Номер 22, страница 92 - гдз по английскому языку 10 класс (enjoy english) учебник Биболетова, Бабушис

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Exercise twenty-two.

Listen to the radio program about an archaeological discovery and answer the questions. Fill in the table while you are listening. Use your workbook.

Host: Welcome to Prehistoric Journeys. Today's program is about one of the most astonishing discoveries in archaeology in half a century. Perhaps the most exciting in the search for other human species in history. Scientists have actually found the bones of what seems to be a tiny species of human, no larger than a three-year-old modern child. These little humans lived with pygmy elephants and Komodo dragons on a remote island in Indonesia, eighteen thousand years ago.

Host: Our guest, Richard Roberts, an archaeologist at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and one of the lucky participants of the research team, has agreed to answer my questions about this impressive discovery. Welcome to the program, Richard.

Richard: Hello, it's a pleasure to be here.

Host: Could you tell us then what exactly was found on the expedition?

Richard: Well, as you mentioned, we Australian, also Indonesian researchers, have discovered the actual skeleton of a miniature human and some stone tools in a cave on Flores, an island not far from Australia. This little human we've called the hobbit, because its structure reminded us of the creatures from the Lord of the Ring books. Her original skeleton stood at just one meter tall and weighed about twenty-five kilograms. She was around thirty years old at the time of her death, which occurred eighteen thousand years ago. This tiny female hobbit was found in the same area on Flores that contained the bones of dwarf elephants, giant rodents, and even huge lizards, called Komodo dragons.

Host: That's really fascinating. So, what did these hobbits actually look like?

Richard: From what we can tell, they were about the size of a three-year-old child, but with a skull only one third as large. They had teeth similar to ours, but a more narrow forehead, thicker eyebrows and no chin.

Host: Not very attractive according to modern standards, were they? Can scientists say anything about their way of life?

Richard: Certainly. While they might not look like modern people, some of their behaviors were surprisingly human. These little people of Flores used fire for cooking and hunted animals, particularly the Stegodon. This primitive dwarf elephant could be found on the island at that time, and, although small, was still quite heavy, at one thousand kilograms. For the tiny hobbit hunter, this beast would have been a challenge, so they also included in their diet, fish, frogs, snakes, tortoises, birds, and rodents.

Host: I wonder how and why the hobbits came to be so small. Have you got any explanations for this?

Richard: When scientists discovered the tiny skeleton, they thought it was the skeleton of a human child. At the time, there was no record of human adults that were that small. Modern pygmies are considerably taller, at about one point four to one point five meters tall. The most likely explanation is that over thousands of years, the species became smaller because the environmental conditions of the island demanded smaller body size. Islands provide only a limited food supply, and the few species that live there are competing for the same territory. Survival will then depend on minimizing daily energy requirements. But there is no absolute proof that this is what in fact happened with the small human.

Host: And my last question for today's program. Could you tell us why this discovery is so important?

Richard: These hobbits were nobody's fool. They survived alongside us for at least thirty thousand years. However different they were from us, they were still managing some extraordinary things, and all with a brain size only one third of size of ours. They were not only producing sophisticated stone tools and hunting pygmy elephants, but they were also traveling by sea to reach their island from mainland Asia. They in fact present an intriguing problem in evolutionary biology. I could not have predicted such a discovery in a million years. This find shows us how much we still have to learn about human evolution.