1 . The Silk Road is the name of different roads that long ago connected Europe, Africa and Asia. People reached these different places along these roads. Scientists believe people began to travel the Silk Road about 3000 years ago. By the time the Chinese silk trade became important in the world, the Silk Road covered almost 6500 kilometers. It spread from Rome to China, which is from the West to the Far East.
Traders travelling along the Silk Road carried silk, of course. They also carried and traded spices (香料), cloth, valuable stones and gold.
There is a famous old story along the old road. It is said that Roman soldiers travelled through central Asia. They started to live somewhere near the ancient Chinese village of Liqian. Sortie of these Romans married local Chinese women and the story of blue-eyed villages of China was started.
During its busiest period, the Silk Road allowed people from many different cultures and countries to meet each other and mix. The Silk Road allowed the sharing of valuable goods and new ideas. These included people and trading goods from the Mediterranean, Persian, Magyar, Armenian, Bactrian, Indian and Chinese areas. All these peoples travelled the Silk Road, and they shared goods, stories, languages, and cultures.
In modern times, the old Silk Road routes (路线) are still used, but now they are crossed by trains instead of camels and horses. There is even a Silk Route Museum in Jiuquan in China. It has over 35,000, objects from all along the Silk Road. In this way, China protects the history of many countries and peoples.
1. How many kilometers did the Silk Road cover?| A．About 3000. | B．Nearly 6500. | C．Almost 2000. | D．Over 35,000. |
| A．Silk. | B．Cloth. | C．Gold. | D．Tea. |
| A．Valuable things could not be sold along the Silk Road. |
| B．The Silk Road allowed people from different countries to mix. |
| C．Ancient Chinese along the Silk Road maybe able to speak different languages. |
| D．The objects in the museum in Jiuquan in China are from all along the Silk Road. |
| A．History and Geography. | B．Sports World. |
| C．Man and Animals. | D．Popular Science. |
2 . It was in the archives(档案室) of the Archbishop of York that Matthew Collins had a sudden insight: He was surrounded by millions of animal skins.
Another person might say they were surrounded by books and manuscripts written on parchment, which is made from skins, usually of cows and sheep. Collins, however, had been trying to make sense of animal—bone fragments from archaeological digs, and he began to think about the advantages of studying animal skins, already cut into rectangles and arranged neatly on a shelf. Archaeologists consider themselves lucky to get a few dozen samples, and here were millions of skins just sitting there.
In recent years, archaeologists and historians have awakened to the potential of ancient DNA extracted from human bones and teeth. DNA evidence has enriched—and complicated—stories of prehistoric human migrations. It has provided clues to epidemics such as the black death. It has identified the remains of King Richard III, found under a parking lot. But Collins isn't just interested in human remains. He’s interested in the things these humans made; the animals they bred, slaughtered, and ate; and the economies they created.
That’s why he was studying DNA from the bones of livestock—and why his lab is now at the forefront of studying DNA from objects such as parchment and beeswax. These objects can fill in gaps in the written record, revealing new aspects of historical production and trade. How much beeswax came from North Africa, for example?
Collins splits his time between Cambridge and the University of Copenhagen, and it’s hard to nail down exactly what kind of -ologist he is. He has a knack for gathering experts as diverse as parchment specialists, veterinarians, geneticists, archivists, economic historians, and protein scientists (his own background). “All I do is connect people together,” he said. “I’m just the ignorant one in the middle.”
However, it didn’t take long his group to hit their first culture conflict. In science and archaeology, destructive sampling is at least tolerated, if not encouraged. But book conservators were not going to let people in white coats come in and cut up their books. Instead of giving up or fighting through it, Sarah Fiddyment, a postdoctoral research fellow working with Collins, shadowed conservationists for several weeks. She saw that they used white Staedtler erasers to clean the manuscripts, and wondered whether that rubbed off enough DNA to do the trick. It did: the team found a way to extract DNA and proteins from eraser pieces, a compromise that satisfied everyone. The team has since sampled 5,000 animals from parchment his way.
Collins is not the first person to think of getting DNA from parchment, but he’s been the first to do it at scale. Studying the DNA in artifacts is still a relatively new field, with many prospects that remain unexplored. But in our own modern world, we’ve already started to change the biological record, and future archaeologists will not find the same treasure of hidden information in our petroleum - laden material culture. Collins pointed out what we no longer rely as much on natural materials to create the objects we need. What might have once been leather or wood or wool is now all plastic.
