. What can we learn from the first two paragraphs?| A．The details of the fossil are still in doubt. |
| B．The deposits were named after the fossil. |
| C．The crash caused the extinction of dinosaurs. |
| D．The fossil is seen as the oldest modern bird skull. |
| A．It attracts palaeontologists as a rare ancient species. |
| B．It can present the whole picture of modern waterfowl. |
| C．It allows researchers to confirm where modern birds emerged. |
| D．It may be the common ancestor of modern chickens and ducks. |
| A．fossils promote the accuracy of historical dates |
| B．it’s not wise to dig the deposits for more remains |
| C．we can’t trust fossils more than molecular clocks |
| D．more investment should be made to study fossils |
5 . It is likely that on American TV shows you at times will be attracted by rubber balls on people’s desks.
Indeed, stress is a big problem for many people.
| A．This helped them relax as well. |
| B．These gadgets may look like simple toys. |
| C．It keeps your hand busy with an easy task. |
| D．These balls are known as “stress relief balls”. |
| E．Fortunately, we have many ways to deal with it. |
| F．This was the perfect way to ease away your tension. |
| G．A focused activity helps take your mind off the problems of your day. |
1. What is the speaker?
| A．A guide. |
| B．A teacher. |
| C．An interpreter. |
| A．The history of Fairhaven. |
| B．An introduction to Manjiro's life. |
| C．The relationship between Japan and the USA. |
| A．1841. |
| B．1827. |
| C．1851. |
| A．To celebrate the achievements of Manjiro. |
| B．To represent the official status of sister cities. |
| C．To sell Japanese and American food. |
7 . The statue of King Leopold II of Belgium that stands in sight of the royal palace in Brussels has been defaced dozens of times in recent years. Activists have painted its hands and eyes red as a reminder of the brutality that Leopold unleashed in the Congo Free State, a territory in central Africa, at the end of the 19th century. As many as 10 million Congolese-or half of the population-might have perished as Europeans forced entire villages to collect rubber and ivory for export.
Leopold’s exploitation of Congo was a scandal. In 1908, after years of campaigning by journalists, the Belgian state stripped the king of his private possession. The Belgian Congo joined other European colonies in Africa where wanton（恶意的）extraction was to be replaced by a supposedly civilising mission. Yet though less transparently murderous, the “benign” colonialism of elsewhere was often not that different from what happened under Leopold. A new book, “In the Forest of No Joy”, by J. P. Daughton, an American historian, exposes how forced labour in the French Congo（now the Republic of Congo）, on the other side of the river from Leopold’s possession（now the Democratic Republic）, led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Africans.
The book is a masterful, if relentlessly bleak, account of the construction of the Congo-Ocean Railway, a route designed to connect the central African interior to the Atlantic. What makes it so compelling is the divide it exposes between the often admirable intentions of colonial bureaucrats, who did genuinely think they were lifting Africans out of poverty, and the grim reality that they enabled. The application of “modern” government to conquered people could be almost as savage as plunder（掠夺）, Mr Daughton shows.
The railway was the idea of Pietro Paolo Savorgnan di Brazza, an Italian-born French explorer who conquered much of central Africa for France “by exclusively peaceful means”. The French state imagined itself as a bringer of civilisation to Africa, and the railway was to provide a way for the Congolese to take part in world trade. Yet Mr Daughton shows how the colonial administration in Congo had little capacity to build a railway without violence: it claimed to be recruiting paid volunteers while its agents forced Africans to work at gunpoint. Many were marched hundreds of kilometres to the tracks chained at the neck, as slaves had been a century before. Whatever work had to be done, reported Albert Londres, a French journalist, “it’s captives who do it.”
Surprisingly, the French state documented these abuses diligently（the archives provide the source of much of Mr Daughton’s information）. In 1926 one inspector, Jean-Noel-Paul Pegourier, compared the treatment of workers on the railway to the German genocide of the Herero in Namibia before the first world war. Yet unlike the reports of Leopold’s abuses, these observations had little effect, not least because orders issued from Paris or even Brazzaville were simply ignored. Raphael Antonetti, the colonial governor, fought back with an avalanche of legalese.
