Lesson 07 Beauty and Drama in Ancient Works of Art

미래엔 영어I Reading_7과.hwp

p. 155

Everyone has, at one time or another, found some old object, picked it up, and wondered about it. How old is it? Who made it? How was it used? Who lost it?

All over the world, archaeologists find old objects and wonder about them. Archaeology is the discovery and study of ancient objects: to find out who made them, how they were used, and how they were lost. Things that are found are often all that is left to tell us about the forgotten past.

In some places, whole cities have been found by archaeologists. Some had been destroyed by fire or by earthquakes, and some by war. Some cities had just been abandoned, to be covered by drifting sands or hidden by thick jungles.

Broken pottery, bits of stone and brick, or lost jewels tell the archaeologist about the lives of ancient people. Once in a while, sometimes quite by accident, a great work of art that has been lost for hundreds of years may be discovered.

p. 156

Ancient Works of Art Discovered by Accident

One day four boys and their dog were playing in the woods near Lascaux, in France. Suddenly their dog disappeared down a hole. One of the boys went into the hole to rescue his dog, and found himself in an underground cave.

The walls were covered with large, powerful paintings of animals. The boys had discovered a cave that had been used in the time of the Old Stone Age. Archaeologists think that the paintings may be more than fifteen thousand years old. The picture above shows a section of a wall in the Lascaux cave.

Prehistoric paintings in two other European caves were discovered by children. A five-year-old girl discovered the cave paintings of Altamira in Spain, and three brothers discovered paintings in the Les Trois Fréres cave in France. Archaeologists, especially a French priest, the Abbé Henri Breuil, studied the paintings to learn about the lives and customs of Stone Age men who made their tools and weapons of stone because they did not yet know about metals. The cavemen believed that their paintings served a magical purpose: to bring success when they went hunting for food.

p. 157

A stray goat led to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. A young shepherd searching for his goat along the rocky shores of the Dead Sea in Jordan came upon the entrance to a dark cave. He called a friend and they explored the cave together. They found rows of clay jars. Inside the jars were rolls of leather and papyrus, wrapped in linen. The rolls, or scrolls, were covered with ancient Hebrew writing.

The boys had discovered the earliest known Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament. The scrolls were brittle with age. Archaeologists worked with great care to keep them from crumbling into dust.

p. 158

What Do Archaeologists Do?

Archaeologists not only look for lost objects, but they also look for answers to all of the questions about the things they find. Archaeologists studied the stone Pueblo god and made a copy, with the lost arm replaced, to show how the god looked long ago. They also painted the copy with the stripes of the original.    Finding objects is just one part of the archaeologist's work. Studying the objects, comparing them, and restoring them to their original state are also parts of the archaeologist's work. In hundreds of ways, archaeologists dig up things of the past to learn more and more about people of ancient times. Their work is important because we can not only learn how to improve modern living but also avoid some of the problems of earlier times. We can determine our own levels of progress, or even "regress," and work forwards towards improvement and betterment. It is also our good fortune that archaeologists discover great and beautiful works of art.