ket課文：科學(xué)美國人60秒考古文章

領(lǐng)取《KET、官方PET真題總結(jié)，官網(wǎng)樣卷，必備詞匯，常用口語句型 》

Archeology is always full of mystery and appeal ...

RE2 UNIT 3 兩篇文章的基本結(jié)構(gòu)相似， 提出猜測(cè)和推斷過程， 還有反駁和承認(rèn)的部分。這類類似于破案推理的神秘，引起了極大的興趣。當(dāng)然， 好材料如果有好老師， 良好的氣氛引導(dǎo)，才能體現(xiàn)價(jià)值。那種積極的課堂和學(xué)習(xí)，真的是我從未見過的，從課后交給我的教材中，我能看出他們的細(xì)心， 真是連老師一個(gè)字都沒有錯(cuò)過。

筆記本更加認(rèn)真整潔。

那么今天蜜雪老師也來獻(xiàn)上一篇科學(xué)美國人60秒的考古文章，然后給大家朗讀音頻。

下列文章選自2020年4月美國科學(xué)雜志考古專欄，專門挑選。

與此同時(shí)為大家朗讀本文，我今天因?yàn)槟７滦侣劰?jié)目，語速更快。

古代尿液的考古窗口——蜜雪老師來自蜜雪00英語:0002:54

This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Bob Hirshon.

A 10,000-year-old archaeological site in central Turkey is helping scientists unlock the region's pee-historic past. That's right: the salty residue of ancient urine can reveal how and when humans went from hunter-gatherers to herder-farmers who kept and raised animals in their settlements.

土耳其中部有一個(gè)有10000年歷史的考古遺址，正在幫助科學(xué)家解決這個(gè)地區(qū)的排尿歷史。是的:古代尿液中的鹽殘留可以揭示人類是如何從狩獵收集者變成在定居地保留和飼養(yǎng)動(dòng)物的放養(yǎng)種植者的。

"And so we thought, okay, what's a process that an animal would go through if it was being kept at the site, whether it's corralled between buildings or kept in other specific areas?"

Archaeologist Jordan Abell from Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. He's been studying the settlement of A??kl? H?yük, located on a 16-meter-high mound near Turkey's Melendiz River.

"We thought, okay, well, these animals would be urinating all the time that they were on the mound."

“所以我們想，好吧，如果動(dòng)物留在這個(gè)地方，它會(huì)經(jīng)歷什么過程，無論是被圈在建筑物之間還是放在其他特定的地方？”

他說：“我們想，嗯，這些動(dòng)物在土丘上生活時(shí)總是小便。

In the dry climate of central Turkey, the sodium, chloride and nitrates from all that animal excretion would be trapped in the layers of earth onto which they were originally peed. Excavating those salts, layer by layer, should provide a timeline of animal populations at the site.

"And so we calculated, using a simple mass-balance approach, an estimate of the number of organisms that it would take to produce these large quantities of salt."

Abell and his colleagues found that from 10,000 years ago to about 9,700 years ago, the site jumped from having just a few large organisms' worth of whiz to more than 1,800.

所以，通過簡(jiǎn)單的質(zhì)量平衡方法，我們可以計(jì)算出生產(chǎn)大量鹽所需的生物數(shù)量。

從10,000年前到9700年前，艾貝爾和他的同事發(fā)現(xiàn)，這個(gè)地方的大型生物數(shù)量已經(jīng)從少數(shù)增加到1800多種。

Of course, people pee too, so the researchers had to figure out which salts were from humans and which were from their animals. Luckily, the location of the salts provided clues—for example, high concentrations in narrow alleyways too small for animals.

"The general thought is that they might have been standing on their roofs and just peeing into these alleyways."

Something that goats and sheep do rarely, if ever. By subtracting contributions from humans, the researchers calculated that there had to be between 800 and 1,300 sheep and goats to account for the remaining pee. The study appears in the journal Science Advances.

假如山羊和綿羊這樣做過，那也是很少見的情況。研究人員計(jì)算，為了產(chǎn)生剩余的尿液，必須有800到1300只綿羊和山羊。這項(xiàng)研究發(fā)表在《科學(xué)進(jìn)步》雜志上。

If true, it means that animal domestication didn't originate solely in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia, as many of us learned in history class.

"Our technique has been able to support that idea, that somewhere outside the Fertile Crescent, in this case in central Turkey, was developing this process at near the same time as has been shown elsewhere within the Fertile Crescent."

An important discovery, since the advent of herding and farming was a turning point for human civilization, leading to cities and modern society.

Abell points out that many archaeological sites have little in the way of physical evidence like bones and artifacts, but presumably all of them have pee. So his advice for other archaeologists who want to track animal and human populations? Look out for number one.

Thanks for listening for Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Bob Hirshon.

假如是真的，那就意味著動(dòng)物飼養(yǎng)并不像我們大多數(shù)人從歷史課上學(xué)到的那樣，只是起源于美索不達(dá)米亞的新月沃土。

“我們的技術(shù)已經(jīng)能夠支持這種觀點(diǎn)，即在新月沃土以外的其他地方，比如這項(xiàng)研究中的土耳其中部地區(qū)，這個(gè)過程幾乎同時(shí)發(fā)展在新月沃土中?！?/p>

因?yàn)樾竽翗I(yè)和農(nóng)業(yè)的出現(xiàn)是人類文明的轉(zhuǎn)折點(diǎn)，所以這是一個(gè)重要的發(fā)現(xiàn)，進(jìn)而催生了城市和當(dāng)今社會(huì)。

艾貝爾指出，很多考古遺址基本上沒有骨骼、器皿等物理證據(jù)，但大概所有遺址都有尿液。他對(duì)其他想跟蹤動(dòng)物和人類物種的考古學(xué)家有什么建議？注意尿液。

感謝您收聽科學(xué)美國人-60秒科學(xué)。我是鮑勃·赫爾尚。

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