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  3. For more than a mile, the desert in southern Peru has a curious ruler-straight and tack-sharp design made by rocks. The wanderin

For more than a mile, the desert in southern Peru has a curious ruler-straight and tack-sharp design made by rocks. The wanderin

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问题     For more than a mile, the desert in southern Peru has a curious ruler-straight and tack-sharp design made by rocks. The wandering mule paths that cross it only emphasize its precision.

    Throughout hundreds of square miles of arid plateau, other such markings around, most of them concentrated between the towns of Naz-ca and Palpa. Known as the Nazca Lines, they form a geometric melange of quardrangles, triangles, and trapezoids. The markings also form spirals and flowers, narrow lines that extend more than five miles, and a desert zoo of giant creatures—birds, reptiles, whales, a monkey, and a spider—all made by stones whose patterns can only be seen from the air.
    Because some of the figures resemble the ones that decorate Nazca pottery, archaeologists attribute the lines to the Nazcas, a coastal people whose culture rose, flourished, and declined between 100 B. C. and A. D. 700.
    Making the patterns must have been extremely time-consuming. The Nazcas must have cleared millions of rocks to expose the lighter ground beneath them, piled the rocks in rows, and created designs that, in this nearly rainless region, can last thousands of years.
    But why did they construct them? Nobody really knows. There have been many guesses. Some say that they were prehistoric roads, or farms. Others say they were signals or offerings to celestial beings. It has also been suggested that they constitute a giant astronomical calendar, an almanac for farmers who wished to predict the return of water to valley streams. One study did ascertain that some of the lines point to solstice positions of the sun and moon in ancient times, as well as to the rising and setting points on the horizon of some of the bright stars. But none of the theories have proven to be correct.
    And so the mystery remains, including the most tantalizing question of all: why did the Nazcas create immense designs that they themselves could never see, designs that people nowadays can only see from the air?
    One person who worked to find out the answer was Maria Beiche. For over forty years she photographed and charted "las lineas" , striving to complete a map of the hundreds of designs and figures of this area, which is some thirty miles long and threaded by the Pan American highway.
    This determined German-born mathematician slept on a camp cot behind her car on the rocky, grassless Peruvian "pampa" , and even when she was elderly, got up before daylight to conduct her research.
    She scorned the suggestion that the markings may have been airfields for outer-space visitors to earth during prehistoric times. "Once you remove the stones, the ground is quite soft," she said. "I’m afraid the spacemen would have gotten stuck. "
    Although Maria Reiche was not able to find the answer, she crusaded to preserve the patterns so that others following her might have a chance to do so.
Why do people name the patterns the Nazca Lines?
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答案Because some of the figures resemble the ones that decorate Nazca pottery．
解析 (参见第三段第一句话。)
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本试题收录于： A类竞赛（研究生）题库大学生英语竞赛（NECCS）分类
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