墨尔本PTE素材库——Ancient Mexican Metropolis Engaged in Hare-Raising Activity

墨尔本PTE素材库——Ancient Mexican Metropolis Engaged in Hare-Raising Activity

中文批注

这段视频的主要内容，是关于古墨西哥人从事野兔饲养活动的介绍。

这段视频相对而言还是简单易懂的。对于PTE目标为65+的学生，还是PTE50+的学生，对于这段视频不应该有太多的地方。大家可以把这篇素材看作一篇基础的练习~

澳大利亚语言学院会定期整理一些PTE的素材库，让各位PTE的考生，能够在平时练习的时候就能接触到一些和official questions criteria相近的话题素材，不但能够锻炼PTE考生的听力和复述的能力，也能在消化每篇素材的过程中提高自己的阅读能力以及词汇量。例如这篇关于野兔饲养研究的文章，大家可以试着re-tell这段视频的内容，并回答以下几个问题：

• 家兔和饲养的野兔的骨头里碳成分有什么区别？是什么造成了这些不同？
• 为什么我们可以通过骨头里的碳成分来判断兔子的来源？
• 这一发现对农业史的发展有什么影响?

【Key vocabulary】

Upend v. 回溯

Husbandry n. 饲养

Bred rabbit n. 饲养兔

Hare n. 野兔

Domesticate v. 驯化

Deliberate v. 仔细考虑

Metropolis n. 大都市

Excavation n. 挖掘

Isotope n. 同位素

Cactus fruit 仙人掌果实

Scavenge v. 打扫

Full Transcript

Upending the belief that residents of ancient Central America did not practice animal husbandry, new evidence shows that people in Teotihuacán raised and bred rabbits and hares.    

As humans developed civilizations in Eurasia and Northern Africa, they also domesticated animals for food and labor: horses, cows, goats, pigs, sheep and a few others. But no evidence existed for the deliberate cultivation and breeding of animals in North or Central America—until now.

“So at this ancient city of Teotihuacan in particular, which is really one of the earliest urban cities in North America…”

Andrew Somerville of the University of California San Diego, talking about the metropolis that once existed some 30 miles northeast of present-day Mexico City.

“…previous excavations have found a lot of rabbits. But at one compound in particular they found more evidence that they were interacting with rabbits more intensively. There was a statue of a rabbit. There was evidence that maybe they were butchering them. And this compound, which is called Oztoyahualco, actually had almost twice as many rabbit bones relative to the other complexes at the city. So it did seem like something was different with this particular compound.”

Somerville and colleagues tested 134 rabbit bones at the 2,000-year-old site, as well as 13 contemporary samples. If the ancient rabbits fed on wild vegetation, the carbon isotopes in the bones would show evidence of what’s known as the C3 photosynthetic pathway. But the domesticated crops of that time, such as corn and cactus fruit, employ what’s called the C4 pathway—which leaves a different carbon isotope ratio in the bones.

“Fortunately we were able to actually show that rabbits from this compound did actually have higher carbon values, significantly higher carbon values. Which means that they did have significantly different diets from other rabbits within the city, and also significantly different diets than wild rabbits from around the region. Which is pretty strong evidence we say to show that they were actually being provisioned by humans, fed by humans, managed by humans.”

The research is in the journal PLoS ONE. [Andrew D. Somerville et al,Animal Management at the Ancient Metropolis of Teotihuacan, Mexico: Stable Isotope Analysis of Leporid (Cottontail and Jackrabbit) Bone Mineral]

It’s true that the carbon evidence could also be the result of the rabbits being trapped in corn fields, where they were scavenging. But the presence of the dedicated pen and the statue of a rabbit led the scientists to conclude that the animals were in fact being raised—which changes our understanding of New World cities.

“That is one of these assumptions about the new world—that they just didn’t have as intensive relationships with animals. That husbandry, especially with mammals, wasn’t as important of a factor in their organization and supporting these big cities. So what we’re showing is that maybe they were just as intensive in some respects as these old world cities but they’re just less archaeologically visible. A rabbit leaves a much smaller footprint than a cow or a horse does.”

(source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/ancient-mexican-metropolis-engaged-in-hare-raising-activity/)