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  3. Some people just won’t shut up. That’s probably been true for a long time—maybe even hundreds of thousands of years. Compute

Some people just won’t shut up. That’s probably been true for a long time—maybe even hundreds of thousands of years. Compute

admin2009-02-15  61
问题     Some people just won’t shut up. That’s probably been true for a long time—maybe even hundreds of thousands of years.
    Computer reconstructions of ancient skulls (头骨) show that our ancestors had ears built like ours as far back as 350,000 years ago. The ears of social mammals(哺乳动物) are typically designed to recognize sounds made by fellow species members. "So, humanlike ears suggest humanlike speech", say researchers from Spain.
    Anthropologists(人类学家) don’t know for sure when people started talking. To get a better idea, the new study focused on a group of fossils(化石) from a place in Spain called Sima de los Huesos. The fossils belong to a species(人种) called Homo heidelbergensis. Modem people did not evolve from H. heidelbergensis, but an ancient group called Neandertals might have.
    Using a computerized scanner(扫描机), the researchers measured ear structures on the remains. Then, they used information about living people to make three-dimensional (三维的)computer models of what the ancient ears looked like. Finally, they measured how sound would pass through the model ears.
    The results showed that the ears could handle almost exactly the stone range of sounds that our ears can today. The researchers suggest that hearing and talking developed in a common ancestor shared by both Neandertals and modern people.
    Other experts are more skeptical(怀疑的). Some studies have turned up conflicting results about the ears and vocal chords(声带) of Neandertals. And anyway, hearing could have evolved long before talking. The two don’t necessarily go together.
    If it’s true that our ancestors could talk more than 350,000 years ago, that brings up another question. What kinds of things did they talk about?
选项 A、our ancestors
B、a kind of ancient human tribe
C、Homo heidelbergensis
D、Neandertals
答案C
解析 根据本题提示，找到"social mammals"，看上一句自然可以找到"our ancestors had ears"，据此浏览四个选项就可以判断出[C]为正确选项。
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