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    In the depths of theFrench Guianese rainforest, there still remain unusual groups of indigenous(土著的) people.Surprisingly, these people live largely by their own laws and their own socialcustoms. And yet, people in this area are in fact French citizens because ithas been a colony(殖民地) of the French Republic since 1946. In theory, they shouldlive by the French law is often ignored or unknown, thus making them into aninteresting area of “lawlessness” in the world.

The lives of thesepeople have finally been recorded thanks to the effects of a Frenchman formParis called Gin. Gin spent five months in early 2015 exploring the most remotecorners of this area, which sits on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, withhalf its population of only 250,000 living in its capital, Cayenne.

“I have a special lovefor the French Guianese people. I have worked there on and off for almost tenyears,” says Gin. “I’ve been able to keep firm friendships with them. Thus Ihave been allowed to gain access to their living environment. I don’t see it asa lawless land. But rather I see it as an area of freedom.”

“I wanted to showthe audience a photographic record touching upon the uncivilized life,”continues Gin. “I prefer to work in black and white, which allows me to showdifferent specific worlds more clearly.”

His black-and-whitepictures present a world almost lost in time. These pictures show peopleseemingly pushed into a world that they were unprepared for. These localcitizens now have to balance their traditional self-supporting huntinglifestyle with the lifestyle offered by the modern French Republic, whichbrings with it not only necessary state welfare, but also alcoholism,betrayal and even suicide.

    It has been more than 50 years since Harvard Business School started admitting women, yet the institution(机构) is still trying hard to find out how to best attract and support them. Its latest effort: a program targeting women's colleges—place that are not traditional feeding grounds for the male-majority business school.

The program is called Peek. It offers juniors, seniors and recent graduates from women's colleges the opportunity to read and discuss four HBS case studies in class specially taught by top HBS members. About 50 to 70 promising students will pay $500 for their stay there.

Women make up 41 percent of Harvard Business School class of 2016—the most the school has had. In 1985, women made up only one-quarter of the graduating class. Harvard is not alone when it comes to struggling with a gender gap (性别差别). At Wharton, the class of 2016 is 40 percent women; at Standford Business School, it's 42 percent. No top business school had gotten to 50 percent yet.

    Despite the Peek program's good intention, the $500 fee bothered someone, said John A. Byrne, the editor of business school new site. "The fact that HBS would charge women for the chance of coming to campus rubbed a lot of people the wrong way,” said Byrne. HBS said the $500 fee was a “fair price” for room and daily meals at the business school for a weekend, and didn't actually cover the full costs of the program.

    For years, women students at Harvard Business School failed to keep pace with men. In 2010, Harvard business School got a new manager, Nitin Nohrin, who promised a turnaround. Nohrin designed a program to encourage women students and professors. He promised to change the school's case studies so that at least 20 percent of the people in the business texts would be women.

    The term “to extend an olive（橄榄） branch” means to make an offer of peace or reconciliation(和好). This term has Biblical（圣经的）origins, coming from the section of the Old Testament that deals with the flood; the sign that the flood is over is an olive branch brought back to the ark(方舟) by a dove. Olive branches were also symbols of peace in Ancient Greece and Rome, and they continue to be used in various works of art that are meant to suggest peace.

    Some people have suggested that the olive was a very deliberate and well-considered choice as a metaphor(比喻）for peace, because olive trees famously take years to mature. War is typically very hard on the trees because people cannot take the time to nurture them and plant new ones. Therefore, the offer of an olive branch would suggest that someone is tired of war, whether it is an actual war or a falling out between friends.

    In Ancient Greek and Roman times, people would offer actual olive branches. In Rome, for example, defeated armies traditionally carried olive branches to indicate that they were giving in, and the Greeks used them into weddings and other ceremonies. In the modern era, the branch is usually metaphorical, rather than actual, not least because the plants can be a bit difficult to obtain.

    Many people agree that peace negotiations at all levels of society are a good idea. Between nations, obviously, it is important to extend an olive branch to ensure mutual safety and to help the world run more smoothly. This act can also be important on a personal level, as resolving conflict and learning to get along with others is viewed as an important life skill in many cultures.

    At some point in their lives, many people will be advised to extend an olive branch to settle a dispute or resolve an issue. Some people believe that it takes an immense amount of courage to take this action, as it often comes with an admission of wrongdoing and regret.

