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
The Mystery of the Mayas The ruins of once-beautiful cities in the forests of Central America tell scientists much about the
The Mystery of the Mayas The ruins of once-beautiful cities in the forests of Central America tell scientists much about the
admin
2013-02-24
26
问题
The Mystery of the Mayas
The ruins of once-beautiful cities in the forests of Central America tell scientists much about the amazing people who built them. But they do not tell why these cities were suddenly abandoned over one thousand years ago. Around A. D. 800, something mysterious happened to the Mayan civilization. Walls and foundations for new buildings were left unfinished. To modern archeologists, it looked as if the cities had been abandoned. What happened? What is the possible explanation of this mystery?
Early Discoveries
In the late 1700’s, a group of explorers cutting their way through a forest in Central America came upon the ruins of an ancient city. Under a tangle of trees and vines, they found large, well-de- signed stone buildings and handsome stone monuments. Some of the stones were covered with a strange kind of writing. Carvings on other stones showed that at least some of the people who lived in the area long before were highly advanced.
Questions Raised
In the next 150 years, more cities were discovered. They seemed to be part of a great civilization stretching across 500 miles (about 800 kilometers) of forest. In 1881, an Englishman named Alfred Maudslay led the first big scientific expedition to study the ruins in the forest. Maudslay was an archeologist, a scientist who studies the remains of ancient communities for clues to how the people lived. Other expeditions followed, but at first they found more questions than answers: Who built the cities, and when the cities were built? How had the people lived here in the middle of a rain forest? Most puzzling of all, what happened to them?
Possible Answers
Gradually, some of the answers have been pieced together. Today, living in parts of Mexico and Guatemala, there are brown skinned Indian people called the Mayas. Scientists believe that the ancestors of these Indians built the cities and carved the stone monuments.
Dates carved on some monuments show that they were put up between A. D. 300 and 800, but bits of buried pottery tell us that the Mayas had lived in some of their cities for hundreds of years earlier. At the height of Mayan civilization, there must have been over two million people living in and around hundreds of beautiful towns and cities.
Archeologists digging in these cities have uncovered roads, a few water reservoirs, and temples built one on top of another. Handsome pictures made of sculptured plaster and painted in bright colors were found on the walls of buildings. Painted pots and pieces of carefully carved jewelry were discovered in tombs under the floors of temples. These pictures and objects showed much about the Mayas’ life. There were scenes of people working, people at war, nobles holding court, priests in fantastic costumes, and Mayan gods.
Possible Errors
For a long time, archeologists worked only on uncovering large Mayan structures, such as temples, palaces, and ball courts. Little effort was made to find the remains of smaller buildings, such as houses. The seeming absence of houses led people to believe that the cities were only the homes of priests and rulers, who lived in the palaces. They thought the ordinary people probably lived in the countryside and came to the cities only for religious ceremonies.
New Evidence
In recent years, new evidence has been uncovered at a number of Mayan cities by different groups of archeologists. The University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia has just finished a twelve-year study of Tikal, the biggest of the Mayan cities. More than one hundred small houses varied, too. Some had many remains of finely decorated pottery. Others had fewer and plainer pieces. The houses were very close together, with little space to raise food, except in small gardens. Change of View
These new findings changed our picture of Mayan life. Dr. William R. Coe, director of the Tikal project, said that Tikal must have been a real city after all, at least for part of its history. It must have had a big population. The differences in the houses show that there were many different classes of people. Perhaps some were craftsmen -- the stonecutters, sculptors, and painters who worked on new temples and monuments.
Mayas’ Impressive Accomplishments
As archeologists studied the Mayas, they became more and more impressed by how much these people had been able to do. In other parts of the world, people were using metal tools before they began building cities. They also had wheels and carts to help move loads, and domesticated animals to push or pull them. The Mayas had none of these things. Their only tools were made of wood or stone. Yet they cut and carved rocks weighing thousands of pounds, and built temples over 200 feet (above sixty meters) tall.
But the Mayas could do more than just make buildings and works of art. One of the most important things they did was learn to write. When some of the Mayan writing was figured out, archeologists discovered how much the Mayas knew about other things, too.
In mathematics, they could count up to the millions. They were the first people to figure out how to use the zero with other numerals to make working with large numbers easier.
In astronomy, too, they were way ahead of other ancient peoples. Records show that the Mayas had observed the skies for centuries, keeping track of what they saw. They knew how long the moon took to go around the earth, and how long the planet Venus took to come back to the same place in the sky. They could predict eclipses, and they worked out a calendar of eighteen twenty-day "months" and one five-day "month" that measured the year as accurately as the calendar we use today.
The reason why people in the past believed that the ordinary Mayan people lived in the countryside was that their knowledge was based on uncovered large buildings.
选项
A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案
A
解析
解题依据在文章第七段。该段写到“由于过去考古学家只注意挖掘大型的玛雅建筑,因而缺乏对普通民房的了解,因此错误地认为普通居民住在乡村”,故答案为[Y]。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/j5u7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
Fewhumanrecordssurviveforlong,the16000-year-oldPaleolithiccavepaintingsatLascaux,France,beingoneexception.Now
ChicagoPublicSchoolsofficialsaregivingthepublicanearlylookatthestrategytheywilluseinDecemberwhendecidingwhi
ChicagoPublicSchoolsofficialsaregivingthepublicanearlylookatthestrategytheywilluseinDecemberwhendecidingwhi
ChicagoPublicSchoolsofficialsaregivingthepublicanearlylookatthestrategytheywilluseinDecemberwhendecidingwhi
ChicagoPublicSchoolsofficialsaregivingthepublicanearlylookatthestrategytheywilluseinDecemberwhendecidingwhi
A、Becausetheywanttoprotectthetrees.B、Becauseitisatradition.C、Becausetheylovenature.D、Becausetheyhavenofamily
A、English,FrenchandGerman.B、English,GermanandItalian.C、English,FrenchandItalian.D、English,GermanandItalian.C信息明示
AnimalTestingAnnastaresatthecomputerscreenandconsidersheroptions.Infrontofheraretwoshapes—aflowerandad
Becausesomanypeopleintheirteensandearly20sareincreasinglysocializing—accessibletoeachothereveryminuteoftheda
Latelyithasbecomepopulartorejecttheadviceofdrinkingeightglassesofwateradayasamedicalmyth.Booksandmedical-
随机试题
A.形寒肢冷B.呼多吸少C.遗精D.小儿骨骼痿软肾精不足可见
Itwas______theinstrumentswerehandled.
胰岛素对脂肪代谢的影响是
()适用于采购标的额较大、市场竞争比较激烈的设备供应,易于使采购人获得较为有利的合同价格。
不容许风险的危险值分值应大于()。
在Word中,当前插入点在表格中某行的最后一个单元格内(如图所示),若在未设定固定行高时敲回车键,则()。
科技资源的分散不仅无法保障科技投入的使用效率,更重要的是无法让有限的科技资源聚焦国家战略决策和重大部署,推动我国科技在重大关键领域的跨越式进步。培育和发展战略性新兴产业是我国当前面临的重大战略机遇。每一个新兴产业领域的推进都是一项系统工程,不仅要选择好方向
当前和今后一段时间,我国政治体制改革的主要任务是
下列关于SQLServer2008视图的说法,错误的是()。
A.dietB.regularlyC.healthyD.commonlyE.reducedF.samplesG.containsH.par
最新回复
(
0
)