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
2010-01-18
50
问题
Scotland Yard’s top fingerprint expert, Detective Chief superintendent Gerald Lambourne had a request from the British Museum’s Prehistoric department to force his magnifying glass on a mystery somewhat outside my usual beat. This was not a question of Whodunit, but Who Was It. The blunt instruments he pored over were the antlers of red deer, dated by 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 Therford, 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, 500B. C.
Flint was especially used for ax-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. Sieveking, the museum’s deputy director of the excavations, was the dried 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 as individuals as people who have left few relics, who could not read or write, but who may have had much more intelligence than had been supposed in the past."
Chief Superintendent Lambourne, who 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 hand--that part of the hand just below the fingers where most pressure would be brought to bear the wielding of a pick.
After 25 years’ specialization in the Yard’s fingerprints department, Chief Superintendent Lambourne knows all about ridge structures--technically known as the "tri-radiate section".
It was his identification of that part of the hand that helped to incriminate some of the Great Train Robbers. In 1995 he discovered similar handprints on a bloodstained tee-maker on a golf-course where a woman had been brutally murdered. They eventually led to the killer, after 4, 065 handprints had been taken.
Chief Superintendent Lamboure had 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 nothing about the age, physical characteristics, even sex of the person who left them," he says. "Even the finger prints of 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.
The idea that mud was applied to the antlers deliberately was ______.
选项
A、the result of an inspired guess
B、a possibility based on reasoning from facts
C、an obvious conclusion
D、a conclusion based on other similar cases
答案
B
解析
事实细节题。文中第五段提到,在开掘的过程中,发现鹿角的周围有干泥,因而推测当时人们故意在鹿角上裹泥巴以方便握取和使用。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/WCvO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
WhatwasthevolumeofBritishexportstoChinain2017?
TheJointStatementontheFrameworkforCooperationstipulatesthatboththepartiesshouldundertakeverificationactivities.
Britishpeoplearefarmoresophisticatedaboutbeveragesthantheywere50yearsago.WitnesstheStarbucksrevolutionandyou’
Britishpeoplearefarmoresophisticatedaboutbeveragesthantheywere50yearsago.WitnesstheStarbucksrevolutionandyou’
Britishpeoplearefarmoresophisticatedaboutbeveragesthantheywere50yearsago.WitnesstheStarbucksrevolutionandyou’
AnarticlepublishedrecentlyintheprestigiousscientificjournalNatureissheddingnewlightonanimportant,buthithertol
A、PromptdeliveryofthegoodsbeforeChristmasisthemostimportant.B、Toppriorityshouldbegiventothecompetitiveandrea
Nutritionalstatementsthatdependonobservationoranecdoteshouldbegivenseriousconsideration,butconsiderationshouldal
Nutritionalstatementsthatdependonobservationoranecdoteshouldbegivenseriousconsideration,butconsiderationshouldal
A、Wedidn’tfindonequalifiedapplicant.B、Nobodyappliedforthejob.C、Onlyonepersonappliedforthejob.D、Weinterviewed
随机试题
高繚仕于晏子,晏子逐之。左右辣日:“高繚之事夫子三年,曾無以爵位而逐之,其義可乎?”晏子日:“婴仄陋之人也,四維之然後能直。今此子事吾三年,未嘗弼吾遏,是以逐之也。”今此子事吾三年,未嘗弼吾過,是以逐之也。
向不特定对象公开发行的证券票面总值超过一定数额的,应当由承销团承销,这个数额是人民币()
下列关于清算企业分配剩余财产表述正确的有()
脱髓鞘疾病病理过程中的具有特征性的表现是
自动冲洗显影液中加入坚膜剂的作用是()。
某宗已抵押的收益性房地产,年有效毛租金收入500万元,年房屋折旧费30万元,维修费、保险费、管理费等50万元,水电供暖费等40万元,营业税及房地产税等65万元,年抵押贷款还本付息额70万元,租赁合同约定,保证合法、安全、正常使用所需的一切费用均由出租人负担
下列对于建设期利息概念的表述,正确的是()。
中国公民王某就职于国内A上市公司,2014年收入情况如下:(1)1月1日起将其位于市区的一套公寓住房按市价出租,每月收取租金3800元。1月因卫生间漏水发生修缮费用1200元,已取得合法有效的支出凭证。(2)在国内另一家公司担任独立董事,3月取得该公司
建立国际政治经济新秩序的基础是()。
“没有革命的理论,就没有革命的运动。”这句话说明()。
最新回复
(
0
)