    In London's art gallery six or seven men, mostly in their 30s, are busy painting the walls with new designs in colorful lettering and clever tricks. Tins of spray paint and beer stand on the ground. The atmosphere is not unlike that of a golf course: a mix of concentration and relaxation.

    Graffiti(涂鸦) painting is traditionally a daring hobby. Teenagers avoid security guards to put their names on trains and buses. But over the past decade that has almost disappeared from Britain's cities. Between 2007 and 2017 the number of incidents of graffiti recorded by the British Transport Police fell by 63%. A survey by the environment ministry shows that fewer places are damaged by tags(绘名) than ever. Graffiti are increasingly limited to only a few walls. In time the practice may die out entirely.

    The most obvious reason for the decline in tagging and train-painting is better policing, says Keegan Webb, who runs The London Vandal, a graffiti blog (博客). Numerous cameras mean it is harder to get away with painting illegally. And punishments are more severe. A generational change is apparent, too. Now teenagers prefer to play with iPads and video games. Those who do get involved tend to prefer street art to graffiti. And the internet helps painters win far more attention by posting pictures online than they can by breaking into a railway yard.

    Taggers and graffiti artists mostly grew up in the 1980s and 1990s. Those men are now older and less willing to take risks. "We can't run away from the police any more," says Ben Eine, who turned from tagging to street art. The hip-hop culture that inspired graffiti in the first place has faded. Video games and comic books provide more inspiration than music.

    Graffiti may eventually disappear. But for now the hobby is almost respectable. Mr Eine says he has lots of friends who used to paint trains. Now with wives and children, they paint abandoned houses at the weekend. It has become something to do on a Sunday afternoon—a slightly healthier alternative to sitting watching the football.

    How did people in ancient China change their luck? Most of them would take the exam, Keju, which began during the Sui Dynasty and lasted for 1,300 years before it was ended in the Qing Dynasty.

    Keju, the early “gaokao”, played a very important role in choosing qualified persons to work for the king.

    The Keju exams were mainly based on classical literature(文学) and philo- sophy. Poetry was very important in earlier Keju exams, and later Keju focused more on writing.

    All candidates had to write an article explaining ideas from those books, which was called Eight Part Essay. Two sentences were required at the start of the article, about the main idea of the title, which was called “to clear the topic”. The exams also focused on more practical matters.  

    Most candidates in ancient China had to go a long way to the capital city for the exam. As transportation in ancient times was not developed, they usually went to the capital on foot, and some took several months to reach the capital.

    The exam was held once every three years and it was made up of four levels: the county examination, provincial examination, academy examination and palace examination. Candidates had to first pass one level in order to take part in the next level. Each examination would take from one to three days to finish, and they were locked in a small room and received cold meals.

    On the exam day, candidates had to first go through safety check. They had to let their hair loose so that it could be checked and their trouser legs, shoes and socks, even bottoms were also checked.

    In the famous fairy tale, Snow White eats the Queen's apple and falls victim to a curse（诅咒）;in Shakespeare's novel, Romeo drinks the poison and dies; some ancient Chinese emperors took pellets（药丸）that contained mercury（水银）, believing that it would make them immortal, but they died afterward.

    Poison has long been an important ingredient in literature and history, and it seems to always be associated with evil, danger and death. But how much do you really know about poison?

    An exhibition, The Power of Poison, opened last month at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, intended to give the audience a more vivid understanding of poison.

    The museum tour starts in a rainforest setting, where you can see live examples of some of the most poisonous animals: caterpillars（毛毛虫）, frogs and spiders. Golden poison frogs, for instance, aren't much bigger than a coin, but their skin is covered with a poison that can cut off the signaling power of your nerves, and a single frog has enough venom to kill 10 grown humans.

    "Poisons can be bad for some things," Michael Novacek, senior vice president of the museum, told NBC News. "Yet they can also be good for others."

    A poisonous chemical found in the yew tree is effective against cancer, which is what led to the invention of a cancer-fighting drug called Taxol.

    The benefits from natural poisons are not limited to just medicine. Believe it or not, many substances（物质）that we regularly ingest（摄入）-chili, coffee and chocolate-owe their special flavors or stimulating（提神的）effects to chemicals that plants make to poison insects.

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    Most of the people who appear most often and most gloriously in the history books are great conquerors and generals and soldiers, whereas the people who really helped civilization forward are often never mentioned at all. We do not know who first set a broken leg, or launched a seaworthy boat, or calculated the length of the year, or manured(施肥)a field; but we know all about the killers and destroyers. People think a great deal of them, so much so that on all the highest pillars (纪念柱) in the great cities of the world you will find the figure of a conqueror or a general or a soldier. And I think most people believe that the greatest countries are those that have beaten in battle the greatest number of other countries and ruled over them as conquerors. It is just possible they are, but they are not the most civilized.

