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 their 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 北欧海盗活动的故事
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/ rCt/ 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 /