新概念英语第四册课文word版.pdf

新概念英语第四册课文 Lesson1 We can read of things that happened 5,000years ago in the Near East,where people first learned to write. But there are some parts of the world where even now people cannot write. The only way that they can preserve their history is to recount it as sagas legends handed down from one generation of story-tellers to another. These legendsare useful becausethey cantell ussomething about migrationsof peoplewho lived long ago, but none could write down what they did. Anthropologists wondered where the remote ancestors of the Polynesian peoples now living in the Pacific Islands camefrom. The sagas ofthese peopleexplainthat some ofthem camefrom Indonesia about 2,000years ago. Butthe first peoplewho were like ourselves lived so long ago that even their sagas, if they hadany, are forgotten. So archaeologists have neither history nor legendsto help them to find outwhere the first modern mencame from. Fortunately, however, ancient men madetools of stone, especially flint, becausethis is easier to shape than other kinds. They may also have used wood and skins, but these have rotted away. Stone does not decay, and so the tools of long ago have remained when even the bonesof the menwho madethem havedisappearedwithout trace. Lesson2 Why, you maywonder, should spiders be our friends ? Becausethey destroy so many insects, and insects include some of the greatest enemies of the human race. Insects would makeitimpossiblefor usto liveintheworld;theywould devourallourcropsand 1 新概念英语第四册课文 kill our flocks and herds, if it were not for the protection we get from insect-eating animals. We owe a lot to the birds and beasts who eat insects but all of them put together killonlyafraction ofthe numberdestroyed byspiders. Moreover,unlikesome of the other insecteaters, spiders neverdo the least harmto us or our belongings. Spidersare not