1. How is Collin’s study different from the study of other archaeologists?| A．He studies human skins and bones. |
| B．He is the first person to study animal skins. |
| C．He studies objects related to humans and their lives. |
| D．His study can provide clues to previous epidemics. |
| A．a subject covering a wide area |
| B．an area to explore |
| C．a person with special expert knowledge |
| D．a method to carry out research |
| A．his major doesn’t help his research |
| B．he can’t connect experts of different fields |
| C．he finds it hard to identify what kind of -ologist he is |
| D．his study covers a wide range of subjects beyond his knowledge |
| A．Destructive sampling is not allowed in the field of science and archeology. |
| B．Collin made a compromise by only studying copies of books made of animal skins. |
| C．Book protectors were opposed to Collin’s study because his group tracked them for several weeks. |
| D．It is difficult for future archeologist to study what society is like today due to plastic objects. |
| A．A new discovery in archaeology |
| B．A lab discovering DNA in old books |
| C．Archaeology on animals seeing a breakthrough |
| D．Collin's contributions to the identification of old books |
3 . A fresh and gentle wind on your face, soft sand under your feet and blue waters as far as the eye can see. Is there any other Olympic sport that is played in such pleasant conditions as beach volleyball？
“I’ve gone to a lot of beautiful places, and met a lot of beautiful people. That wouldn’t have happened if I had been playing another sport.” said Randy Stoklos, America’s most famous beach volleyball player.
The sport began as a four-a-side game on beaches in Southern California in the 1920s. The first recorded two-man game took place there in 1930, and the first tournament (锦标赛) was held in Los Angeles 18 years later. The winners were awarded a case of Pepsi. In the 1950s, women started playing and the sport soon spread to Europe and South America. Yet at that time, beach volleyball was more an entertainment show than a sport, with beauty contests included. The Association of Volleyball Professionals was founded in 1983 and beach volleyball developed into a fast, athletic sport. Its world-wide popularity won beach volleyball a place at the 1996 Olympics in Atalanta, where 24 male teams and 16 female teams took part. At present, the US and Brazil are the best in the world at beach volleyball.
The game came to China in the early 1990s and there have been national tournaments since 1994. It became an official event at the Eighth National Games in 1997. China’s You Wenhui and Wang Lu finished ninth in the women’s beach volleyball world championships in Brazil.
1. The passage is mainly about ______.| A．the history of beach volleyball |
| B．how to play beach volleyball |
| C．the importance of beach volleyball |
| D．women’s beach volleyball in China |
| A．Beach volleyball was first played like other Olympic: sports. |
| B．Beach volleyball has always been an entertainment show rather than a sport. |
| C．Beach volleyball began on beaches in Souther California. |
| D．Women started playing beach volleyball in South America in 1945. |
| A．In 1948, | B．In 1996. | C．In 1950. | D．In 1997. |
| A．in 1996, beach volleyball became an official event in China |
| B．China’s beach volleyball team is the best in the world |
| C．China’s beach volleyball players won the first place in Brazil |
| D．beach volleyball came to China in the early 1990s |
4 . Few people are aware that Waterloo Bridge, crossed by thousands of daily commuters (每天长途上下班的人) and celebrated as a London landmark, was mainly built by a female workforce.
There are no written or photographic records of the women who built the bridge since the construction company that built it closed in the 1980s and with it went all the records. What’s left is anecdotal evidence, kept alive by the tourist boat skippers who have called it the Ladies Bridge.
During the Second World War, with the majority of the active male labor-force away at the front, women increasingly took on traditionally male roles. By 1944, 25,000 women were working in the construction industry, carrying out back-breaking tasks. These women were permitted to carry out this exhausting and dangerous work on the basis that it would only be temporary and that their pay would be lower than that of men. So the surge (激增) in women working in construction and engineering did not continue after the war.
September sees a series of events celebrating the unknown work of the large female workforce. Musician Claudia Molitor has created a 45-minute musical entitled “the Singing Bridge”, which runs at Somerset House from Sept9th. to Sept25th. In late September, the “Light up the Ladies Bridge” event saw the National Theatre’s fly tower lit up by large scale photographic projections (投影片) of female construction workers working in construction during World War II.
Let’s all celebrate the women who have helped to build the cities in which we live.
