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
2024-12-31
17
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 heads 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] The word "minute" in paragraph 6 means ______.
选项
A、recording
B、sixty seconds
C、small
D、instinct
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/3893077.html
相关试题推荐
ScotlandYard’stopfingerprintexpert,DetectiveChiefSuperintendentGerald
ScotlandYard’stopfingerprintexpert,DetectiveChiefSuperintendentGerald
ScotlandYard’stopfingerprintexpert,DetectiveChiefSuperintendentGerald
WhichnameisNOTrelatedtoBritain?A、NorthernIreland.B、Scotland.C、Wales.D、
NewZealandistheworld’slargestexportersofA、lamb.B、expertise.C、honey.D、p
StatisticⅠ.Thedefendantisguiltyornot?Expert:
StatisticⅠ.Thedefendantisguiltyornot?Expert:
StatisticⅠ.Thedefendantisguiltyornot?Expert:
StatisticⅠ.Thedefendantisguiltyornot?Expert:
[originaltext]Interviewer(W)Superintendent(M)W:Well,Mr.Fox.Wouldyoupl
随机试题
ThousandsofSouthKoreans______thestreetsinthecenterofSeoultodemandPre
短路电流中一定存在零序分量的短路类型是()。A.接地短路 B.相间短路 C
2011年版的《中国居民膳食指南》包括( )条内容。A.8 B.9 C.1
音乐活动《两只小象》
冬虫夏草含A.藻胶酸、粗蛋白、甘露醇、钾、碘 B.粗蛋白、D-甘露醇、核苷类
随着中国老龄化进程加快,养老问题困扰不少普通家庭。2012年全国老龄工作会议:截
协调并督促未成年社区服刑人员的法定监护人,帮助其接受义务教育,鼓励有就学意愿的社
简历的筛选应涉及下列哪几个方面?()A.审查简历中的逻辑性 B.审查应聘者的
()一般适用于具有通用技术.性能标准没有特殊要求的招标项目。A.综合标价法
同工况下,轴流泵与混流泵、离心泵相比,其特点和性能有()。A.适用于低扬程大流
最新回复
(
0
)