ket课文：科学美国人60秒考古文章

领取《KET、PET官方真题总结，官网样卷，必要词汇，口语常用句型 》

Archeology is always full of mystery and appeal ...

RE2 UNIT 3 两篇课文的基本结构相似， 提出猜测和推理过程， 有反驳也有承认的部分。这类似于推理破案的神秘性，引起了极大的兴趣。当然， 好的材料如果有好的老师， 良好的氛围引导，才能体现价值。在课堂上和学习种积极，真是我从未见过，从课后给我的教材中，我可以看出他们的细心， 连老师一个字都没错过。

笔记本更严肃、更整洁

然后今天蜜雪老师也来奉献一篇科学美国人60秒的考古文章，然后给大家朗诵音频。

以下文章选自2020年4月《美国科学杂志》考古专栏，特别挑选。

同时给大家读这篇文章，由于模仿新闻节目，我今天说得更快。

古代尿液的考古之窗——蜜雪老师来自蜜雪英语00:0002:54:54

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.

土耳其中部的一个有10000年历史的考古遗址正在帮助科学家解决该地区的尿液历史问题。是的：古代尿液中的盐残留物可以揭示人类是如何从狩猎采集者转变为在定居点保留和饲养动物的饲养者的。

"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 Aşıklı Höyük, 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."

所以我们想，好吧，如果动物被留在这个地方，它们会经历什么过程，无论是被圈在建筑物之间还是被放在其他特定的地方？

我们认为，嗯，这些动物在土堆上生活时总是小便。

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.

这样，我们就可以用简单的质量平衡法来计算生产这些大量盐所需的生物数量。

艾贝尔和他的同事们发现，从10000年前到9700年前，这个地方的大型生物数量从几个跃升到1800多个。

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.

如果山羊和绵羊这样做了，情况就很少了。通过减少人类排尿，研究人员计算出必须有800到1300只绵羊和山羊才能产生剩余的尿液。这项研究发表在《科学进步》杂志上。

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.

如果是真的，那就意味着动物饲养并不像我们大多数人从历史课上学到的那样，只起源于美索不达米亚新月的沃土。

我们的技术已经能够支持这一观点。在新月肥沃土壤之外的其他地方，土耳其中部地区，几乎与新月肥沃土壤的过程同时发展。

这是一个重要的发现，因为畜牧业和农业的出现是人类文明的转折点，从而催生了城市和当今社会。

艾贝尔指出，许多考古遗址基本上没有实物证据，如骨骼和文物，但可能所有遗址都有尿液。他对其他想要追踪动物和人类物种的考古学家有什么建议？注意尿液。

谢谢你听科学美国-60秒科学。我是鲍勃。·赫尔尚。

↓↓↓