    Animals fight; so do savages (野蛮人); hence to be good at fighting is to be good in the way in which an animal or a savage is good, but it is not to be civilized. Even being good at getting other people to fight for you and telling them how to do it most efficiently －this, after all, is what conquerors and generals have done －is not being civilized. People fight to settle quarrels. Fighting means killing, and civilized peoples ought to be able to find some way of settling their disputes other than by seeing which side can kill off the greater number of the other side, and then saying that that side which has killed most has won. And it not only has won, but, because it has won, has been in the right. For that is what going to war means; it means saying that might is right.

    That is what the story of mankind has on the whole been like. Even our own age has fought the two greatest wars in history, in which millions of people were killed or disabled. And while today it is true that people do not fight and kill each other in the streets －while, that is to say, we have got to the stage of keeping the rules and behaving properly to each other in daily life － nations and countries have not learnt to do this yet, and still behave like savages.

    You may know the Eiffel Tower as one of the most famous man-made monuments in the world, and you'd be absolutely right! Read on to learn about the history of the great Eiffel Tower.

    Travelers from around the world flock(蜂拥)to Paris, France, to visit the Eiffel Tower, making it the most visited paid monument in the entire world! In fact, in 2010, the Eiffel Tower welcomed its 250 millionth visitor!

The history of the Eiffel Tower

    The Eiffel Tower was named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the famous monument. Construction began in January of 1887 and was completed in only two years. Their plan was to finish the tower in time to be the entrance arch for the World's Fair in 1889. This fair celebrated the 100^th anniversary of the French Revolution, which took place from 1789 to 1799.

The height competition

    Located on the Champs de Mars, the tower is the tallest structure in Paris. It was the tallest man-made structure in the world for 41 years until the Chrysler Building in New York surpassed(超过) it. Then the spire(塔尖) on the top of the tower was added, raising its height to 17 feet taller than the Chrysler Building. It is now 1,063 feet tall! There are two replicas(复制品) of the Eiffel Tower in the world: a half scale model at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas and a full-sized monument of a similar (but not exact) design in Tokyo, Japan.

Three shades of wonder

    Some pictures make the Eiffel Tower look like a dark iron color. But it is, in fact, bronze. Not only that, but the tower is actually painted three different shades to make it appear even taller: darkest on the bottom and lightest on the top.

    All languages change over time, but some change at a faster rate than others. The most important factors are the number of people who speak a language, where they live and whether they move around, the importance of the language for world trade and communication, and changes in technology.

    However, today English is the most widely used language in the world. English is spoken by about 350 million people as a first language in countries such as Great Britain, the United States. In addition, about a billion more people speak English as a second language.

    English started to take over French as an international language during the period of British colonialism (殖民主义) when the English ruled many countries in Africa and Asia. The colonial period came to an end at the same time that several other changes occurred. For example, the U.S. started to play a greater part in global affairs and the international economy. New means of communication technology such as television and the Internet spread English worldwide. In addition, they could use the Internet for information, business, or e-mail communication, all in English. Just as the use of English spread, other languages changed English by contact or by new inventions and technology.

    In contrast, Icelandic is a language that has changed very slowly. Icelandic speakers today can understand poetry written in a slightly different dialect over 1,000 years ago! Why has Icelandic changed so slowly? The main reason is the isolated (孤立的) location of the island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Compared to England, Iceland had no history of colonialism. Iceland's small population has not played a major role in international trade or communication. Today, most Icelanders speak English in addition to their native language. With outside influences, Icelandic is changing more rapidly now.

A. People everywhere could watch the news or sports events in English.

B. These changes have a great influence on the development of society.

C. Isolation meant that for hundreds of years, Icelanders had little contact with speakers of other languages.

D. What are some of the factors that influence how quickly a language changes?

E. The language communication brings about the communication of technology.

F. In the past, other languages such as Latin or French were more important than English.

G. English was the primary means of communication in these colonies.

    What brings a nation together? Of the four choices — shared values, language, history, and religion, it's shared values. In our latest poll (民意调査), seven out of 16 countries chose values as the greatest factor (因索）bringing a nation together, and six preferred language. Both choices scored high in the poll, suggesting that our values and how we express them are closely linked Still, history was not forgotten in some countries, particularly in Mexico and Russia. Even Canada and the United States chose national histories as the second-most important factor uniting their people. The biggest surprise? Not one country picked religion as its top choice.

