2015年11月14日
词汇题：
prohibited=restricted
sufficient=enough
flourished=prospered
drawn to=attracted
initially=at first
conventional=standard
stagnation=lack of growth
implication=consequence
exclusively=solely
modified=changed
initiate=start
high=elevated
第一篇 Dyran民族
原文回顾： Dyran民族前期很着重于收集和狩猎，而随着人口增长迫使他们更大范围的狩猎，为了提高打猎成功率，他们开发了更有效率的武器。但是由于气候的变化野生谷物减少，这个民族开始自己培育作物。慢慢开始有了耕作并越发感兴趣。
相关背景学习：History of Hunting
Hunting has a long history and may well pre-date the rise of the species Homo sapiens. While our earliest Hominid ancestors were probably frugivores or omnivores, there is evidence that earlier Homo species, and possibly also australopithecine species, utilised larger animals for subsistence. Evidence from western Kenya suggests that hunting has been occurring for more than two million years.
Furthermore, evidence exists that hunting may have been one of the multiple environmental factors leading to extinctions of the holocene megafauna and their replacement by smaller herbivores. North American megafauna extinction was coincidental with the Younger Dryas impact event, possibly making hunting a less critical factor in prehistoric species loss than had been previously thought. However, in other locations such as Australia, humans are thought to have played a very significant role in the extinction of the Australian megafauna that was widespread prior to human occupation.
Inuit walrus hunters
The closest surviving relatives of the human species are the two species of Pan: the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus). Common chimpanzees have an omnivorous diet that includes troop hunting behaviour based on beta males being led by an alpha male. Bonobos have also been observed to occasionally engage in group hunting, but eat a mostly frugivorous diet.
While it is undisputed that early humans were hunters, the importance of this for the emergence of the Homo genus from the earlier Australopithecines, including the production of stone tools and eventually the control of fire, are emphasised in the hunting hypothesis and de-emphasised in scenarios that stress omnivory and social interaction, including mating behaviour, as essential in the emergence of human behavioural modernity. With the establishment of language, culture, and religion, hunting became a theme of stories and myths, as well as rituals such as dance and animal sacrifice.
Hunting was a crucial component of hunter-gatherer societies before the domestication of livestock and the dawn of agriculture, beginning about 11,000 years ago. By the Mesolithic, hunting strategies had diversified with the development of the bow 18,000 years ago and the domestication of the dog about 15,000 years ago. There is fossil evidence for spear use in Asian hunting dating from approximately 16,200 years ago.
第二篇 月球的火山口
原文回顾：有一位地理学家认为月球的火山口是由陨石撞击而成，但是通过实验发现这个结论并不正确。后来，他又推测是由于月球下面蕴藏的火山喷发形成的，进过科学家与地球上的坑做对比，并借助摄影家在月球上的照片和探查发现月球地下有足够的空间来蕴藏火山，而且岩浆也足够热得融化石头，于是得出结论:月球上的一系列地貌都是由于火山喷发形成的。
相关背景学习：Lunar craters
The word crater was adopted by Galileo from the Greek word for vessel - ( a Greek vessel used to mix wine and water). Galileo built his first telescope in late 1609, and turned it to the Moon for the first time on November 30, 1609. He discovered that, contrary to general opinion at that time, the Moon was not a perfect sphere, but had both mountains and cup-like depressions, the latter of which he gave the name craters.
Scientific opinion as to the origin of craters swung back and forth over the ensuing centuries. The competing theories were (a) volcanic eruptions blasting holes in the Moon, (b) meteoric impact, (c) a theory known as the Welteislehre developed in Germany between the two World Wars which suggested glacial action creating the craters.
Evidence collected during the Apollo Project and from unmanned spacecraft of the same period proved conclusively that meteoric impact, or impact by asteroids for larger craters, was the origin of almost all lunar craters, and by implication, most craters on other bodies as well.
The formation of new craters is studied in the lunar impact monitoring program at NASA. The biggest recorded creation was caused by an impact recorded on March 17, 2013. The explosion, which was visible with the naked eye, is believed to be from an approximately 40 kg meteoroid hitting the moon with a speed of 90000 km/h.
第三篇 锄地工具改造和马的启用
原文回顾：锄地工具改造成了更加复杂的版本，用来锄更湿更重的土促进了农业发展，然后这样的改进引起了马代替牛的作用。某地方人通过改进了马锄地的方式让欧洲人也开始注意到马的使用，因为马更便宜。马后来变成了很重要的一个运输工具。
相关背景学习：Tools
Anthropologists believe that the use of tools was an important step in the evolution of mankind. Humans evolved an opposable thumb — useful in holding tools — and increased dramatically in intelligence, which aided in the use of tools. Because tools are used extensively by both humans and wild chimpanzees, it is widely assumed that the first routine use of tools took place prior to the divergence between the two species. These early tools, however, were likely made of perishable materials such as sticks, or consisted of unmodified stones that cannot be distinguished from other stones as tools.
Stone artifacts only date back to about 2.5 million years ago. However, a 2010 study suggests the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis ate meat by carving animal carcasses with stone implements. This finding pushes back the earliest known use of stone tools among hominins to about 3.4 million years ago.
Finds of actual tools date back at least 2.6 million years in Ethiopia. One of the earliest distinguishable stone tool forms is the hand axe.
Up until recently, weapons found in digs were the only tools of “early man” that were studied and given importance. Now, more tools are recognized as culturally and historically relevant. As well as hunting, other activities required tools such as preparing food, “…nutting, leatherworking, grain harvesting and woodworking…” Included in this group are “flake stone tools".
Tools are the most important items that the ancient humans used to climb to the top of the food chain; by inventing tools, they were able to accomplish tasks that human bodies could not, such as using a spear or bow and arrow to kill prey, since their teeth were not sharp enough to pierce many animals' skins. “Man the hunter” as the catalyst for Hominin change has been questioned. Based on marks on the bones at archaeological sites, it is now more evident that pre-humans were scavenging off of other predators' carcasses rather than killing their own food.
Mechanical devices experienced a major expansion in their use in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome with the systematic employment of new energy sources, especially waterwheels. Their use expanded through the Dark Ages with the addition of windmills.
Machine tools occasioned a surge in producing new tools in the industrial revolution. Advocates of nanotechnology expect a similar surge as tools become microscopic in size.
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