Wang Anshi （1021 - 1086）, a poet and reformer of Song Dynasty, is still remembered after a long period of time. This year marked the 1, 000th anniversary of Wang’s birthday. To commemorate the occasion, China Post    1    （issue）a collection of stamps in December（2021）.

When he was young, Wang became familiar    2    the hardships of the peasants. After he passed the imperial civil service exams and became     3     official, Wang wanted to change their conditions and initiated a series of reforms.

He implemented new laws to ease farmers’ burdens, loaned grain to farmers and allowed them to repay their debts after the autumn harvest. He attached great importance to    4    （train）talents in different fields, for example, in laws.     5    （unlucky）, these policies harmed the interests of the upper classes and his reforms eventually failed.

Wang’s     6    （brave） to innovate has inspired many people. The former Chinese Premier Wen: Jiabao- quoted Wang in his speech: A true reformer should fear neither strange astronomical    7    （phenomenon）nor comments.

US politician Henry A. Wallace had a book    8    （record）Wang’s reform policies. When the Unitech States faced sudden economic depression during the Roosevelt administration of the 1930s, Wallace applied Wang’s economic principles and helped the country get through the crisis successfully.

During his lifetime, Wang    9    （pen）more than 1, 000 poems. Often short and plainspoken, these poems contain profound topics,     10    won him wide acclaim（称赞）both at home and abroad.

Located in Guanghan city of Southwest China’s Sichuan Province and covering an area of 12 square kilometers. Sanxingdui Site is the remains of the ancient Shu culture, which dates back     1     4,800-2,600 years ago, and is considered to be one of the     2     (great) archaeological (考古的) discoveries in the 20th century. This particular discovery is a strong proof of the     3     (exist) of the ancient Shu State and the integrative pattern of the multi-cultures of the Chinese nation.

In fact, as a cultural site,, Sanxingdui had come into the notice of archaeologists in as early as the 1930s, and     4     (exploration) were made soon. It all began     5     a farmer called Yan Daocheng dug out a number of treasures     6     (accidental) in the spring of 1929. In the summer of 1986, thousands of rare treasures were unearthed from two large newly-discovered sacrificial pits (祭祀坑). The unearthed objects are unique in shape and superior in techniques,     7     (confirm) the extraordinary creativity of the ancient Shu people and their desires     8     (connect) with and understand the universe.

After sleeping for 3,000 years, their awakening has shocked the world. When our eyes     9     (caught) by the creations of the ancient Shu ancestors, it is     10     encounter with a civilization lost for 3,000 years.

In human history, many ancient and splendid civilizations were born and died. China is the only country with uninterrupted human civilization. Chinese civilization was born on both     1    (shore) of the Yellow River in 2800 BC. And the rich land     2     Chinese civilization began is Henan Province.

In the long history of Chinese civilization, we may feel that the unique Chinese characteristics are all around us and all within us,     3    (reflect)in Kungfu to a large extent.

Kungfu or martial arts can only     4    (master)through hard work and practice, which contains rich yet profound Chinese philosophy, whether in curing diseases and improving health,     5     in conquering the enemy and preventing conflict. Kungfu can even have an effect on the daily lives of Kungfu fighters.

All styles or schools of martial art originate from Shaolin Temple. So far, Shaolin Kungfu     6    (become)a window of Chinese culture to the world, which also turns Shaolin Temple into the most     7    (influence) “holy land” of martial arts in the world.

Chinese civilization     8     its thousands of years of history is just like an old man,     9    (remain)tough and intelligent. No matter what happens in the world, he is always standing there with a big smile and     10     inclusive attitude.

Deep in the jungle, the Maya built an empire (帝国). And now, scientists are unlocking more secrets about this ancient civilization with the     1     (discover) of 417 cities dating back to 2,000 years ago, said The Washington Post. The cities were found to be connected by 110 miles (177 kilometers) of “highways” in May. They     2     (consist) of the “world’s first-ever extensive system of highways”. The “highways”, as Reuters reported, were     3     (space) stone roadways. Plus, scientists also found pyramids, ball game courts and water     4     (engineer).

The Maya civilization was “far more advanced than we thought”, noted The Washington Post. The new findings showed that they were already busy     5     (create) cities in world history at the time, CNN reported. They did all this in a jungle environment,     6     is rare and impressive. They had to clear rainforest areas     7     (farm) and built large underground reservoirs to store rainwater.

    8    , by 900 BC, many Maya cities were abandoned, calling an end     9     the empire. Scientists still don’t know why. With new forms of technology, maybe this mystery and others could     10     (uncover), telling us even more about this fascinating civilization.

7 . While DNA from animal bones or teeth can cast light on an individual species, environmental DNA enabled scientists to build a picture of a whole ecosystem.

A core of ice age sediment (沉积物) from northern Greenland has yielded the world’s oldest sequences of DNA. The 2 million-year-old DNA samples revealed the now largely lifeless polar region was once home to rich plant and animal life — including elephant-like mammals known as mastodons (乳齿象), reindeer, hares, lemmings, geese, birch trees and poplars, according to new research published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

The finding is the work of scientists in Denmark who were able to detect and restore environmental DNA — genetic material drop into the environment by all living organisms — in tiny amounts of sediment taken from the Copenhagen Formation, in the mouth of a strait in the Arctic Ocean in Greenland’s northernmost point, during a 2006 expedition.

They then compared the DNA pieces with libraries of DNA collected from both extinct and living animals, plants and microorganisms. The genetic material revealed dozens of other plants and creatures that had not been previously detected at the site based on what’s known from fossils and pollen records.

“The first thing that blew our mind when we’re looking at this data is obviously this mastodon and the presence of it that far north, which is quite far north of what we knew as its natural range,” said study co-author Mikkel Pedersen.

The mix of temperate (温带) and Arctic trees and animals suggested a previously unknown type of ecosystem that has no modern equivalent — one that could act as a genetic road map for how different species might adapt to a warmer climate, the researchers found.

Love Dalen, a professor at the Centre for Palaeogenetics at Stockholm University, said the finding “pushed the envelope” for the field of ancient DNA. “Also, the findings that several temperate species (such as relatives of spruce and mastodon) lived at such high latitudes are exceptionally interesting,” he added.

Further study of environmental DNA from this time period could help scientists understand how various organisms might adapt to climate change. “It’s a climate that we expect to face on Earth due to global warming and it gives us some idea of how nature will respond to increasing temperatures,” he explained.

8 . 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.