Voyage of Going beyond the blue line
A One feels a certain sympathy for Captain James Cook on the day in 1778 that he “discovered” Hawaii. Then on his third expedition to the Pacific, the British navigator had explored scores of islands across the breadth of the sea, from lush New Zealand to the lonely wastes of Easter Island. This latest voyage had taken him thousands of miles north from the Society Islands to an archipelago so remote that even the old Polynesians back on Tahiti knew nothing about it. Imagine Cook’s surprise, then, when the natives of Hawaii came paddling out in their canoes and greeted him in a familiar tongue, one he had heard on virtually every mote of inhabited land he had visited. Marvelling at the ubiquity of this Pacific language and culture, he later wondered in his journal: “How shall we account for this Nation spreading itself so far over this Vast ocean?”
B Answers have been slow in coming. But now a startling archaeological find on the island of Éfaté, in the Pacific nation of Vanuatu, has revealed an ancient seafaring people, the distant ancestors of today’s Polynesians, taking their first steps into the unknown. The discoveries there have also opened a window into the shadowy world of those early voyagers. At the same time, other pieces of this human puzzle are turning up in unlikely places. Climate data gleaned from slow-growing corals around the Pacific and from sediments in alpine lakes in South America may help explain how, more than a thousand years later, the second wave of seafarers beat their way across the entire Pacific.
C “What we have is a first- or second-generation site containing the graves of some of the Pacific’s first explorers,” says Spriggs, professor of archaeology at the Australian National University and co-leader of an international team excavating the site. It came to light only by luck. A backhoe operator, digging up topsoil on the grounds of a derelict coconut plantation, scraped open a grave – the first of dozens in a burial ground some 3,000 years old. It is the oldest cemetery ever found in the Pacific islands, and it harbors the bones of an ancient people archaeologists call the Lapita, a label that derives from a beach in New Caledonia where a landmark cache of their pottery was found in the 1950s. They were daring blue-water adventurers who roved the sea not just as explorers but also as pioneers, bringing along everything they would need to build new lives – their families and livestock, taro seedlings and stone tools.
D Within the span of few centuries, the Lapita stretched the boundaries of their world from the jungle-clad volcanoes of Papua New Guinea to the loneliest coral outliers of Tonga, at least 2,000 miles eastward in the Pacific. Along the way they explored millions of square miles of an unknown sea, discovering and colonizing scores of tropical islands never before seen by human eyes: Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Samoa.
E What little is known or surmised about them has been pieced together from fragments of pottery, animal bones, obsidian flakes, and such oblique sources as comparative linguistics and geochemistry. Although their voyages can be traced back to the northern islands of Papua New Guinea, their language – variants of which are still spoken across the Pacific – came from Taiwan. And their peculiar style of pottery decoration, created by pressing a carved stamp into the clay, probably had its roots in the northern Philippines. With the discovery of the Lapita cemetery on Éfaté, the volume of data available to researchers has expanded dramatically. The bones of at least 62 individuals have been uncovered so far – including old men, young women, even babies – and more skeletons are known to be in the ground. Archaeologists were also thrilled to discover six complete Lapita pots. It’s an important find, Spriggs says, for it conclusively identifies the remains as Lapita. “It would be hard for anyone to argue that these aren’t Lapita when you have human bones enshrined inside what is unmistakably a Lapita urn.”
F Several lines of evidence also undergird Spriggs’s conclusion that this was a community of pioneers making their first voyages into the remote reaches of Oceania. For one thing, the radiocarbon dating of bones and charcoal places them early in the Lapita expansion. For another, the chemical makeup of the obsidian flakes littering the site indicates that the rock wasn’t local; instead, it was imported from a large island in Papua New Guinea’s the Bismarck Archipelago, the springboard for the Lapita’s thrust into the Pacific. A particularly intriguing clue comes from chemical tests on the teeth of several skeletons. DNA teased from these ancient bones may also help answer one of the most puzzling questions in Pacific anthropology: Did all Pacific islanders spring from one source or many? Was there only one outward migration from a single point in Asia, or several from different points? “This represents the best opportunity we’ve had yet,” says Spriggs, “to find out who the Lapita actually were, where they came from, and who their closest descendants are today.”
