在宇宙的中心呼唤爱

Lesson 1 Finding fossil man发现化石人

We 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 thei r history is to recount it as sagas----legends handed down from one generation of storytellers 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 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 help 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 have remained when even the bones of the men who made them have disappeared without trace.

ROBIN PLACE Finding fossil man

New words and expressions

生词短语

recount /ri'kaunt/ v.叙述/ ' rei'kaunt/ 再数一次record / ' rek[d/ /ri' kC:d/ 第一个音节带重音，名前动后叙述：recount : emotionless

重复

describe

depict： a little emotional

narrate：temporal&spacial 根据时间或空间顺序描述。

portray：描述

saga /'sa:g[/ n.英雄故事

描述的内容mostly real 刁欧海盗活动的故事

legend /'ledV[nd/ n.传说，传奇

unreal e.g robin hood

anthropologist/ 'AnWr['pCl[dVist/ n.人类学家

anthrop：人

philosophere :philo＋sopher|爱＋智慧＝哲学家

philanthropist : 慈善家（对人有爱心的人）

anthropology :人类学

带-gy结尾的都是学科：biology 生物学geography 地理学ecology 生态学

remote/ ri'm[ut/ n.遥远

ancestor / 'Ansest[/ n.祖先

an

在前面

forefather,forebear ，predecessor祖先

rot/ ❒♦/ v.烂掉

leave me rot.＝leave me along

rot to death.

soon ripe,soon rotten.

decay 国家民族逐渐衰亡decompose 逐渐衰竭deteriorate关系逐渐恶化

trace /treis/ n.痕迹，踪迹

trace the problem

i follow your trace＝i follow where you go

polynesia 波利尼西亚

poly-多

polyandric: a wife with more than one husband polygeny : a husband with more than one wife

flint /flint/ n.燧石flinting hearted

fossil /

' ♐♦●/ n. 化石cobble 鹅卵石Notes on the text

课文注释read of 读到

谈到：speak of ,talk of ,know of,hear of

near east：近东mediterranean, south europe,north afric far east

非限定性从句，表原因

oral(spoken) language is earlier than written language. precede :什么在什么之前，不用比较，直接跟名词counterpart: two things or two people have the same position oral(spoken) language is earlier than written counterpart.

preserve: 保留，保存（腌制）如果句中有only，那后面的表语结构就要用to do sth,而不是doing sth. storyteller: 讲故事的人