1 . The ancient silk road was a once in a life time journey. It was one of the most important milestones of trade and culture in world history, and the pioneer, Zhang Qian, could not be easily forgotten by history. He was an outstanding diplomat, traveler and explorer in the Han Dynasty of China, honored as the “the first Chinese to open their eyes to see the world” and “the Columbus of the east”.

In 138 BC, at the reign of Emperor Wudi, Zhang Qian was sent to the west of China for an alliance with the Yue-chi people to fight against the Xiongnu. He started his trip from Chang’an(now Xi’an in Shanxi Province)to Longxi(in Gansu Province). Along the way, no matter how difficult the environment was, his faith was firm. But unfortunately, Zhang was caught by the Xiongnu people just as he left Han, and was held prisoner for ten years.

Zhang finally managed to escape with some of his men and continued to travel west without any dry food or drinking water. Due to the excellent skill of shooting arrows, they survived by eating some birds and other animals along the way. When Zhang at last reached the Yue-chi in Northern India, he was disappointed to find that they didn’t want to fight against the Xiongnu people. On the return journey, Zhang Qian and his men were again caught. It was not until 125 BC that they returned to Chang’an.

Though Zhang hadn’t finished his mission, he brought back first-hand information on the geography, ethnography, and societies of Central Asia. The paths Zhang Qian explored later served as the highways connecting Europe, the Middle East, Mesopotamia, Central Asia, and East Asia. Commodities, crops, animals, religions, ideas, music, technology, and artifacts have been transported by diplomats, merchants and soldiers along this network of highways, which have, since the 19th century been known as the “Silk Road”. Zhang Qian has been remembered as the great explorer that opened up a new era of cultural exchange between East and West with long-lasting treasure well observable today.

2 . Back in 2019, three Chinese scientists were playfighting during a break from working in the Chongqing Province, China. One was kung-fu kicked into a rock, causing an opening in the rock face. Inside, a wonderful fossil (化石) lay undisturbed, preserved for millions of years.

The fossil was a jawed fish, some 439 million years old, and the findings from the Chongqing site, along with other fossil findings in nearby Guizhou province, have excited the science world, as they are 11 million years older than any fish fossil found before. It is a significant discovery because scientists have suspected that jaws evolved (进化) some 450 million years ago, but there had yet to be any fossils that supported this theory. The oldest fossils with jaws found were 439 million years old.

In this discovery, though, there was a new species of shark that was 439 million years old, with a full jaw.

“All these things are still like dreams,” said Zhu Min, who led the research teams that recently published four papers on the discoveries. “Today we are staring at complete early fishes, 11 million years earlier than the previous oldest finds. These are both the most exciting as well as the most challenging fossils I have had the privilege to work on.”

Some of the fish that were discovered were placoderms, an extinct class of fish that have hard plates that formed a shield around the head and trunk, while others were an ancient type of shark.

The scientists found the oldest-known teeth of any vertebrate (脊椎动物), 14 million years older than any previous findings, as well as two other shark descendants. China has been the site of numerous discoveries in recent years, including fossils of feathered dinosaurs, as well as the oldest known animals on Earth.

“The discovery of the Chongqing site is indeed an unbelievable miracle of fossil hunting,” Zhu added. “Suddenly we realized we have found a jaw-dropping fossil site. We are now close to the core of solving the fishy tree of early jawed vertebrates.”

4 . Human footprints in White Sands National Park in New Mexico aroused an argument two years ago when scientists found the prints to be surprisingly old.

In 2021, researchers described more than 60 footprints preserved in New Mexico. Radiocarbon dating(放射性碳定年法)of an aquatic(水生的)plant’s seeds in and around the footprints suggested that the first humans in North America came from Siberia via a land bridge between 23,000 and 21,000 years ago, almost 7000 years earlier than the long-held theory.

But some scientists noted that the aquatic plants used to date the footprints could have absorbed ancient carbon in groundwater. “There’s a possibility then for the plant to give overstated viewpoints on its age,” says Davis, who wrote a criticism of the 2021 paper.

Now, two other ways probably solving the argument, researchers report in the Oct. 6 Science. Pigati and colleagues radiocarbon-dated pollen(花粉)stuck in the same layers as some of the footprints. The pollen came from land plants, mainly pine, avoiding the groundwater carbon issue. The researchers also collected stones above the lowest footprints and used a dating method that estimates how long the stones had been buried.

The pollen gave an age range of 23,400 to 22,600 years old, and the stone an age minimum of about 21,500 years old. Both results proved the previous age estimate. Despite possible errors in the individual dating methods, “the data overall from the new study strongly indicate human presence in the Americas” around 22,000 years ago, says Bente Philippsen, a physicist at the Norwegian University.

One thing is certain: There’s still plenty to uncover about the footprints.Coauthor Kathleen Springer says, “We are learning more every time we go out there,” she says. “This paper is literally the latest chapter in the White Sands story.”

5 . Walled Cities Of The World

There are numerous historical walled cities across the world, whose walls date back several centuries. These walls were fortification (碉堡), a necessity throughout medieval eras for defense. They have been preserved as historical monuments and popular tourist attractions in the modern time.

York, England

The city of York is a medieval city situated in the north of England. Historically, the city was ruled by the Romans, Angles, and the Vikings before being incorporated as part of the Kingdom of England in 954. Located in the city are walls built in 71 AD which have been restored and extended with time.

Xi’an, China

The city of Xian is one of the oldest cities in China. It prospered economically as the eastern last station of the Silk Road. The existing walls were originally built in 770 BC and reconstructed in the 14th century under the Ming Dynasty. The walls are well preserved and are a major tourist attraction in the city.