    Ireland has had a very difficult history. The problems started in the 16th century when English ruler tried to conquer(征服) Ireland. For hundreds of years, the Irish people fought against the English. Finally, in 1921, the British government was forced to give independence to the south of Ireland. The result in that today there are two “Irelands”. Northern Ireland, in the north, is part of the United Kingdom. The Republic of Ireland, in the south is an independent country.

    In the 1840s the main crop, was affected by disease and about 750,000 people died of hunger. This, and a shortage(短缺) of work, forced many people to leave Ireland and live in the USA, the UK, Australia and Canada. As a result of these problems, the population fell from 8.2 million in 1841 to 6.6 million in 1851.

    For many years, the majority of Irish people earned their living as farmers. Today, many people will work on the land but more and more people are moving to the cities to work in factories and offices. Life in the cities is very different from life in the countryside, where things move at a quieter and slower pace.

    The Irish are famous for being warm-hearted and friendly. Oscar Wilde, a famous Irish writer, once said that the Irish were “the greatest talkers since the Creeks”. Since independence, Ireland has revived(复兴) its own culture of music, language, literature and singing. Different areas have different styles of old Irish songs which are sung without instruments. Other kinds of Irish music use many different instruments such as the violin, whistles, etc.

    The first ancient Olympic Games for which we still have written records were held in 776 BC. Coroebus won the only event at the Olympics. This made him the very first Olympic champion in history. Then they grew and continued to be played every four years. In 393 AD, the Roman emperor Theodosius Ⅰ, a Christian, announced to end the Games because of their pagan (异教的) influences.

    About 1,500 years later, a young Frenchman named Pierre de Coubertin began their revival (恢复). In 1892 Coubertin first brought forward his idea to revive the Olympic Games but failed.

    Two years later, Coubertin organized a meeting with 79 delegates (代表) who represented nine countries. At this meeting he got what he wanted. All the delegates at the conference voted for the Olympic Games. They also decided to have Coubertin set up an international committee to organize the Games. This committee became the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Demetrious Vikelas from Greece was selected to be its first president. Athens was chosen for the revival of the Olympic Games and the planning was begun.

    The very first modern Olympic Games opened in the first week of April, 1896. Since the Greek government had been unable to afford a stadium, a rich Greek architect, Georgios Averoff, donated one million drachmas (over $100,000) to repair the Panathenaic Stadium, originally built in 330 BC.

    Since the Games were not well publicized internationally, contestants (选手) were not nationally chosen but rather came individually and at their own expense. Some contestants were tourists who happened to be in the area during the Games.

    The history of chocolate begins with a plant whose name is cacao. For centuries, people worldwide have been enjoying the rich favor of chocolate, a product made from cacaoAmericans eat an average of more than five kilograms of chocolate per person every year. The specialty shop shows the culture of chocolate and sells chocolates from different areas of the world.

    Historians believe the Mayan people of Central America first learned to farm cacao plants around 2,000 years agoThen they grew them around their homes. They cooked the cacao seeds and pressed them into soft powder. They mixed the powder with water to make a delicious chocolate drink. There are often images of cacao plants on Maya buildings and art objects. The rulers drank chocolate at ceremonies

    The Aztecs also valued chocolate in the Aztec culture. But the cacao plant could not grow in the area where they livedThey even used cacao seeds as a form of money to pay or give as offerings to the gods. Only the very wealthy people in Aztec societies could afford to drink chocolate because cacao was so valuable.

    The explorer Christopher Columbus brought cacao seeds to Spain after his trip to Central America in 1502. The wealthy people of Spain first enjoyed the chocolate drink Nowadays, the English, Dutch and French all plant cacao trees in their own countries.

A. Chocolate is very sensitive to temperature.

B. The Mayan took the cacao trees from the rainforests.

C. Chocolate is especially popular in the United States.

D. Chocolate has been prepared as a drink for nearly all of its history.

E. So they had to exchange goods with other societies for cacao seeds.

F. Since then, the popularity of the drink has spread throughout Europe.

G. And even poorer members of Mayan society could enjoy the drink sometimes.

    Lawns（草坪）are some of the most common things in the world until you really start thinking about them. That's when you realize that they make no sense. Why do people keep these uninteresting, pointless little plants outside their homes? They're not beautiful like flowers, they don't provide food and you have to take care of them constantly.

