新概念4 48篇.docx

1、新概念4 48篇Lesson 1 Finding Fossil manWe can read of things that happened 5,000 years ago in the Near East, where people first learned to write. But there are some parts of the world where even now people cannot write. The only way that they can preserve their history is to recount it as sagas-legends

2、handed down from one generation of story-tellers to another. These legends are useful because they can tell us something about migrations of people who lived long ago, but none could write down what they did. Anthropologists wondered where the remote ancestors of the Polynesian peoples now living in

3、 the Pacific Islands came from. The sagas of these people explain that some of them came from Indonesia about 2,000 years ago.But the first people who were like ourselves lived so long ago that even their sagas, if they had any, are forgotten. So archaeologists have neither history nor legends to he

4、lp them to find out where the first modern men came from. Fortunately, however, ancient men made tools of stone, especially flint, because this is easier to shape than other kinds. They may also have used wood and skins, but these have rotted away. Stone does not decay, and so the tools of long ago

5、have remained when even the bones of the men who made them have disappeared without trace.Lesson 2 Spare that spiderWhy, you may wonder, should spiders be our friends ? Because they destroy so many insects, and insects include some of the greatest enemies of the human race. Insects would make it imp

6、ossible for us to live in the world; they would devour all our crops and kill our flocks and herds, if it were not for the protection we get from insect-eating animals. We owe a lot to the birds and beasts who eat insects but all of them put together kill only a fraction of the number destroyed by s

7、piders. Moreover, unlike some of the other insect eaters, spiders never do the least harm to us or our belongings.Spiders are not insects, as many people think, nor even nearly related to them. One can tell the difference almost at a glance for a spider always has eight legs and an insect never more

8、 than six.How many spiders are engaged in this work on our behalf ? One authority on spiders made a census of the spiders in a grass field in the south of England, and he estimated that there were more than 2,250,000 in one acre, that is something like 6,000,000 spiders of different kinds on a footb

9、all pitch. Spiders are busy for at least half the year in killing insects. It is impossible to make more than the wildest guess at how many they kill, but they are hungry creatures, not content with only three meals a day. It has been estimated that the weight of all the insects destroyed by spiders

10、 in Britain in one year would be greater than the total weight of all the human beings in the country.T. H. GILLESPIE Spare that Spider from The ListenerLesson 3 Matterhorn manModern alpinists try to climb mountains by a route which will give them good sport, and the more difficult it is, the more h

11、ighly it is regarded. In the pioneering days, however, this was not the case at all. The early climbers were looking for the easiest way to the top because the summit was the prize they sought, especially if it had never been attained before. It is true that during their explorations they often face

12、d difficulties and dangers of the most perilous nature, equipped in a manner which would make a modern climber shudder at the thought, but they did not go out of their way to court such excitement. They had a single aim, a solitary goal-the top!It is hard for us to realize nowadays how difficult it

13、was for the pioneers. Except for one or two places such as Zermatt and Chamonix, which had rapidly become popular, Alpine villages tended to be impoverished settlements cut off from civilization by the high mountains. Such inns as there were were generally dirty and flea-ridden; the food simply loca

14、l cheese accompanied by bread often twelve months old, all washed down with coarse wine. Often a valley boasted no inn at all, and climbers found shelter wherever they could-sometimes with the local priest (who was usually as poor as his parishioners), sometimes with shepherds or cheesemakers. Invar

15、iably the background was the same: dirt and poverty, and very uncomfortable. For men accustomed to eating seven-course dinners and sleeping between fine linen sheets at home, the change to the Alps must have been very hard indeed.Lesson 4 Seeing handsIn the Soviet Union several cases have been repor

16、ted recently of people who can read and detect colours with their fingers, and even see through solid doors and walls. One case concerns an eleven-year-old schoolgirl, Vera Petrova, who has normal vision but who can also perceive things with different parts of her skin, and through solid walls. This

17、 ability was first noticed by her father. One day she came into his office and happened to put her hands on the door of a locked safe. Suddenly she asked her father why he kept so many old newspapers locked away there, and even described the way they were done up in bundles.Veras curious talent was

18、brought to the notice of a scientific research institute in the town of UIyanovsk, near where she lives, and in April she was given a series of tests by a special commission of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federal Republic. During these tests she was able to read a newspaper through an opaq

19、ue screen and, stranger still, by moving her elbow over a childs game of Lotto she was able to describe the figures and colours printed on it; and, in another instance, wearing stockings and slippers, to make out with her foot the outlines and colours of a picture hidden under a carpet. Other experi

20、ments showed that her knees and shoulders had a similar sensitivity. During all these tests Vera was blindfold; and, indeed, except when blindfold she lacked the ability to perceive things with her skin. lt was also found that although she could perceive things with her fingers this ability ceased t

21、he moment her hands were wet.Lesson 5 YouthPeople are always talking about the problem of youth . If there is onewhich I take leave to doubt-then it is older people who create it, not the young themselves. Let us get down to fundamentals and agree that the young are after all human beings-people jus

22、t like their elders. There is only one difference between an old man and a young one: the young man has a glorious future before him and the old one has a splendid future behind him: and maybe that is where the rub is.When I was a teenager, I felt that I was just young and uncertain-that I was a new

23、 boy in a huge school, and I would have been very pleased to be regarded as something so interesting as a problem. For one thing, being a problem gives you a certain identity, and that is one of the things the young are busily engaged in seeking.I find young people exciting. They have an air of free

24、dom, and they have not a dreary commitment to mean ambitions or love of comfort. They are not anxious social climbers, and they have no devotion to material things. All this seems to me to link them with life, and the origins of things. Its as if they were in some sense cosmic beings in violent and

25、lovely contrast with us suburban creatures. All that is in my mind when I meet a young person. He may be conceited, illmannered, presumptuous of fatuous, but I do not turn for protection to dreary clichs about respect for elders-as if mere age were a reason for respect. I accept that we are equals,

26、and I will argue with him, as an equal, if I think he is wrong.Lesson 6 The sporting spiritI am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no

27、inclination to meet on the battlefield. Even if one didnt know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles.Nearly all the sports practised nowadays are competitive. You play t

28、o win, and the game has little meaning unless you do your utmost to win. On the village green, where you pick up sides and no feeling of local patriotism is involved, it is possible to play simply for the fun and exercise: but as soon as the question of prestige arises, as soon as you feel that you

29、and some larger unit will be disgraced if you lose, the most savage combative instincts are aroused. Anyone who has played even in a school football match knows this. At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare. But the significant thing is not the behaviour of the players but the atti

30、tude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of the nations. who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously believe-at any rate for short periods-that running, jumping and kicking a ball are tests of national virtue.Lesson 7 BatsNot all sounds made by animals serve

31、as language, and we have only to turn to that extraordinary discovery of echo-location in bats to see a case in which the voice plays a strictly utilitarian role.To get a full appreciation of what this means we must turn first to some recent human inventions. Everyone knows that if he shouts in the

32、vicinity of a wall or a mountainside, an echo will come back. The further off this solid obstruction the longer time will elapse for the return of the echo. A sound made by tapping on the hull of a ship will be reflected from the sea bottom, and by measuring the time interval between the taps and the receipt of the echoes the depth of the sea at that point can be calculated. So was born the echo-sounding apparatus, now in general use in ships. Every solid object will reflect a sound, varying according to the size and nature of the object. A shoal of fish will do this. So it is a comparative