The railway was a masterpiece of engineering, as Mr Daughton readily admits. For decades it provided the only means of transporting goods within Congo. The wealth of Brazzaville, still so named, was built on it. In Britain and France, the infrastructure bequeathed to former colonies is often cited as an argument for its benefits. But to build it, a weak and stingy state had to rely on brutality. As Mr Daughton reports, “the Congo-Ocean provides an all too-useful case in point for how the language of humanity could be invoked to explain the deaths of thousands.”
1. According to the passage, King Leopold was infamous for ________.| A．taking possession of the private belongings of 10 million Congolese by killing them |
| B．reviving slavery by illegally transporting the native Congo villagers to Europe |
| C．being physically handicapped by people in the Congo Free State for his cruel governance |
| D．his tyrannical and exploitative behaviors imposing forced labor on the Congolese |
| A．European bureaucrats’ intention to bring prosperity to the Africans led to unintended consequences. |
| B．The African workers involved in the railway construction were enslaved and ill-treated. |
| C．Despite being crowned as a masterpiece of engineering, the railway is of little benefit to local people. |
| D．Some colonists led no better lives when governed by civilized leaders than by tyrants. |
| A．Because the local governor turned a blind eye to the instructions given by higher officials. |
| B．Because some of the descriptions were groundless and denied by the inspector on the site. |
| C．Because the local agents fought back by filing a lawsuit against the alleged documents. |
| D．Because the workers on the railway were contracted volunteers though being treated cruelly. |
| A．A Brief History of Forced Labor | B．Blood on the Tracks |
| C．Treasure of Colonialism | D．The Vanishing Humanity |
Sugar cane cultivation(甘蔗种植) originated in southwest Asia, where Marco Polo reported in his
In the fourteenth century, the island of Cyprus was the location of major sugar farms,
Brown sugar
Pedestrians only
The concept of traffic-free shopping areas goes back a long time. During the Middle Ages, traffic-free shopping areas were built to allow people to shop in comfort and, more importantly, safety. The modern, traffic-free shopping street was born in Europe in the 1960s, when both city populations and car ownership increased rapidly. Dirty exhaust fumes from cars and the risks involved in crossing the road were beginning to make shopping an unpleasant and dangerous experience. Many believed the time was right for experimenting with car-free streets, and shopping areas seemed the best place to start.
At first, there was resistance from shopkeepers. They believed that such a move would be bad for business. They argued that people would avoid streets if they were unable to get to them in their cars. When the first streets in Europe were closed to traffic, there were even noisy demonstrations, as many shopkeepers predicted they would lose customers.
However, research carried out afterwards in several European cities revealed some unexpected statistics. In Munich, Cologne and Hamburg, visitors to shopping areas increased by 50 percent. On Copenhagen’s main shopping street, shopkeepers reported sales increases of 25-40 percent. Shopkeepers in Minneapolis, USA, were so impressed when they learnt this that they even offered to pay for the construction and maintenance costs of their own traffic-free streets.
With the arrival of the traffic-free shopping street, many shops, especially those selling things like clothes, food and smaller luxury items, prospered. Unfortunately, it wasn’t good news for everyone, as shops selling furniture and larger electrical appliances actually saw their sales drop. Many of these were forced to move elsewhere, away from the city centre. Today they are a common feature on the outskirts of towns and cities, often situated in out-of-town retail zones with their own car parks and other local facilities.
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Kite flying dated from China and became popular around the country. With a long history, it is considered as the
In the past, people fastened bamboo-made whistles onto a kite. While
In the 7th century, kite
Around the Qingming Festival, usually on early April, many people fly kites in public squares. The sky is dotted with kites of different designs, such as dancing butterflies, bounding dragons, and swimming fish. When people look at those kites, they feel as if they were flying away with the kites
The traditional Chinese kite expresses
