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1.What is one difficulty facing the historian attempting to reconstruct the
distant past? There are ... available.
2.What have historians assumed about calendars? They came into being with
...
3.What have historians found about the code engraved on walls, bones and so
on? It is ... in fact.
Future historians will be in a unique position when they come to record the
history of our own times. They will hardly know which facts to select from the
great mass of evidence that steadily accumulates. What is more, they will not
have to rely solely on the written word. Films, videos, CDs and CD-ROMS are just
some of the bewildering amount of information they will have. They will be able,
as it were, to see and hear us in action. But the historian attempting to
reconstruct the distant past is always faced with a difficult task. He has to
deduce what he can from the few scanty clues available.Up to now, historians
have assumed that calendars came into being with the advent of agriculture, for
then man was faced with a real need to understand something about the seasons.
Recent scientific evidence seems to indicate that this assumption is
incorrect.Historians have long been puzzled by dots, lines and symbols which
have been engraved on walls, bones, and the ivory tusks of mammoths. The nomads
who made these markings lived by hunting and fishing during the last Ice Age
which began about 35,000 B.C. and ended about 10,000 B.C. By correlating
markings made in various parts of the world, historians have been able to read
this difficult code. They have found that it is connected with the passage of
days and the phases of the moon. It is, in fact, a primitive type of calendar.
It has long been known that the hunting scenes depicted on walls were not simply
a form of artistic expression_r. They had a definite meaning, for they were as
near as early man could get to writing. It is possible that there is a definite
relation between these paintings and the markings that sometimes accompany them.
It seems that man was making a real effort to understand the seasons 20,000
years earlier than has been supposed. |
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发表于 2018-5-31 22:50:14