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
A period of climate change about 130,000 years ago would have made water travel easier by lowering sea levels and creating navig
A period of climate change about 130,000 years ago would have made water travel easier by lowering sea levels and creating navig
admin
2014-06-02
17
问题
A period of climate change about 130,000 years ago would have made water travel easier by lowering sea levels and creating navigable lakes and rivers in the Arabian Peninsula, the study says. Such a shift would have offered early modern humans—which arose in Africa about 200,000 years ago—a new route through the formerly scorching northern deserts into the Middle East. The new paper was spurred by the discovery of several 120,000-year-old tools at a desert archaeological site in the United Arab Emirates. The presence of the tools—whose design is uniquely African, experts say—so early in the region suggests early humans marched out of Africa into the Arabian Peninsula directly from the Horn of Africa, roughly present-day Somalia Previously, scientists had thought humans first left via the Nile Valley or the Far East.
"Up till now we thought of cultural developments leading to the opportunity of people to move out of Africa," said study co-author Hans-Peter Uerpmann, a retired archaeobiologist at the University of Tubingen in Germany. "Now we see, I think, that it was the environment that was the key to this," Uerpmann said during a press briefing Wednesday.
The discovery "leaves a lot of possibilities for human migrations, and keeping this in mind, might change our view completely." During the past few years, a series of tools were discovered at the Jebel Faya site in the U.AE., some of which—such as hand axes—had a two-sided appearance previously seen only in early Africa.
Scientists used luminescence dating to determine the age of sand grains buried with the stone tools. This technique measures naturally occurring radiation stored in the sand. For the climatic data, scientists studied the climate records of ancient lakes and rivers in cave stalagmites, as well as changes in the level of the Red Sea. This warmer period 130,000 years or so ago caused more rainfall on the Arabian Peninsula, turning it into a series of lush rivers that humans might have boated or rafted.
During this period the southern Red Sea’s levels dropped, offering a "brief window of time" for humans to easily cross the sea—which was then as little as 2.5 miles wide, according to Adrian Parker, a physical geographer from Oxford Brookes University in the United Kingdom.
Once humans entered the peninsula, they dispersed and likely reached the Jebel Faya site by about 125,000 years ago, according to the study, published in the journal Science.
Geneticist Spencer Wells called the discovery a "very interesting find," especially because the Arabian Peninsula is becoming a hot spot for archaeological finds—particularly underwater, since the Persian Gulf was a fertile river delta during early human migrations. But he noted that the study doesn’t "rewrite the book on what we know about human migratory history." That’s because tools dating to the same period have already been found in Israel, so it’s "consistent with what we suspected" about an earlier wave of migration into the Middle East, said Wells, director of the National Geographic Society’s Genographic Project. Wells also noted there’s no evidence yet that the migrants in the new paper were our ancestors—the group, and their genes, may have died out long ago.
Bence Viola, of the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, agreed the finding was interesting but not that surprising, also citing the evidence of humans in Israel about 120,000 years ago. Viola, who wasn’t involved in the study, added that the migration route proposed in the paper makes sense on another level—the Arabian Peninsula would have been something early humans were used to. "If you look even today, the environment in the Horn of Africa, in Somalia or northern Ethiopia, is similar to what you see in Oman or Yemen—not like the big desert," Viola noted. "It’s not like they needed to adapt to a completely different environment—it’s an environment that they knew."
Why they made the trek is another question, since they wouldn’t have been hurting for food or resources in their African homeland, Viola noted. "Curiosity," he said, "is a pretty human desire."
Which of the following is TRUE about the ancient Africans mentioned in the research?
选项
A、They moved to other areas to seek for food and resources.
B、The environment in Arabian Peninsula is better for them.
C、They are the ancestors of the present Arabian Peninsula inhabitants.
D、The reason of their migration still remains inconclusive.
答案
D
解析
关于非洲居民迁徙的原因,第8、9段并没有给出确切肯定的说法,维奥拉使用的是would have been和wouldn’t have been这类猜测的语气,因此选项D中inconclusive(不确定的)与之吻合。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/GypO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
TheUnitedStatesbelievesthattheefforttoreducetensionsisservedbyimprovingcommunicationbetweencountriesthathaved
DawnaWalterisoneoftheauthorsleadingthewayinBritainwithherbookthatattemptstohowevenatidy【M1】______
Clearlyifwearetoparticipateinthesocietyinwhichwelivewemustcommunicatewiththeotherpeople.Agreatdealofcomm
WhichofthefollowingisNOTofBritishorigin?
Parakey:SharingOnlineBecomesEverEasierTodayarecipeisn’tpassedonattheThanksgivingtableanymore.It’scommunicat
UniversityAwardsTheBA(orBachelorofArts)andtheBSc(orBachelorofScience)arealsocalled"【1】".SomeBritishunive
Onequestionisoftenriseninresponsetointernational【M1】______testcomparisons:Dotheseresultsreallymeananything?I
IntroductionLinguisticshasbothpracticalandphilosophicalmotivations.Soboth,thefirstandsecondeditionsofthistex
AgricultureinBritainI.Britishagricultureanditssupportingareas:accountforaround(1)______ofGNP.II.Smallpercentage
中国有句古话是这样的:“山不在高,有仙则名;水不在深,有龙则灵。”中国书法好似山上之仙、水中之龙。中国书法同其他书写形式有很大区别。汉字在其漫长的发展史中演化成许多不同的艺术形式,其中包括甲骨铭文、青铜器铭文、篆书、隶书、楷书、行书和草书。
随机试题
查尔斯.琼斯和马瑟斯在文中根据政府提案的来源,将公共政策主体划分为政府内部和政府外部两大类。()
QSC&Vhasbeenthefoundationthat【36】McDonald’ssuccess.QSC&V【37】theMcDonald’s【38】ofQuality,Service,Cleanliness,andValue
风湿性心脏病最常见的瓣膜损害部位是( )
依据《海商法》的规定,下列关于承运人对集装箱装运的货物的责任期间的表述哪个是正确的?
( )应对监理文件、施工文件和工程档案的编制责任、编制套数和移交期限做出明确规定。
垃圾转运站规划除按要求布置收集点外,还应使清运路线合理,以有效地发挥人力、物力作用。路线设计应考虑的方面中,不合理的是()。
“十三五”时期,要推动建立()相结合的旅游紧急救援体系,推进国家旅游紧急救援基地建设,鼓励有条件的旅游企业建立紧急救援队伍。
试对赫尔巴特和杜威的教育思想进行比较。
小明是某幼儿园大班的孩子,在该幼儿园里,他是出了名的“身强体壮”的顽皮鬼,和其他小朋友矛盾不断,今天上午又挨了老师的一顿狠批。事情是这样的:前几天,小明所在的班刚转来了一个小朋友李朋,李朋个子也比较高,这样,小明和李朋成为该班仅有的两个“高个”。小明主动找
A、 B、 C、 D、 E、 B因为n≥2时,有所以,故本题应选B.
最新回复
(
0
)