    Israeli bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari thought these deeds were weird too. He looked into their history and ended up with an interesting story.

    No one considered putting patches of grass outside their homes in ancient times. That changed in the Middle Ages, when French and English kings and nobles started putting patches of grass at their castle entrances.

    “Well-kept lawns demand land and a lot of work,” wrote Harari in his book. “In exchange, they produce nothing of value.” Peasants could never afford to waste their time or land on lawns, so these lawns were a perfect status symbol（身份的象征）for nobility（高贵）.

    When the Industrial Revolution began in the 18th and 19th centuries, the middle classes started being able to afford their own suburban（郊区的）houses. And guess what became the suburban status symbol? A perfectly kept lawn.

    The popularity of lawns continued to grow, taking over public event spaces and sports. In the past, people played sports on all kinds of surfaces—dirt, ice, sand. But in the last couple centuries, they made the switch to green grass.

    “Grass is nowadays the most widespread crop in the USA after corn and wheat,” Harari continued. Lawns spread beyond Europe and the U.S, and they're now status symbols around the world.

    Suburban people may not realize it, but they care for lawns just because centuries ago, French and English kings wanted to show off by intentionally planting something useless. It's strange that people should continue to spend so much time and money on what's really a leftover（遗留物）from the Middle Ages. When you plan your house, you can shake off（摆脱）the cultural leftover and imagine for yourself a rock garden or some other new creation.

    For thousands of years, people thought of glass as something beautiful to look at. Only in large glass windows. Glass bottles and jars that hold food and drink allow us to see the contents. Glass is used to make eyeglasses, microscopes, telescopes, and many other extremely useful and necessary things.

    Until the Second World War, most of the glass used for optical (光学的) instruments was imported from Europe. However, during the war Americans could not get European glass, and they were forced to make their own. Therefore, new kinds of glass were developed that had been previously unknown. These new effects were achieved by mixing other chemical elements with the sand. Some of the new glass is very strong and can resist many kinds of shocks. Legend (传说) has it that a kind of very hard glass was invented by a Roman who showed his discovery to the Emperor. When the Emperor saw the glass he feared that it would become more valuable than gold and sliver, making his treasure worthless. Therefore, he had the glass-maker killed, and the secret was not discovered again for hundreds of years.

    In the present century, safety glass was invented for use in modem cars and planes. Safety glass is made by placing a layer of plastic between two layers of plate glass. When the outside layer of glass is broken, the pieces do not scatter (散开) and injure people. Some glass of the type is strong enough to resist bullets (子弹).

    Although nowadays plastics have replaced glass under conditions where glass might be easily broken, there are new uses being developed, for the greatest advantage of glass is that its component (组成的) parts are inexpensive and can be found all over the world.

    Frequently, we speak about people being “color-blind” but very few of us are. Even those who describe themselves as color-blind are normally just color lack. A strongly, color-blind person will still be able to tell 20 different colors, compared to the 100 or so that normal-sighted people see.

    Pingelap, a tiny island in the Pacific, is a beautiful spot but one that has a genetic trouble. It is known as Color-blind Island because so many people who live on this remote island can only see black and white.

    Not being able to see colors is bad enough. But one islander, Herrol, who's a fisherman, also struggles in full sunlight because all he sees is a painful burnt-out image. “I find it difficult to go outside in the sun,” he says, “because when it's sunny I cannot see to do my work.”

    But if being truly color-blind is rare, why is it that around 10% of the population of Pingelap live in a totally black and white world?

    Well, we know that in 1780 the population of Pingelap was all but wiped out by a tsunami (海啸). As few as 20 people survived, one of whom was the king. It's believed he had a genetic fault that causes colour-blindness and he passed this fault on to his many generations.

    There is one advantage. Herrol can see well, really well, in the dark. So when it gets dark, Herrol and his friends get in their boats and hunt flying fish. They hang up flaming torches and the fish are attracted to the flames. “This type of fishing is fun,” Herrol says, “especially if we catch plenty. So even though it's hard work we enjoy it.”

    Cities usually have a good reason for being where they are, like a nearby port or river. People settle in these places because they are easy to get to and naturally suited to communications and trade. New York City, for example, is near a large harbour at the mouth of the Hudson River. Over 300 years its population grew gradually from 800 people to 8 million. But not all cities develop slowly over a long period of time. Boom towns grow from nothing almost overnight. In 1896, Dawson, Canada, was unmapped wilderness(荒野). But gold was discovered there in 1897, and two years later, it was one of the largest cities in the West, with a population of 30,000.

