首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Scotland Yard’s top fingerprint expert, Detective Chief Superintendent Gerald Lambourne had a request from the British Museum’s
Scotland Yard’s top fingerprint expert, Detective Chief Superintendent Gerald Lambourne had a request from the British Museum’s
admin
2011-01-02
80
问题
Scotland Yard’s top fingerprint expert, Detective Chief Superintendent Gerald Lambourne had a request from the British Museum’s Prehistoric Department to focus his magnifying glass on a mystery. "Somewhat outside my usual beat," he said.
This was not a question of Who Did It, but Who Was It. The blunt instruments he pored over were the antlers of red deer, dated by a radio-carbon examination as being up to 5,000 years old. They were used as mining picks by Neolithic man to hack flints and chalk, and the fingerprints he was looking for were of our remote ancestors who had last wielded them.
The antlers were unearthed in July during the British Museum’s five-year-long excavation at Grime’s Graves, near Thetford, Norfolk, a 93-acre site containing more than 600 vertical shafts in the chalk some 40 feet deep. From artifacts found in many parts of Britain it is evident that flint was extensively used by Neolithic man as he slowly learned how to farm land in the period from 3,000 to 1,500 B. C.
Flint was especially used for axe beads to clear forests for agriculture, and the quality of the flint on the Norfolk site suggests that the miners there were kept busy with many orders.
What excited Mr. G. de G. Sieveking, the museum’s deputy director of the excavations, was the fried mud still sticking to some of them. "Our deduction is that the miners coated the base of the antlers with mud so that they could get a better grip," he says. "The exciting possibility was that fingerprints left in this mud might at last identify individuals who have left few relics, who could not read or write, but who may have had much more intelligence than has been supposed in the past."
Chief Superintendent Lambourne, who four years ago had "assisted" the British Museum by taking the fingerprints of a 4,000-year-old Egyptian mummy, spent two hours last week examining about 50 antlers. On some he found minute marks indicating a human grip in the mud. Then on one he found the full imprint of the "ridge structure" of a human hand — that part of the hand just below the fingers where most pressure would be brought to bear in wielding a pick.
Chief Superintendent Lambourne has agreed to visit the Norfolk site during further excavations next summer, when it is hoped that further hand-marked antlers will come to light. But he is cautious about the historic significance of his findings.
"Fingerprints and handprints are unique to each individual but they can tell us nothing about the age, physical characteristics, even sex of the person who left them," he says. "Even the fingerprints of a gorilla could be mistaken for those of a man. But if a number of imprinted antlers are recovered from given shafts on this site I could at least determine which antlers were handled by the same man, and from there might be deduced the number of miners employed in a team."
"As an indication of intelligence I might determine which way up the miners held the antlers and how they wielded them."
To Mr. Sieveking and his museum colleagues any such findings will be added to their dossier of what might appear to the layman as trivial and unrelated facts but from which might emerge one day an impressive new image of our remote ancestors.
选项
答案
C
解析
语义题。文章中第六段先提到了侦探发现了一些minute marks,接着说后来又发现了full imprint,有前后不同、对比的意味,可见minute marks含义和full imprint相反,minute应该意为“小的,不明显的”,用作形容词。
转载请注明原文地址:https://www.kaotiyun.com/show/9ReO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
WilkinsMicawberisacharacterinthenovel______,aneternaloptimistwho,despiteevidencetothecontrary,continuestoha
SuccessPersonalityAccordingtoaGallupsurvey,anumberofqualitiesarecommonamongsuccessfulpeople.Herearefiveof
SuccessPersonalityAccordingtoaGallupsurvey,anumberofqualitiesarecommonamongsuccessfulpeople.Herearefiveof
Proponentsofdifferentjazzstyleshavealwaysarguedthattheirpredecessors,musicalstyledidnotincludeessentialcharacte
A、Adams.B、ER.C、Sweeps.D、Law&Order.A消息中提到许多programmes,而各有不同的内容,在听的过程中应该note-taking
Britain’sSystemofEducationTheBritishCommonwealthincludesaquarteroftheworld’spopulationinone-sixthoftheworld
Inanaturaldisaster--ahurricane,flood,tornado,volcaniceruption,orothercalamity--minutesandevensecondsofwarnin
Shoppingforclothesisnotthesameexperienceforamanasitisforawoman.Amangoesshoppingbecauseheneedssomething.
Adeputysheriff’sdashmountedcameracaptureshistornadochase.Racingjustminutesbehindthemonsterstormhelooksforda
"Iwouldn’twanttohavesomeonetakemydaughtertoahospitalforanabortionorsomethingandnottellme.Iwouldkillhimi
随机试题
以下有关建筑面积指标的计算,正确的有()。【2014年真题】
甲公司与乙公司订立了一份建材买卖合同,乙按约定向甲支付了定金4万元合同约定如任何一方不履行合同应向对方支付违约金6万元。交货日期届满,甲无法交付该律材,乙诉至法院提出的如下诉讼请求中,既能最大限度保护自己的利益,又能获得支持的是()。
背景我国东北某新建机场在施工前,被要求执行绿色施工组织模式。在施工过程中发生了以下事件:事件一:监理单位被要求按《民用机场绿色施工指南》(AC—158—CA—2017—02)的相关条款对施工单位的施工实施监理。事件二:在施工单位提交的施工组织设计中,
悬吊式顶棚按施工工艺的不同,分为暗龙骨吊顶和( )。
关于外部性的说法不正确的是()。
在对时间序列进行速度分析时,应注意的事项有()。
根据增值税法律制度的有关规定,下列各项中不可以作为增值税进项税额抵扣凭证的有()。
道家的教育主张“行不言之教”。()
SQL语句中,能够判断"订购日期"字段是否为空值的表达式是
KevinHines,amanic-depressive(躁狂抑郁症患者),was19andinoneofhisweeklydownswingsonanovercastMondaymorningin2000.Hew
最新回复
(
0
)