首页
登录
职称英语
Scotland Yard’s top fingerprint expert, Detective Chief Superintendent Gerald
Scotland Yard’s top fingerprint expert, Detective Chief Superintendent Gerald
游客
2023-12-16
8
管理
问题
Scotland Yard’s top fingerprint expert, Detective Chief Superintendent Gerald Lambourne had a request from the British Museum’s Prehistoric Department to focus his magnifying glass on a mystery. "Somewhat outside my usual beat," he said.
This was not a question of Who Did It, but Who Was It. The blunt instruments he pored over were the antlers of red deer, dated by a radio-carbon examination as being up to 5,000 years old. They were used as mining picks by Neolithic man to hack flints and chalk, and the fingerprints he was looking for were of our remote ancestors who had last wielded them.
The antlers were unearthed in July during the British Museum’s five-year-long excavation at Grime’s Graves, near Thetford, Norfolk, a 93-acre site containing more than 600 vertical shafts in the chalk some 40 feet deep. From artifacts found in many parts of Britain it is evident that flint was extensively used by Neolithic man as he slowly learned how to farm land in the period from 3,000 to 1,500 B. C.
Flint was especially used for axe beads to clear forests for agriculture, and the quality of the flint on the Norfolk site suggests that the miners there were kept busy with many orders.
What excited Mr. G. de G. Sieveking, the museum’s deputy director of the excavations, was the fried mud still sticking to some of them. "Our deduction is that the miners coated the base of the antlers with mud so that they could get a better grip," he says. "The exciting possibility was that fingerprints left in this mud might at last identify individuals who have left few relics, who could not read or write, but who may have had much more intelligence than has been supposed in the past."
Chief Superintendent Lambourne, who four years ago had "assisted" the British Museum by taking the fingerprints of a 4,000-year-old Egyptian mummy, spent two hours last week examining about 50 antlers. On some he found minute marks indicating a human grip in the mud. Then on one he found the full imprint of the "ridge structure" of a human hand — that part of the hand just below the fingers where most pressure would be brought to bear in wielding a pick.
Chief Superintendent Lambourne has agreed to visit the Norfolk site during further excavations next summer, when it is hoped that further hand-marked antlers will come to light. But he is cautious about the historic significance of his findings.
"Fingerprints and handprints are unique to each individual but they can tell us nothing about the age, physical characteristics, even sex of the person who left them," he says. "Even the fingerprints of a gorilla could be mistaken for those of a man. But if a number of imprinted antlers are recovered from given shafts on this site I could at least determine which antlers were handled by the same man, and from there might be deduced the number of miners employed in a team."
"As an indication of intelligence I might determine which way up the miners held the antlers and how they wielded them."
To Mr. Sieveking and his museum colleagues any such findings will be added to their dossier of what might appear to the layman as trivial and unrelated facts but from which might emerge one day an impressive new image of our remote ancestors. [br]
选项
答案
C
解析
语义题。文章中第六段先提到了侦探发现了一些minute marks,接着说后来又发现了full imprint,有前后不同、对比的意味,可见minute marks含义和full imprint相反,minute应该意为“小的,不明显的”,用作形容词。
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3279625.html
相关试题推荐
WhichofthefollowingisnotpartofBritian?A、WalesB、EnglandC、ScotlandD、Gre
WhereisBelfast?A、InIreland.B、InWales.C、InNorthernIreland.D、InScotland.
Amongherfellowastronomers,VeraRubinisknownasanexpertobserveroft
Amongherfellowastronomers,VeraRubinisknownasanexpertobserveroft
Amongherfellowastronomers,VeraRubinisknownasanexpertobserveroft
Amongherfellowastronomers,VeraRubinisknownasanexpertobserveroft
______islocatedinthewestofGreatBritain.A、EnglandB、ScotlandC、WelshD、Nor
WhichofthefollowingisNOTapartofGreatBritain?A、England.B、Scotland.C、I
WhereistheHighlandsinU.K.?A、InWales.B、InScotland.C、InEngland.D、InN
Tracingmissingpersonscantakemuchpatientdetectivework.Butaspecialk
随机试题
Theevolutionofsexratioshasproduced,inmostplantsandanimalswithsep
Whydidherneighborsgoupontheroof?[originaltext]M.Hi,Jane...Say,are
试说明运输业总产值包括的具体内容。
绩效管理委员会的主要职责包括()。A.领导和推动企业的绩效管理 B.研究绩效
关于传统知识,下列说法正确的是()。A.世界知识产权组织是目前对传统知识保护与利
患者,女性,40岁,突发腹痛来诊,面色苍白,大汗,BP80/50mmHg,HR1
证券具有极高的流动性必须满足的条件是()。 Ⅰ.很容易变现 Ⅱ.变现的交易
标准作业指变电运维工作应严格执行现场运维标准化作业,细化工作步骤,量化关键工艺,
根据“谁作出行政行为,谁就是被告”原则,经复议的案件,复议机关是被告。()
常用的短期体内诱癌试验不包括A.小鼠睾丸染色体畸变试验 B.小鼠皮肤肿瘤诱变试
最新回复
(
0
)