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  3. Stone tools, animal bones and an incised mammoth tusk found in Russia’s frig

Stone tools, animal bones and an incised mammoth tusk found in Russia’s frig

游客2023-09-13  21
问题     Stone tools, animal bones and an incised mammoth tusk found in Russia’s frigid far north have provided what archaeologists say is the first evidence that modern humans or Neanderthals lived in the Arctic more than 30,000 years ago, at least 15,000 years earlier than previously thought.
    A team of Russian and Norwegian archaeologists, describing the discovery in today’s issue of the journal Nature, said the campsite, at Mamontovaya Kurya, on the Ura River at the Arctic Circle, was the "oldest documented evidence for human presence at this high latitude. " Digging in the bed of an old river channel close to the Ural Mountains, the team uncovered 123 mammal bones, including horse, reindeer and wolf." The most important find," they said, was a four-foot mammoth tusk with grooves made by chopping with a sharp stone edge, "unequivocally the work of humans." The tusk was carbon-dated at about 36,600 years old. Plant remains found among the artifacts were dated at 30,000 to 31,000 years."
    Other archaeologists said the analysis appeared to be sound. But they cautioned that it was difficult, when dealing with riverbed deposits, to be sure that artifacts had not become jumbled out of their true place, and thus time, in the geologic layers. They questioned whether the discoverers could reliably conclude that the stone tools were in fact contemporary with the bones. But in a commentary accompanying the article, Dr. John A. J. Gowlett of the University of Liverpool in England wrote, "Although there are questions to be answered, the artifacts illustrate both the capacity of early humans to do the unexpected, and the value of archaeologists’ researching in unlikely areas."
   The discoverers said they could not determine from the few stone artifacts whether the site was occupied by Neanderthals, hominids who by then had a long history as hunters in Europe and western Asia, or some of the first anatomically modern humans to reach Europe.
    In any case, other archaeologists said, the findings could be significant.
    If these toolmakers were Neanderthals, the findings suggested that these human relatives, who became extinct after 30,000 years ago, were more capable and adaptable than they are generally given credit for. Living in the Arctic climate presumably required higher levels of technology and social organization.
    If they were modern humans, then the surprise is that they had penetrated so far north in such a short time. There has been no firm evidence for modern humans in Europe before about 35,000 years ago. It had generally been thought that the northernmost part of Eurasia was not occupied by humans until the final stage of the last ice age, some 13,000 to 14,000 years ago, when the world’s climate began to moderate. Dr. Gowlett said the new findings indicated that the Arctic region of European Russia was extremely cold but relatively dry and ice-free more than 30,000 years ago. [br] What is the significance of the discovery?
选项 A、It shows that modern humans lived in the Arctic more than 3,000 years ago.
B、It shows that Neanderthals lived in the Arctic more than 3,000 years ago.
C、It shows the oldest documented evidence for human presence at such high latitude.
D、It shows human could use tools 30,000 years ago.
答案 C
解析 判断题。正如考古学家们说的：the campsite...．was the oldest documented evidence for human presence at this high latitude．这个发现证明人类很早就在极北地出现了，这是它的重大意义所在，C项符合．A，B两项未有定论，D项则可由别的考古发现证明，并不是这一次发现的意义所在。
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