今天小编为大家分享的是经典新概念英语：The first calender，希望通过这篇文章的学习对你们有所帮助，下面跟随小编一起学习吧。
　　Future historians will be in a unique position when they come to record the history of our own times. They will hardly know which facts to select from the great mass of evidence that steadily accumulates. What is more, they will not have to rely solely on the written word. Films, videos, CDs and CD-ROMS are just some of the bewildering amount of information they will have. They will be able, as it were, to see and hear us in action. But the historian attempting to reconstruct the distant past is always faced with a difficult task. He has to deduce what he can from the few scanty clues available. Even seemingly insignificant remains can shed interesting light on the history of early man.
　　 Up to now, historians have assumed that calendars came into being with the advent of agriculture, for then man was faced with a real need to understand something about the seasons. Recent scientific evidence seems to indicate that this assumption is incorrect.
　　 Historians have long been puzzled by dots, lines and symbols which have been engraved on walls, bones, and the ivory tusks of mammoths. The nomads who made these markings lived by hunting and fishing during the last Ice Age which began about 35,000 B.C. and ended about 10,000 B.C. By correlating markings made in various parts of the world, historians have been able to read this difficult code. They have found that it is connected with the passage of days and the phases of the moon. It is, in fact, a primitive type of calendar. It has long been known that the hunting scenes depicted on walls were not simply a form of artistic expression. They had a definite meaning, for they were as near as early man could get to writing. It is possible that there is a definite relation between these paintings and the markings that sometimes accompany them. It seems that man was making a real effort to understand the seasons 20,000 years earlier than has been supposed.
　　生词和短语calendar n. 历法，日历historian n. 历史学家unique adj. 无与比的steadily adv. 不断地solely adv. 地video n. 录像CD-ROM n. （只读）光盘驱动器bewilder v. 令人眼花缭乱deduce v. 推断，推理scanty adj. 不足的，贫乏的clue n. 线索insignificant adj. 不重要的shed v. 使流出，泻advent n. 出现，到来，来临agriculture n. 农业assumption n. 假定，设想dot n. 小圆点symbol n. 符号engrave v. 雕刻ivory n. 象牙制品mammoth n. （古）长毛象tusk n. 獠牙，长牙，象牙nomad n. 游牧民correlate v. 使相互联系phase n. 月相，天相primitive adj. 原始的depict v. 描画，描绘
　　 历史学家迄今认为日历是随农业的问世而出现的，因为当时人们面临着了解四季的实际需要，但近期科学研究发现，好像这种假设是不正确的。
　　 长期以来，历史学家一直对雕刻在墙壁上、骨头上、古代长毛象的象牙上的点、线和形形色色的符号感到困惑不解。这些痕迹是游牧人留下的，他们生活在从公元前约35，000年到公元前10，000年的冰川期的末期，以狩猎、捕鱼为生。历史学家通过把世界各地留下的这种痕迹放在一起研究，终于弄懂了这种费解的代码。他们发现代码与昼夜更迭和月亮圆缺有关，事实上是一种原始的日历。大家早就知道，画在墙上的狩猎图景并不是单纯的艺术表现形式，它们有着一定的含义，因为它们已接近古代人的文字形式。有时，这种图画与墙壁上的刻痕共存，它们之间可能有一定的联系。看来人类早就致力于探索四季变迁了，比人们想像的要早20,000年。