题型：阅读理解 题类：常考题 难易度：普通
吉林省白城市镇赉高中2018-2019学年高二下学期英语期中考试试卷
A new discovery may change how scientists think about prehistoric humans. Human history is more of a war movie than a romantic comedy, at least as far as other animals are concerned; we may be causing one of the planet's great extinction events at the moment. But a recent discovery means humans might not be as destructive as we thought.
Large animals have a history of disappearing when humans move to their areas. Scientists have long believed that humans simply hunted big animals because people are really good at hunting. For example, scientists thought humans arrived in Madagascar around 4,000 years ago, but only two thousand years later, giant lemurs, giant tortoises and elephant birds disappeared from the island. Many scientists thought humans had something to do with that rapid drop in biodiversity(生物多样性).
At least, that's what scientists thought until a group of researchers dug up a lot of bones in Madagascar recently. These bones belonged to the elephant bird, a kind of extinct bird that weighed up to 1,000 pounds. The huge bones were covered in cuts that clearly came from a human hunter. The researchers found that the humans had killed the birds 10,000 years ago...Thousands of years before scientists believed humans had come to the island.
"Our research provides evidence of human activity in Madagascar more than 6,000 years earlier than suspected, which shows that a different extinction theory is required to understand the huge biodiversity loss that has happened on the island." explained James Hansford, one of the researchers. "Humans seem to have coexisted with elephant birds and other now-extinct species for over 8,000 years, clearly with limited negative influence on biodiversity for most of this period."
If humans lived among large animals for thousands of years without wiping them out, then maybe our species can't wipe other species out. Rather, extinction is more of a habit we've learned. Perhaps we can unlearn it too.
He was a poet known for the nostalgia he describes in his poems. Now, it's time: for us to express our nostalgia for this great writer.
On Dec 14, 2017, the famous Chinese poet Yu Guangzhong passed away in Taiwan. Born in 1928 in Nanjing, Jiangsu, Yu studied in Sichuan when he was young. At that time, he had showed great interest in Chinese poems and spent a lot of his free time trying writing poems himself. Then he managed to publish his first poem at the age of 20. A year later, Yu and his family moved to Taiwan. He lived and worked there until his death.
Nostalgia is Yu's masterpiece in which he expresses his homesickness for the Chinese mainland when he was in Taiwan.
Published in 1971, the poem remains highly popular among Chinese speakers worldwide. Even those who know little about literature are familiar with lines from the poem. The poem is included in Chinese high school textbooks.
Besides his achievements in poetry, Yu was also a successful essay writer, critic and translator. He once translated English poet Siegfried Sassoon's poem In Me, Past, Present, Future Meet into Chinese. It is regarded as an accurate and powerful translation, in which the most famous line is “心有猛虎, 细嗅蔷薇” for “In me the tiger sniffs the rose”.
Yu spent his whole life writing. “The reason why I stick to writing till today comes down to my passion for the Chinese language,” he once said in a 2015 interview. He then added that this passion was strengthened by his love for his mother and His motherland.
Now, let's appreciate the poem Nostalgia.
When I was young, But later on, Nostalgia was a tiny, tiny stamp. Nostalgia was a low, low grave. Me on this side, Me on this outside, Mother on the other side. And my mother was inside. When I grew up, And at present, Nostalgia was a narrow boat ticket. Nostalgia becomes a shallow strait. Me on this side, Me on this side, Bride on the other side. Mainland on the other side. |
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