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  3. 　　The early history of the alphabet may require rewriting. Four clay artifacts found at an ancient site in Syria have what is po

　　The early history of the alphabet may require rewriting. Four clay artifacts found at an ancient site in Syria have what is po

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问题 　　The early history of the alphabet may require rewriting. Four clay artifacts found at an ancient site in Syria have what is potentially the earliest alphabetic writing ever found. The discovery suggests that the alphabet emerged 500 years earlier than we thought. A popular idea is that the alphabet first appeared in Egypt some 3,800 years ago. But a discovery at the roughly 4,300-year-old site of Umm el-Marra in Syria challenges this. During excavations in 2004, Glenn Schwartz at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland and his colleagues found four lumps of clay the size and shape of human fingers, each inscribed with between one and five symbols.
　　" When I first saw them, I thought: this looks like writing, " says Schwartz, but it was clearly unlike the cuneiform writing typical of the time and place. After considering other possibilities—for instance, that the symbols were from script used by the Indus civilization—Schwartz now argues that these may be early alphabetic letters. He thinks versions of the letters A, L, O and K are present, although it isn’t clear what words they might spell out.
　　If the clay fingers are as old as claimed, they would " blow our current theories about the invention of the alphabet clear out of the water", says Aaron Koller at Yeshiva University, New York. Koller wonders if Schwartz somehow misdated the artifacts, and whether they are really about 1,000 years younger—although Schwartz is sure they aren’t.
　　Benjamin Sass at Tel Aviv University, Israel, says the Umm el-Marra symbols, whatever they are, don’t look like early alphabetic signs to him, so they don’t pose a challenge to existing ideas of the alphabet’s invention. But John Darnell at Yale University is more open to the idea that the alphabet is older than we thought. "All writing has a protohistory no doubt, so the signs Schwartz has published could really represent such a thing, "he says.
　　There is some evidence that there was trade between Egypt and the ancient cities of what is now northern Syria, says Schwartz, so it is still conceivable the alphabet emerged in Egypt and was then carried north to Umm el-Marra. Whatever the sequence of events, the consensus is that the alphabet wasn’t the official writing system of any political state much before about 3,200 years ago. This suggests it was passed down through many generations as an informal script that wasn’t used by royals or the powerful elite.
　　In a second discovery, Felix Hoflmayer at the Austrian Archaeological Institute and his colleagues have found an alphabetic inscription on a shard of ceramic that they say dates from towards the end of this informal period. They discovered the 3,450-year-old inscription, which is just six letters long, near an ancient city wall at the site of Tel Lachish in Israel.
Regarding the authenticity of Ummel-Marra symbols, Schwartz is_________.
选项 A、doubtful
B、indifferent
C、confident
D、puzzled
答案C
解析 态度题。根据题干可定位至第二段。由but it was clearly unlike the cuneiform writing“但它显然不像楔形文字”，argues that these may be eaily alphabetic letters“认为这些可能是早期的字母”，although it isn’t clear what words they might spell out“尽管不清楚它们可能拼出什么单词”，以及第三段中针对Koller对文物年代的质疑表示sure they aren’t“确认没有弄错”可知，对于乌梅尔马拉符号的真实性，施瓦茨是有信心的，故选项C正确。
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