新概念英语第四册笔记-完整版

L1 Finding fossil man

We can read of things that happened 5,000 years 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 storytellers to another. These legends

are useful because they can tell us something about migrations of

people who 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 came from.

The sagas of these people explain that some of them came from

Indonesia about 2,000 years ago.

But the first people who were like ourselves lived so long ago that

even their sagas, if they had any, are forgotten. So archaeologists

have neither history nor legends to help them to find out where the

first'modern men' came from.

Fortunately, however, ancient men made tools of stone, especially

flint, because this 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 bones of the men who made them have disappeared

without trace.

New words and expressions

recount /ri'kaunt/ v.叙述 / ' rei'kaunt/ 再数一次

record / ' rek[d/ /ri' kC:d/ 第一个音节带重音，名前动后

叙述：recount : emotionless 重复

describe

depict： a little emotional

narrate： temporal&spacial 根据时间或空间顺序描述。

portray：描述

saga /'sa:g[/ n.英雄故事 描述的内容mostly real 北欧海盗活动的故事

legend /'ledV[nd/ n.传说，传奇 unreal e.g robin hood

anthropologist/ 'AnWr['pCl[dVist/ n.人类学家

anthrop：人

philosophere :philo＋sopher|爱＋智慧＝哲学家

philanthropist : 慈善家（对人有爱心的人）

anthropology :人类学

带-gy结尾的都是学科：biology 生物学 geography 地理学

ecology 生态学

remote/ ri'm[ut/ n.遥远

ancestor / 'Ansest[/ n.祖先

an- 在前面

forefather,forebear ，predecessor祖先

rot/ rCt/ v.烂掉

leave me rot.＝leave me along

rot to death.

soon ripe,soon rotten.

decay 国家民族逐渐衰亡 decompose 逐渐衰竭 deteriorate关系逐渐恶化

trace /treis/ n.痕迹，踪迹 trace the problem

i follow your trace＝i follow where you go

polynesia 波利尼西亚

poly-多

polyandric: a wife with more than one husband

polygeny : a husband with more than one wife

flint /flint/ n.燧石 flinting hearted

fossil / ' fCsl/ n. 化石 cobble 鹅卵石

read of 读到

谈到：speak of ,talk of ,know of,hear of

near east：近东 mediterranean, south europe,north afric

far east

非限定性从句，表原因

oral(spoken) language is earlier than written language.

precede :什么在什么之前，不用比较，直接跟名词

counterpart: two things or two people have the same position

oral(spoken) language is earlier than written counterpart.

preserve: 保留，保存（腌制）

如果句中有only，那后面的表语结构就要用to do sth,而不是doing sth.

storyteller: 讲故事的人

fortuneteller, palmreader: 算命先生

migration ：移民 １）migrant ２）immigrant

v. migrate:迁移，迁徙

migratory bird:候鸟

none: no body

people＋s 民族

if they had any: 即便是有

his relatives,if he had any,never went to visit him when he was

hospitalized.

find out千方百计，费尽周折＝explore

modern men :the men who were like ourselves

however－anywhere you want ,加逗号

but,yet－不加标点，only at the beginning of the sentence

therefore－自由

so－自由

tool:小工具

instrument:实验器械

equipment:设备

shape:成型；教育，改造

may also have:表推测

peel:果皮

leather:皮革

hide:兽皮 cowhide:牛皮

without (any) trace:无影无踪

L 2 Spare that spider

Why, you may wonder, should spiders be our friends ? Because

they destroy so many insects, and insects include some of the

greatest enemies of the human race. Insects would make it

impossible.for us to live in the world; they would devour all our

crops and 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 kill only a

fraction of the number destroyed by spiders. Moreover, unlike

some of the other insect eaters, spiders never do the least harm to

us or our

belongings.

Spiders are not insects, as many people think, nor even nearly

related to them. One can tell the difference almost at a glance for a

spider always has eight legs and an insect never more than six.

How many spiders are engaged in this work on our behalf ? One

authority on spiders made a census of the spiders in a grass field in

the south of England, and he estimated that there were more than

2,250,000 in one acre, that is something like 6,000,000 spiders of

different kinds on a football pitch. Spiders are busy for at least half

the year in killing insects. It is impossible to make more than the

wildest guess at how many they kill, but they are hungry creatures,

not content with only three meals a day. It has been estimated that