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
59
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
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://kaotiyun.com/show/9ReO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
Formostpeople,theideaofgivingapresentationtoagroupofpeopleisafateworsethandeath.Recentresearchhasshownth
Federaleffortstoaidminoritybusinessesbeganinthe1960’swhentheSmallBusinessAdministration(SBA)beganmakingfederal
Nowastothematteroflying.Youwanttobeverycarefulaboutlying;otherwiseyouarenearlysuretogetcaught.Oncecaught
Imagineyoufoundoutthatideasinventedbyacomputerwereratedhigherbyindependentexpertsthanideascreatedbyagroupo
Ateamofinternationalresearchershasfoundnewevidencethatanendangeredsubspeciesofchimpanzeeisthesourceoftheviru
Westerntattooistsworkwithaspecialelectricalinstrument,somethinglikeadentist’sdrill.Itholdsanumberofveryfinen
A、ThestoriesofHarryPotterarecriticizedinsomeothercitiesinU.SexceptNewMexiconB、YoungpeoplearefascinatedwithH
ThomasJefferson,whodiedin1826,loomseverlargerasafigureofspecialsignificance.Americans,ofcourse,arefamiliarwi
Eliot’sinterestedinpoetryinabout1902withthediscoveryofRomantic.HehadrecalledhowhewasinitiatedintopoetrybyE
SimonedeBeauvoir’sworkgreatlyinfluencedBettyFiredan’s—indeed,madeitpossible.Why,then,wasitFriedanwhobecamethe
随机试题
厂规、厂纪与国家法律不相符时,职工应首先遵守国家法律。()
饥饿时分解代谢可产生酮体的物质是()
在我国开发区是知识经济、信息社会和经济全球化背景下的城市规划实践,并非完美,由于一些地方政府盲目建立或扩大建设所造成的()浪费也是触目惊心的。
生产制造过程质量管理的内容通常包括()。
依照《证券投资基金管理运作管理办法》规定,合理的基金费用可以从( )中支付。
上市公司申请发行新股,应当符合以下具体要求,其中正确的有()
综合性学习是当代教育发展的一个新特点,美术课程特别设置了()这一新的学习领域,旨在发展学生的综合实践能力和探究发现能力。
一个小女孩听爸爸说这次出国回来要给她买电动火车,于是,她到幼儿园对小伙伴说:“我爸爸从国外给我带回一个电动火车,可好玩了。"这是小孩()的表现。
检查软件产品是否符合需求定义的过程称为
OverviewLikemanypeople,youmayexperiencecabinfeverduringthewintermonths.Or,youmaytendtoeatmoreandsleepm
最新回复
(
0
)