G “There is one stubborn question for which archaeology has yet to provide any answers: How did the Lapita accomplish the ancient equivalent of a moon landing, many times over? No one has found one of their canoes or any rigging, which could reveal how the canoes were sailed. Nor do the oral histories and traditions of later Polynesians offer any insights, for they segue into myth long before they reach as far back in time as the Lapita.” All we can say for certain is that the Lapita had canoes that were capable of ocean voyages, and they had the ability to sail them,” says Geoff Irwin, a professor of archaeology at the University of Auckland and an avid yachtsman. Those sailing skills, he says, were developed and passed down over thousands of years by earlier mariners who worked their way through the archipelagoes of the western Pacific making short crossings to islands within sight of each other. Reaching Fiji, as they did a century or so later, meant crossing more than 500 miles of ocean, pressing on day after day into the great blue void of the Pacific. What gave them the courage to launch out on such a risky voyage?
H The Lapita’s thrust into the Pacific was eastward, against the prevailing trade winds, Irwin notes. Those nagging headwinds, he argues, may have been the key to their success. “They could sail out for days into the unknown and reconnoiter, secure in the knowledge that if they didn’t find anything, they could turn about and catch a swift ride home on the trade winds. It’s what made the whole thing work.” Once out there, skilled seafarers would detect abundant leads to follow to land: seabirds and turtles, coconuts and twigs carried out to sea by the tides and the afternoon pileup of clouds on the horizon that often betokens an island in the distance. Some islands may have broadcast their presence with far less subtlety than a cloud bank. Some of the most violent eruptions anywhere on the planet during the past 10,000 years occurred in Melanesia, which sits nervously in one of the most explosive volcanic regions on Earth. Even less spectacular eruptions would have sent plumes of smoke billowing into the stratosphere and rained ash for hundreds of miles. It’s possible that the Lapita saw these signs of distant islands and later sailed off in their direction, knowing they would find land. For returning explorers, successful or not, the geography of their own archipelagoes provided a safety net to keep them from overshooting their home ports and sailing off into eternity.
I However they did it, the Lapita spread themselves a third of the way across the Pacific, then called it quits for reasons known only to them. Ahead lay the vast emptiness of the central Pacific, and perhaps they were too thinly stretched to venture farther. They probably never numbered more than a few thousand in total, and in their rapid migration eastward they encountered hundreds of islands – more than 300 in Fiji alone. Still, more than a millennium would pass before the Lapita’s descendants, a people we now call the Polynesians, struck out in search of new territory.
Questions 14 - 20
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?
Choose the correct answer:
TRUE if the statement is true
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
- Captain Cook once expected Hawaii might speak another language of people from other pacific islands.
- TRUE
- FALSE
- NOT GIVEN
题解：出现了专有名词Captain Cook和Hawaii，动作是expected，然后对象是people，这个人的状态需要是from other pacific islands并且speak another language。在A段可以找到相关描述，其中surprise与a familiar tongue表示了cook的情绪，那么由此可以看出，他之前确实是期待过speak another language of people。所以选TRUE
- Captain Cook depicted a number of cultural aspects of Polynesians in his journal.
- TRUE
- FALSE
- NOT GIVEN
题解：出现了量词a number of，并且对象是Polynesians的cultural aspects，记在了journal上。A段中确实出现了journal，但是并没有出现与题干所给的信息相符合的记录。所以看下一题
- Professor Spriggs and his research team went to the Efate to try to find the site of the ancient cemetery.
