Lesson 1 Finding fossil man发现石化人
鄅国We can read of things that happened 5,000 years ago in the Near East, where people first learned to write.
But there are some parts of the world where even now people cannot write. The only way that they can prerve their history is to recount it as sagas--legends handed down from one generation of story-tellers to another. The legends are uful becau they can tell us something about migrations of people who lived long ago, but none could write down what they did. Anthropologists wondered where the remote ancestors of the Polynesian peoples now living in the Pacific Islands came from. The sagas of the people explain that some of them came from Indonesia about 2,000 years ago.
But the first people who were like ourlves lived so long ago that even their sagas, if they had any, are forgotten. So archaeologists have neither history nor legends to help them to find out where the first 'modern men' came from.
黑教室Fortunately, however, ancient men made tools of stone, especially flint, becau this is easier to shape than other kinds. They may also have ud wood and skins, but the have rotted away. Stone does not decay, and so the tools of long ago have remained when even the bones of the men who made them have disappeared without trace.
Lesson 2 Spare that spider别伤害蜘蛛腰围2尺6
Why, you may wonder, should spiders be our friends ? Becau they destroy so many incts, and incts include some of the greatest enemies of the human race. Incts would make it impossible for us to live in the world; they would devour all our crops and kill our flocks and herds, if it were not for the protection we get from inct-eating animals. We owe a lot to the birds and beasts who eat incts but all of them put together kill only a fraction of the number destroyed by spiders. Moreover, unlike some of the other inct eaters, spiders never do the least harm to us or our belongings.
Spiders are not incts, as many people think, nor even nearly related to them. One can tell the difference almost at a glance for a spider always has eight legs and an inct nev
er more than six.
How many spiders are engaged in this work on our behalf ? One authority on spiders made a census of the spiders in a grass field in the south of England, and he estimated that there were more than 2,250,000 in one acre, that is something like 6,000,000 spiders of different kinds on a football pitch. Spiders are busy for at least half the year in killing incts. It is impossible to make more than the wildest guess at how many they kill, but they are hungry creatures, not content with only three meals a day. It has been estimated that the weight of all the incts destroyed by spiders in Britain in one year would be greater than the total weight of all the human beings in the country.
Lesson 3四级听力答案 Matterhorn man马特霍恩山区人
Modern alpinists try to climb mountains by a route which will give them good sport, and the more difficult it is, the more highly it is regarded. In the pioneering days, however, this was not the ca at all. The early climbers were looking for the easiest way to the top becau the summit was the prize they sought, especially if it had never been attained be
三水冠军城fore. It is true that during their explorations they often faced difficulties and dangers of the most perilous nature, equipped in a manner which would make a modern climber shudder at the thought, but they did not go out of their way to court such excitement. They had a single aim, a solitary goal--the top!
It is hard for us to realize nowadays how difficult it was for the pioneers. Except for one or two places such as Zermatt and Chamonix, which had rapidly become popular, Alpine villages tended to be impoverished ttlements cut off from civilization by the high mountains. Such inns as there were were generally dirty and flea-ridden; the food simply local chee accompanied by bread often twelve months old, all washed down with coar wine. Often a valley boasted no inn at all, and climbers found shelter wherever they could--sometimes with the local priest (who was usually as poor as his parishioners), sometimes with shepherds or chee-makers. Invariably the background was the same: dirt and poverty, and very uncomfortable. For men accustomed to eating ven-cour dinners and sleeping between fine linen sheets at home, the change to the Alps
奉献
must have been very hard indeed.
Lesson 4 Seeing hands 看手
职业方向
In the Soviet Union veral cas have been reported recently of people who can read and detect colours with their fingers, and even e through solid doors and walls. One ca concerns an 'eleven-year-old schoolgirl, Vera Petrova, who has normal vision but who can also perceive things with different parts of her skin, and through solid walls. This ability was first noticed by her father. One day she came into his office and happened to put her hands on the door of a locked safe. Suddenly she asked her father why he kept so many old newspapers locked away there, and even described the way they were done up in bundles.
Vera's curious talent was brought to the notice of a scientific rearch institute in the town of UIyanovsk, near where she lives, and in April she was given a ries of tests by a special commission of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federal Republic. During the tests she was able to read a newspaper through an opaque screen and, stranger still, by moving her elbow over a child's game of Lotto she was able to describe the figure
s and colours printed on it; and, in another instance, wearing stockings and slippers, to make out with her foot the outlines and colours of a picture hidden under a carpet. Other experiments showed that her knees and shoulders had a similar nsitivity. During all the tests Vera was blindfold; and, indeed, except when blindfold she lacked the ability to perceive things with her skin. It was also found that although she could perceive things with her fingers this ability cead the moment her hands were wet.
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