Quebec City, Canada

Quebec City was a colonial (殖民地的) town which was fortified by the settling Europeans. The walls began to be built in 1608 under both British and French regimes (政权). A fort was constructed by the British as an additional defensive measure and remains undamaged to date. The city’s fortifications were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985.

Mexico City, Mexico

Historically, the City of Mexico gained importance as the Aztec Capital. The Spanish then drove out the Aztecs and rebuilt it as the Spanish Capital. The walls protecting the city were built in 1521. Mexico City is also home to numerous colonial-era buildings which together with the walls are major tourist attractions in the city.

6 . When ancient Egyptians put pen to paper — or, more accurately, ink to papyrus (纸莎草纸) — they took steps to ensure that their words would last forever, a new study suggests. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have found that ancient scribes (抄写员) likely added lead to their inks to help their writing dry. More than 1,000 years later, reports Cosmos magazine, 15th-century European artists employed lead as well. According to the London National Gallery, lead-based pigments (颜料) found in many Old Master paintings are “known to aid the drying of paint films.”

According to a statement from the University of Copenhagen, the study’s authors analyzed 12 papyrus pieces dated to between 100 and 200 C.E., when Egypt was under Roman control. The team used X-ray microscopy to determine the raw materials used in different inks, as well as the chemical structure of the dried ink attached to the ancient paper. Ancient Egyptians began writing with ink — made by burning wood or oil and mixing the resulting material with water — around 3200 B.C.E. Typically, scribes used black, carbon-based ink for the body of text and reserved red ink for headings and other key words in the text. Though black and red inks were most common, shades of blue, green, white and yellow also appeared in ancient texts.

The researchers write that the Egyptians created red inks with iron-based combinations — most likely natural earth pigments. The team also identified the presence of lead. They were bowled over that there was no lead white or other combinations that would typically be present in a lead-based pigment. Instead, the ancient ink’s lead pigments appeared to wrap around the papyrus cell walls and iron particles (微粒).The resulting effect looked “as if the letters were outlined” in lead. This find indicates that the ancient Egyptians invented a system of adding lead to red and black inks specifically for the purpose of sticking the words to paper.

The 12 analyzed papyrus pieces are part of the University of Copenhagen’s Papyrus Carlsberg Collection. The documents originated in Tebtunis, the only large-scale institutional library known to have survived from ancient Egyptian times.

7 . A huge fire broke out on 2 September 1666 in London. The fire, known as the Great Fire of London, was the worst fire in the history of London. It burned down more than three quarters of the old city.

The fire started in the very early hours of Sunday morning in the house of the king’s baker. A strong wind blew the fire from the baker’s house into a small hotel next door. Then it spread quickly into Thames Street. That was the beginning.

At that time, most of the buildings in London were made of wood, so it was easy for the fire to spread quickly. By eight o’clock, three hundred houses were on fire. By Monday, nearly a kilometre of the city was burning along the Thames River. On Tuesday, which was considered the worst day, the fire destroyed many well-known buildings, including the old St Paul’s Cathedral.

The fire burned until finally hundreds of buildings in the path of the fire were destroyed to create a firebreak. The fire then died out eventually with nothing left to burn.

8 . In 2017, Yazd, a city in the desert of central Iran, was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Yazd has long been a focal point for creative inventiveness. It is home to an underground refrigeration structure called yakchat   and an underground irrigation system called qanats. In addition, the city has the wind catcher, a cooling architectural element that has been used for thousands of years. And it has the most wind catchers in the world.

These remarkable towers are a common sight standing above the buildings of Yazd. There are two main forces that drive the air through and down into the structures: the incoming wind and the change in buoyancy (浮力) of air. First，as air is caught by the opening of a wind catcher, it is led down to the house below. Then the air flows throughout the inside of the building, sometimes over underground pools of water for further cooling. Eventually, warmed air will   rise and leave the building through another tower or opening.

Some of the earliest wind-catching technology came from Egypt 3,300 years ago. Here, buildings had thick walls, few windows facing the sun, an opening to take in air and an exit opening on the other side known as malqaf architecture. Iran’s wind-catching technology is widely considered to have added structural improvements to allow for better cooling-such as typically combining it with its existing irrigation system to help to cool the air down before releasing it throughout the home.

The structures, which require no electricity to power them, are now drawing scientists back to the desert city to see what role they could play in keeping us cool in a rapidly heating world. Parham Kheirkhah Sangdeh has extensively studied the scientific application and surrounding culture of wind catchers in contemporary architecture at Ilam   University in Iran. He hopes to see Iran’s wind catchers updated to add energy-efficient cooling to existing buildings. “People need to keep an eye on the past and understand why energy conservation is important,” he says.

9 . English family names or surnames as we know today weren’t widely used until the Norman conquest (征服)of 1066. Before that time there weren’t enough people to make it necessary to use anything other than a single name.     1    people began adding descriptions such as “John the Baker” to tell between people of the same name. These descriptive names eventually became associated with a family, passed down from one generation to the next.

Occupational(职业性的)Surnames.     2     Two common English surname, Smith and Wright, are excellent examples of this. A name ending in “-man” usually suggests a trade name, as in Chapman (shopkeeper).

Descriptive Surnames. Based on a unique quality or physical characteristic of the individual, descriptive surnames often developed from nicknames. Most refer to an individual’s appearance, like size, color or physical shape, for example, Little or Armstrong.     3     Goodchild or Wise are good examples of this.

Geographical Surnames. These are names coming from the location of the land in which the first bearer and his family lived, and are generally the most common origin of English surnames. They were first introduced into England by the Normans, many of whom were known by the name of their personal lands.     4     County names in Great Britain, such as Kent and Devon, have been commonly adopted as surnames.

Other local surnames are from descriptive landscape features such as hills and woods which describe the land where the bearer lives.     5