1. Why do few people know about the builders of Waterloo Bridge?| A．The records of their work have been lost. |
| B．Female workers received little attention. |
| C．The construction took place long ago. |
| D．Few people know about the bridge. |
| A．There are less female workers in London. |
| B．Waterloo Bridge is popular among artists. |
| C．The story of Waterloo Bridge is better known. |
| D．Many works of art were created during World War II. |
| A．It was a tradition in London. |
| B．They wanted to get a steady job. |
| C．Most men had gone to the battlefield. |
| D．The company offered them better pay. |
| A．Female Workers on the Rise |
| B．A Hidden Treasure in London |
| C．A New London Landmark |
| D．The Story behind the Ladies Bridge |
Considering our limited knowledge, it's not surprising that exploration of the oceans constantly brings about discoveries in various
First, many archaeological finds are made in shallow waters, including whole cities
Amazing biological discoveries are also being made, like the barreleye living 6,000 meters below the ocean's surface. Such discoveries enable us
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In advance of the Allied landings at Normandy, the British planned the aerial bombing of the Amiens Prison in northwest France.
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The most important rule of the road concerns which side to drive on. A large number of accidents in the world happen for this reason, with more and more people
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9 . TRADITIONAL belief has always had it that a not-so-clear-thinking---Vincent Van Gogh cut off his own ear after a fight with the French artist Paul Gauguin in 1888.Van Gogh is said to have handed the ear to a woman named Rachel. Then, doing what any person who had just lost an ear might do, he went home to take a nap.
But a new book titled In Van Gogh’s Ear argues that it was Gauguin who cut off the Dutch painter’s ear. Authors Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans explained inconsistencies(矛盾) in Gauguin’s description of the event and his ability as an expert swordsman(剑客). “Vincent might have attacked him; Gauguin wanted to defend himself and to get rid of this “madman’,……
They believe that Gauguin and Van Gogh agreed to hide the incident. But that doesn’t mean Gogh never dropped a hint about the “real” story. He once told his brother Theo in a letter, “Luckily, Gauguin is not yet armed with machine guns and other dangerous war weapons”.
1. It is widely accepted by people that cut off his ear.| A．Hans Kaufmann | B．Gauguin | C．Rachel | D．Van Gogh himself |
| A．Van Gogh is a Dutch painter |
| B．Gauguin didn’t use a machine gun to cut off Van Gogh’s ear |
| C．Theo is van Gogh’s brother |
| D．Van Gogh had slept for a long time after his ear was cut off |
| A．Van Gogh cut off his own ears. |
| B．It’s not possible Gauguin who cut off Van Gogh’s ear |
| C．Kaufmann and Wildegans wrote the book called In Van Gogh’s Ear |
| D．Van Gogh never dropped a hint about his ear |
| A．Gauguin wanted to kill him |
| B．He was lucky not to be killed by Gauguin |
| C．He hated Gauguin |
| D．He wanted to tell his brother it was who cut off his ear |
| A．Who cut off Van Gogh’s ear? |
| B．The introduction of Van Gogh |
| C．A new book titled In Van Gogh’s Ear |
| D．A Swordsman |
10 . Magic (魔术) is believed to have begun with the Egyptians, in 1700 BC. A magician named Dedi of Dedsnefu was reported to have performed for the pharaoh (法老), or the king. He was also known to have entertained (使娱乐) the slaves who built the pyramids. The “Cups and Balls” trick that he was particularly good at is still performed by magicians all over the world today.
The ancient Greeks and Romans were also fascinated by the idea of magic. Actually, one of their main interests was the art of deception (欺骗). This explains why at that time the priests even built magic devices into their temples. These devices made it possible for doors to open by themselves and wine to flow magically out of statues’ mouths. This was done mainly to make people believe that the priests had unusual power.
Magic however, was not well accepted before the 1800s. Magicians were thought to be freaks(怪物) and, were only allowed to perform in a circus. It was in the 19th century that the magician Robert Houdin came along and changed people’s views and attitudes about magic. It was because of Robert Houdin that many magicians were able to add Dr. or MD to their names. Today magicians try hard to find new ways to show their practiced skills. Magic is now entertainment for families all over the world.
1. What is the best title for the passage?| A．Magical Tricks | B．A Great Magician |
| C．Magic as Entertainment | D．The History of Magic |
| A．amused | B．encouraged | C．attracted | D．moved |
| A．They performed magical tricks to entertain people. |
| B．They made the statues in the temples drink wine as they wished. |
| C．They treated the people with wine flowing down from statues’ mouths. |
| D．They built magic devices in the temples to make doors open by themselves. |
| A．Magic should be used only in temples. |
| B．Magic could only be performed in a circus. |
| C．Magic was performed by freaks and doctors. |
| D．Magic was the major daily activity for the pharaohs. |
| A．Magic began about 3,700 years ago. |
| B．Dedi of Dedsnefu performed magic for kings only. |
| C．Robert Houdin was the first magician to perform magic. |
| D．The “Cups and Balls” trick has been performed for about 1,700 years. |
