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
A Messenger from the Past His people said good-bye and watched him walk off toward the mountains. They had little reason to
A Messenger from the Past His people said good-bye and watched him walk off toward the mountains. They had little reason to
admin
2011-01-15
75
问题
A Messenger from the Past
His people said good-bye and watched him walk off toward the mountains. They had little reason to fear for his safety: the man was well dressed in insulated clothing and equipped with tools needed to survive the Alpine climate. However, as weeks passed without his return, they must have grown worried, then anxious, and finally resigned, After many years everyone who knew him had died, and a note even a memory of the man remained.
Then, on an improbably distant day, he came down from the mountain. Things had changed a bit: it wasn’t the Bronze Age anymore, and he was a celebrity.
When a melting glacier released its hold on a 4,000-year-old corpse in September, it was quite rightly called one of the most important archeological finds of the century. Discovered by a German couple hiking at 10,500 feet in the Italian Tyrol near the Austrian border, the partially freeze-dried body still wore remnants of leather garments and boots that had been stuffed with straw for insulation. The hikers alerted scientists from the University of Innsbruck in Austria, whose more complete examination revealed that the man was tattooed on his back and behind his knee. At his side was a bronze ax of a type typical in southern central Europe around 2000 B C. On his expedition--perhaps to hunt or to search for metal ore--he had also carded an all-purpose stone knife, a wooden backpack, a bow and a quiver, a small bag containing a flint lighter and kindling, and an arrow repair kit in a leather pouch.
Such everyday gear gives an unprecedented perspective on life in early Bronze Age Europe. "The most exciting thing is that we genuinely appear to be looking at a man who had some kind of accident in the course of a perfectly ordinary trip," says archeologist Ian Kinnes of the British Museum. "These are not artifacts placed in a grave, but the fellow’s own possessions."
Unlike the Egyptians and Mesopotamians of the time, who had more advanced civilizations with cities and central authority, the Ice Man and his countrymen lived in a society built around small, stable villages. He probably spoke in a tongue ancestral to current European languages. Furthermore, though he was a member of a farming culture, he may well have been hunting when he died, to add meat to his family’s diet. X-rays of the quiver showed that it contained 14 arrows. While his backpack was empty, careful exploration of the trench where he died revealed remnants of animal skin and bones at the same spot where the pack lay. There was also the remainder of a pile of berries. Clearly the man didn’t starve to death.
A The trench provided him so with shelter from the elements, and he also had a braided mat of grass to keep him warm. B If injury or illness caused the Ice Man’s death, an autopsy on the 4,000-year-old victim could turn up some clues. C The circumstances of his death may have preserved such evidence, as well as other details of his life. D Freeze-dried by the frigid climate, his inner organs and other soft tissues are much better preserved than those of dried-up Egyptian mummies or the waterlogged Scandinavian "Bog Men" found in recent years.
One concern, voiced by archeologist Colin Renfrew of Cambridge University, is that the hot TV lights that greeted the hunter’s return to civilizetion may have damaged these fragile tissues, jeopardizing a chance to recover additional precious genetic information from his chromosomes. If not, Renfrew says, "it may be possible to get very long DNA sequences out of this material. This is far and away the most exciting aspect of the discovery."
For the time being, all biological research has literally 68 been put on ice at the University of Innsbruck while an in ternational team of experts, led by researcher Konrad Spindler, puzzlees out a way to thaw the body without destroying it. As sensational as it sounds, it remains to be seen how useful 4,000-year-old human DNA will really be. "The problem is that we are dealing with a single individual," says evolutionary biologist Robert Sokal of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. "In order to make statements about the population that existed at the time, we need more specimens."
The wish for more messengers from the past may yet come true. Five more bodies of mountain climbers, all of whom died within the past 50 years, have emerged from melting Austrian mountain ice this summer. The Ice Man’s return from the Tyrol has demonstrated that the local climate is warmer now than it has been for 4,000 years. People are beginning to wonderland plan for--what the melting ice may reveal next.
"No one ever thought this could happen," says Christopher Stringer, an anthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London. "The fact that it has occurred once means that people will now be looking for it again."
According to paragraph 6, the author use such evidence to refer to
选项
A、proof of how the Ice Man died.
B、clues to how the Ice Man died.
C、theories describing how the Ice Man may have died.
D、the circumstances in which the Ice Man lived.
答案
B
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/thyO777K
0
托福(TOEFL)
相关试题推荐
Soviet’sNewWorkingWeekHistorianinvestigateshowStalinchangedthecalendartokeeptheSovietpeoplecontinuallyatwork.
CommunicatingStylesandConflictKnowingyourcommunicationstyieandhavingamixofstylesonyourteamcanprovideapositiv
CommunicatingStylesandConflictKnowingyourcommunicationstyieandhavingamixofstylesonyourteamcanprovideapositiv
CommunicatingStylesandConflictKnowingyourcommunicationstyieandhavingamixofstylesonyourteamcanprovideapositiv
CommunicatingStylesandConflictKnowingyourcommunicationstyieandhavingamixofstylesonyourteamcanprovideapositiv
Lookatthefollowingpeopleandlistofstatementsbelow.Matcheachpersonwiththecorrectstatement.Writethecorrectlette
AccidentalScientistsAAparadoxliesclosetotheheartofscientificdiscovery.Ifyouknowjustwhatyouarelookingfor,fi
ElephantCommunicationO’Connell-Rodwell,apostdoctoralfellowatStanfordUniversity,hastravelledtoNamibia’sfirst-ev
Howdidthestudentgettheuniversityprospectus?Whocanusethelanguagelab?
随机试题
FamiliesseparatedbytheFloridaStraitswereoverjoyedTuesdayandMiami-basedchartercompaniesrushedtoaddseatsandfligh
甲公司拟向乙公司购买铝材200吨,每吨价格5000元,双方在购销合同中约定的定金数额在发生纠纷时能获得人民法院支持的是()。
依据关税的有关规定,下列费用中不计入该进口货物关税完税价格的是()。
对下列各句中引号的作用分析正确的一项是()。①事业的利益应高于一切私人关系或派别关系,不管这些关系在回忆中是多么“美好”。②现在青年最要紧的是“行”,不是“言”。③“长江后浪推前浪”,每一代的青年都是接力赛的好手。④我们
我国的政府采购实行集中采购和分散采购,纳入集中采购目录的政府采购项目,应当实行集中采购,那么,关于集中采购目录的制定主体,下面说法不正确的是()
HowcanwepracticeourspokenEnglish?Thefirstandthemostimportantthingis【16】yourself.Youshouldalwaysbefullof【
THISWEEKINARTConnectedbyhistorybutmorethananoceanaway,theCanaryIslandsandSanAntonioaregettingtoknoweacho
Horsesareusedinguardingherbs,carryingmeninlandswheretherearenoroads,andhelpingfarmersworktheirland.Pigeons
Indeed,it__________________(正是总裁在投资问题上的仓促决定)eventuallyledtothebankruptcyofourcorporation.
Manydaysseemtobring【B1】______tasksandresponsibilities,allofwhichapparentlymustbetackledrightaway.Youspendaday
最新回复
(
0
)