首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Scotland Yard’s top fingerprint expert, Detective Chief Superintendent Gerald Lambourne had a request from the British Museum’s
Scotland Yard’s top fingerprint expert, Detective Chief Superintendent Gerald Lambourne had a request from the British Museum’s
admin
2011-01-02
48
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.
选项
答案
C
解析
推断题。第三段段末提到,由在英国许多地方发现的工具可知,新石器时期的人大量使用燧石,由此推断,那些被发现的工具应该是由燧石制成的,可见答案为C。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/1ReO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
InrecentyearsAmericansocietyhasbecomeincreasinglydependentonitsuniversitiestofindsolutionstoitsmajorproblems.
TheDeathofaSpouseFormuchoftheworld,thedeathofRichardNixonwastheendofacomplexpubliclife.Butresearchers
Nowastothematteroflying.Youwanttobeverycarefulaboutlying;otherwiseyouarenearlysuretogetcaught.Oncecaught
Americansoftentrytosaythingsasquicklyaspossible,soforsomeexpressionsweusethefirstlettersofthewordsinstead
Inacompetitiveandfast-pacedmodernsociety,busybusinessexecutivesaresoengrossingintheirworkthattheyhardlyknow
A、ItvotedtoapprovedthelawB、ItvotedtosubmittothefederaleducationreformlawwhenconflicthappenedC、Itvotedtoqui
ThomasJefferson,whodiedin1826,loomseverlargerasafigureofspecialsignificance.Americans,ofcourse,arefamiliarwi
Shoppingforclothesisnotthesameexperienceforamanasitisforawoman.Amangoesshoppingbecauseheneedssomething.
SimonedeBeauvoir’sworkgreatlyinfluencedBettyFiredan’s—indeed,madeitpossible.Why,then,wasitFriedanwhobecamethe
A、price.B、quality.C、status.D、safety.C
随机试题
脉络膜转移癌最常见的原发肿瘤,男性与女性患者分别是()
在执行中,双方当事人可以自行和解。( )
S公司为高新技术企业,有A、B、C三个资产组,每个资产组负责不同的项目,能够产生独立的现金流。假定S公司的全部资产均为固定资产,由于行业竞争激烈,技术更新速度快,2020年末S公司部分资产出现减值迹象,相关资料如下:(1)A资产组为一条完整的生产线,主要
一个完善的物流信息系统包括()层次。
神经衰弱的主要症状包括()。
甲、乙、丙、丁、戊分别住在同一个小区的1、2、3、4、5号房子内。现已知:①甲与乙不是邻居;②乙的房号比丁小;③丙住的房号数是双数;④甲的房号比戊大3号。根据上述条件,丁所住的房号是:
已知二叉树后序遍历序列是dabec,中序遍历序列是debac,它的前序遍历序列是
若有以下程序:#include<iostream>usingnamespacestd;intmain(){charstr[10];cin>>str;cout<<str<<
JobPositionsAvailable:IntimaRestaurant,18EastSecondAvenue,NewYork,NY1003IntimaRestaurant,AlDenteMagazine’sChoi
Whenyouaresmall,allambitionsfallintoonegrandcategory:whenI’mgrownup.WhenI’mgrownup,yousay,I’llgoupinspa
最新回复
(
0
)