雅思阅读真题+题目+答案：Prehistoric Cave Paintings Took up to 20,000 Years to Complete

雅思阅读真题+题目+答案：Prehistoric Cave Paintings Took up to 20,000 Years to Complete

It may have taken Michelangelo four long years to paint his fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but his earliest predecessors spent considerably longer perfecting their own masterpieces. Scientists have discovered that prehistoric cave paintings took up to 20,000 years to complete. Rather than being created in one session, as archaeologists previously thought, many of the works discovered across Europe were produced over hundreds of generations, who added to, refreshed and painted over the original pieces of art.

Until now it has been extremely difficult to pinpoint when prehistoric cave paintings and carvings were created, but a pioneering technique is allowing researchers to date cave art accurately for the first time and show how the works were crafted over thousands of years. Experts now hope the technique will provide a valuable insight into how early human culture developed and changed as the first modern humans moved across Europe around 40,000 years ago.

Dr Alistair Pike, an archaeologist at Bristol University who is leading the research, said:The art gives us a really intimate window into the minds of the individuals who produced it, but what we don’t know is exactly which individuals they were as we don’t know exactly when the art was created. If we can date the art then we can relate that to the artefacts we find in the ground and start to link the symbolic thoughts of these individuals to where, when and how they were living.’

Hundreds of caves have been discovered across Europe with elaborate prehistoric paintings and carvings on their walls. It is thought the designs, which often depict scenes of animals, were created up to 40,000 years ago – some time after humans began moving from southern Europe into northern Europe during the last ice age.

Traditional dating techniques have relied on carbon dating the charcoal and other pigment used in the paintings, but this can be inaccurate as it only gives the date the charcoal was created not when the work was crafted.’When you go into these caves today there is still charcoal lying on the ground, so the artists at the time could have been using old charcoal rather than making it fresh themselves,’ explained Dr Pike.

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Questions 1-5

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? Write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1  Cave paintings inspired Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

2  It now seems that cave paintings were painted in one go and then left untouched.

3  Dr Pike is focusing on dating artefacts found on the ground in the caves.

4  There are a number of disadvantages to using carbon dating to date paintings and carvings.

5  The Altamira cave contains more cave paintings than any other cave in Europe.

Questions 6-8

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

6 Dr Pike believes that

A most caves remained undiscovered for thousands of years.

B archaeologists should not have excavated the caves at all.

C the caves were uninhabited but were treated as important.

D the paintings were painted by the people living in the caves.

7 Uranium series dating

A was previously used for other purposes.

B is a technique which was invented by Dr Pike.

C relies on the presence of stalactites in the caves.

D only works with caves which are underwater.

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