People were riding horses much earlier than previously thought, new archaeological finds suggest. Scientists have now traced the

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问题     People were riding horses much earlier than previously thought, new archaeological finds suggest. Scientists have now traced the first conclusive evidence of domesticated horses back to Kazakhstan, about 5, 500 years ago. That’s 1,000 years earlier than we already knew about, and about 2, 000 years before domesticated horses showed up in Europe.
    【R1】______Scientists analyzed the horses’ lower leg bones, and found that they more closely resembled those of later known domestic horses rather than those of ancient wild horses. The researchers also developed a new method to identify the chemical signatures of fat from horse milk, and were able to find these traces on Botai pottery fragments.【R2】______
    "The invention of a method to identify the fat residues left by horse milk in ceramic pots is a spectacular and brilliant advance," archaeologists David Anthony and Dorcas Brown of Hartwick College wrote in an e-mail. " If you’re milking horses, they are not wild. "
    【R3】______For one thing, it meant people could travel much farther, and much more quickly, than before.
    "When people began to ride, it revolutionized human transport," Anthony and Brown said. "We still measure the power of our transportation technologies in horsepower, because for millennia, until just about 150 years ago, that was the fastest transport humans had. "
    【R4】______They were less nomadic than previous residents of that area, which is why archaeologists have an easier time studying their remains, compared to earlier peoples who moved around so often that they didn’t leave large deposits in any one place.【R5】______
    "We’ll probably be looking more widely now trying to apply the same techniques to other sites," Brown said. " I wouldn’t be surprised if we find even earlier ones. I think even if mere are earlier sites, they’re still going to be in the neighboring area, where those big grass plains are. "
A. The advent of horsemanship was a major advance for civilization, right up there with inventing the wheel and making tools out of iron.
B. Finally, a few of the ancient horse skulls bore physical markings on the teeth that could have been made by the use of a harness with a bit in the mouth.
C. Experts suspect mat some of these even earlier groups may have also domesticated houses, though.
D. Comparisons were also made to leg bones from modern and 3, 000-year-old domesticated horses and from wild Siberian horses mat lived more than 20,000 years ago.
E. The Botai people lived in planned-out villages, with houses partly buried underground.
F. Archaeologists have uncovered thousands of horse bones at the site of me ancient Botai culture in Kazakhstan.
【R3】

选项

答案A

解析 上下文语义。空白处之后的内容提及有了马以后人们可以走得更远,在下一段首句中又提及人类开始骑马彻底改变了人类的交通。选项A“马的发现是人类文明的进步,正如人们发明了轮子和用铁来制造工具。”与后文相衔接,符合逻辑。故答案为A。
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