- TRUE
- FALSE
- NOT GIVEN
题解：出现专有名词Professor Spriggs和Efate，并且说明要去找cemetery。C段出现了graves和cemetery，但是实际上并没有说教授和他的研究团队要去find，只是在谈论研究，如果只是这样的话应该会填NOT GIVEN。但是文章中还有一句It came to light only by luck，表示这只是一个偶然，那么几句可以断定教授的目的并不是去find。所以选FALSE。
- The Lapita completed a journey of around 2,000 miles in a period less than a centenary.
- TRUE
- FALSE
- NOT GIVEN
题解：专有名词Lapita，然后出现了比较级less than a centenary和量词2,000 miles。首先定位D段，发现几个关键词基本上全都出现了。原文中说的是Within the span of few centuries，在题目中却是less than，本来我是想选FALSE的，但是根据雅思做题的原则，实际上我无法从原文中判断是不是这2,000 miles，其实是在less than a centenary完成的。虽然说的是few centuries，但是这个是夹在了Within里面，所以答案是NOT GIVEN。
- The Lapita were the first inhabitants in many Pacific islands.
- TRUE
- FALSE
- NOT GIVEN
题解：这个简单，主要关键词就是first。在D段中，紧接着就出现了discovering and colonizing，然后还有never before seen。并且scores of也对应上了题干中的many，所以破案了，这题目选TRUE。
- The unknown pots discovered in Efate had once been used for cooking.
- TRUE
- FALSE
- NOT GIVEN
题解：关键词Efate和cooking，然后还有pots。所以在找到专有名词的定位点外，还需要注意与容器有关的词。在E段有这么一句discover six complete Lapita pots，但是无论是从上还是往下皆没有看到有关于cooking的描述，都是在讨论墓地里面有拉皮塔人的骸骨。所以选择 NOT GIVEN。
- The urn buried in Efate site was plain as it waswithout any decoration.
- TRUE
- FALSE
- NOT GIVEN
题解：关键词urn，plain和without any decoration。该题比较难，首先得清楚urn的含义。它实际上和题干以及原文中的pots含义是相近的，那么就要找有关于其风格的描述。在E段中，出现了peculiar style of pottery decoration，那么推翻了题干的论点。所以选择FALSE
Questions 21 - 23
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage
Using ONE WORD ONLY from the Reading Passage for each answer.
Scientific Evident found in Efate site
Tests show the human remains and the charcoal found in the buried urn are from the start of the Lapita period. Yet the 21 covering many of the Efate sites did not come from that area. Then examinations carried out on the 22 discovered at Efate site reveal that not everyone buried there was a native living in the area. In fact, DNA could identify the Lapita’s nearest 23 present-days.
题解：第21空前有一个Yet表示转折，以及还有一个the，那么代表该空处应该填Noun。结合上下文，覆盖在Efate地区上的thing，这个东西not come from that area。在E段出现了the rock wasn’t local，所以第21应该填rock。然后接着往下面看，22前面是the，那么应该填Noun。根据题干，需要找一个东西，它可以用来证明不是所有埋在那里的人都是本地人。并且23题出现了一个特别显眼的专有名词DNA，那么22题的答案多半就在它前面，非常容易可以找到答案teeth。然后23题显然也是填名词，并且是和Lapita’s nearest，而且有时间限制，得是present-days。F段中的closest descendants are today直接破案了，答案就是descendants。
Questions 24 - 26
Answer the questions below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.
24What did the Lapita travel in when they crossed the oceans?
题解：G段出现了Lapita had canoes that were capable of ocean voyages，答案就是canoes
25In Irwins’s view, what would the Lapita have relied on to bring them fast back to the base?
题解：专有名词Irwins，然后关键词是fast back to the base。原文中H段中出现了对应人物，然后还有catch a swift ride home on the trade winds，由此可以看出，答案就是trade winds。
26Which sea creatures would have been an indication to the Lapita of where to find land?
题解：关键词是creatures，以及find land。需要在文章中去找哪里出现了动物相关的单词，没啥好说的leads to follow to land: seabirds and turtles，接着稍微看一点点，答案写脸上了。就是seabirds and turtles。
