首页
登录
职称英语
A Messenger from the Past His people said good-bye a
A Messenger from the Past His people said good-bye a
游客
2024-01-04
22
管理
问题
A Messenger from the Past
His people said good-bye and watched him walk off toward the mountains. They had little reason to fear for his safety: the man was well dressed in insulated clothing and equipped with tools needed to survive the Alpine climate. However, as weeks passed without his return, they must have grown worried, then anxious, and finally resigned, After many years everyone who knew him had died, and a note even a memory of the man remained.
Then, on an improbably distant day, he came down from the mountain. Things had changed a bit: it wasn’t the Bronze Age anymore, and he was a celebrity.
When a melting glacier released its hold on a 4,000-year-old corpse in September, it was quite rightly called one of the most important archeological finds of the century. Discovered by a German couple hiking at 10,500 feet in the Italian Tyrol near the Austrian border, the partially freeze-dried body still wore remnants of leather garments and boots that had been stuffed with straw for insulation. The hikers alerted scientists from the University of Innsbruck in Austria, whose more complete examination revealed that the man was tattooed on his back and behind his knee. At his side was a bronze ax of a type typical in southern central Europe around 2000 B C. On his expedition--perhaps to hunt or to search for metal ore--he had also carded an all-purpose stone knife, a wooden backpack, a bow and a quiver, a small bag containing a flint lighter and kindling, and an arrow repair kit in a leather pouch.
Such everyday gear gives an unprecedented perspective on life in early Bronze Age Europe. "The most exciting thing is that we genuinely appear to be looking at a man who had some kind of accident in the course of a perfectly ordinary trip," says archeologist Ian Kinnes of the British Museum. "These are not artifacts placed in a grave, but the fellow’s own possessions."
Unlike the Egyptians and Mesopotamians of the time, who had more advanced civilizations with cities and central authority, the Ice Man and his countrymen lived in a society built around small, stable villages. He probably spoke in a tongue ancestral to current European languages. Furthermore, though he was a member of a farming culture, he may well have been hunting when he died, to add meat to his family’s diet. X-rays of the quiver showed that it contained 14 arrows. While his backpack was empty, careful exploration of the trench where he died revealed remnants of animal skin and bones at the same spot where the pack lay. There was also the remainder of a pile of berries. Clearly the man didn’t starve to death.
A The trench provided him so with shelter from the elements, and he also had a braided mat of grass to keep him warm. B If injury or illness caused the Ice Man’s death, an autopsy on the 4,000-year-old victim could turn up some clues. C The circumstances of his death may have preserved such evidence, as well as other details of his life. D Freeze-dried by the frigid climate, his inner organs and other soft tissues are much better preserved than those of dried-up Egyptian mummies or the waterlogged Scandinavian "Bog Men" found in recent years.
One concern, voiced by archeologist Colin Renfrew of Cambridge University, is that the hot TV lights that greeted the hunter’s return to civilizetion may have damaged these fragile tissues, jeopardizing a chance to recover additional precious genetic information from his chromosomes. If not, Renfrew says, "it may be possible to get very long DNA sequences out of this material. This is far and away the most exciting aspect of the discovery."
For the time being, all biological research has literally 68 been put on ice at the University of Innsbruck while an in ternational team of experts, led by researcher Konrad Spindler, puzzlees out a way to thaw the body without destroying it. As sensational as it sounds, it remains to be seen how useful 4,000-year-old human DNA will really be. "The problem is that we are dealing with a single individual," says evolutionary biologist Robert Sokal of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. "In order to make statements about the population that existed at the time, we need more specimens."
The wish for more messengers from the past may yet come true. Five more bodies of mountain climbers, all of whom died within the past 50 years, have emerged from melting Austrian mountain ice this summer. The Ice Man’s return from the Tyrol has demonstrated that the local climate is warmer now than it has been for 4,000 years. People are beginning to wonderland plan for--what the melting ice may reveal next.
"No one ever thought this could happen," says Christopher Stringer, an anthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London. "The fact that it has occurred once means that people will now be looking for it again." [br] The author believes that more messengers from the past can be got because
选项
A、four more Ice Men were found in Austrian.
B、melting ice due to the warmer climate may reveal something.
C、there will be more and more people looking for them.
D、scientists have invented more advanced technologies to find them.
答案
B
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3334288.html
相关试题推荐
Choosethecorrectletter,A,BorC.[br]Peoplecarryingitemsthatarenotal
Choosethecorrectletter,A,BorC.[br]ThenumberofpeopleworkingatSydne
Whatisthemainopinionofeachofthefollowingpeople?ChooseFIVEanswersfr
Whatisthemainopinionofeachofthefollowingpeople?ChooseFIVEanswersfr
Whatisthemainopinionofeachofthefollowingpeople?ChooseFIVEanswersfr
WhatisChloeconcernedabout?[br][originaltext]Youwillheartwopeoplecall
WhatisChloeconcernedabout?[br][originaltext]Youwillheartwopeoplecall
Whichattitudeisassociatedwiththefollowingpeopleduringtheconversation?
Whichattitudeisassociatedwiththefollowingpeopleduringtheconversation?
Whichattitudeisassociatedwiththefollowingpeopleduringtheconversation?
随机试题
Wehavebeentoldthatundernocircumstances_________________________(我们可以使用办公
【B1】[br]【B6】A、inB、ofC、toD、forD本题考查的是介词的运用和固定搭配。“forthemostpart”这个词组的意思是
Asmenage,theytypicallygetlessandlessdeepsleep—afactthatcould【B
[originaltext]M:Weseemtobehavingthisconversationoverandoveragain.W:
(2017年真题)甲上市公司2015年1月2日以2500万元取得乙公司(此前甲
最常见的痤疮损害为A.脓疱 B.炎性丘疹 C.粉刺 D.结节 E.囊肿
我们用“羞花”来形容历史上哪位美女?( )A、西施 B、杨贵妃 C、貂禅
下列不属于环境影响评价的主要技术内容的是()。 A.分析该项目环境影响的来
某消防工程视同单位在消防给水系统施工前制定了设备进场前的检验方案,其中稳压泵进场
A.秋、冬季 B.春末夏初 C.开花前或果实未成熟时 D.花含苞待放时
最新回复
(
0
)