    Dawson did not have any of the natural conveniences of cities like London or Paris. People went there for gold. They travelled over snow-covered mountains and sailed hundreds of miles up icy rivers. The path to Dawson was covered with thirty feet of wet snow that could fall without warming. An avalanche(雪崩) once closed the path, killing 63 people. For many who made it to Dawson, however, the rewards were worth the difficult trip. Of the first 20,000 people who dug for gold, 4,000 got rich. About 100 of these stayed rich men for the rest of their lives.

    But no matter how rich they were, Dawson was never comfortable. Necessities like food and wood were very expensive. But soon, the gold that Dawson depended on had all been found. The city was crowded with disappointed people with no interest in settling down, and when they heard there were new gold discoveries in Alaska, they left Dawson City as quickly as they had come. Today, people still come and go — to see where the Canadian gold rush happened. Tourism is now the chief industry of Dawson City — its present population is 762.

    People from Britain and Ireland first came to live in Australia in 1788. They brought different dialects （方言）of English with them. These different kinds of English began to mix and change. The newcomers soon began to speak with their own typical accent（口音） and vocabulary. More and more people came to Australia during the Gold Rush in the 19th and 20th centuries. Some came from Britain and Ireland; others came from non-English speaking countries. Australian English continued to grow and change.

    Australian English has also been influenced by American English. During the Second World War, there were many American soldiers staying in Australia. More importantly, American television shows and music have been popular in Australia since the 1950s.

    Australians use many words that other English speakers do not use. The famous Australian greeting, for example, is G'day! A native forest is called the bush and central Australia is called the outback. Many words were brought to Australia from Britain and Ireland. For example, mate means "friend", and it is still used in Britain. Some of these words have changed in meaning. Some words have come from Australian original languages, many of which are names for animals, plants and places, like dingo and kangaroo.

    Australian spelling comes from British spelling. In words like organise and realise, -ise is the expected and taught spelling method. In words like colour, favourite, -our is the normal, but nouns such as the Labor Party and Victor Harbor are spelled with -or. Program, on the other hand, is more common than programme.

    There are also differences in the definition （定义）of words Australians use in different parts of the country. For example, football means "rugby" in New South Wales and Queensland, but "Australian rules football" in everywhere else in Australia. In New South Wales, a swimming costume is called a cossie or swimmers, while in Queensland it is called togs and bathers in Victoria.

    It's easy to imagine the Sahara as a lifeless and timeless place, where the merciless forces of nature rule over any sense of human history. However, that's far from the truth. Some corners of the Western Sahara, found along the northwestern coast of Africa, are littered with hundreds of ancient stone monuments from centuries worth of human culture, some of which date back to over 10,000 years ago.

    Between 2002 and 2009, the Western Sahara Project, led by the University of East Anglia in the UK, documented the archaeology(考古学) and environment of northwestern Sahara around the town of Tifariti. The monuments come in a variety of forms and were constructed by a number of different cultures across the centuries. Many appear to be little more than long rows of piled rocks, while others are purposefully placed large stones standing proudly in a circular pattern. Others are 5-meter-high (16 feet) dry stone wall constructions that could have only been built by human hands.

    It's unclear what most of the monuments are meant to represent, although most are assumed to be burial mounds(墓冢), used as part of a funerary ceremony, or sign at the presence of a grave. This desire to construct burial mounds is something that can be found in countless cultures across the planet, from the Scythians of ancient Siberia to the sea-faring Vikings of northern Europe, and it looks like the ancient people of Western Sahara were not different.

    For one reason or another, this natural basin area managed to remain a place of human activity over the millennia, especially when times became tough in the surrounding areas. "One of our theories is that as the Sahara dried between five and six thousand years ago—this is one of the refugia(避难所), an area where water remained," Joanne Clarke, prehistoric archaeologist at the University of East Anglia, told Atlas Obscura.

Before the 1830s, most newspapers were sold through annual subscriptions in America, usually $8 to $10 a year. Today $8 to $10 seems a small amount of money, but at that time these amounts were forbidding to most citizens. Accordingly, newspaper were read almost only by rich people in politics or the trades. In addition, most newspapers had little in them that would appeal to a mass audience. They were dull and visually forbidding. But the revolution that was taking place in the 1830s would change all that.

The trend, then, was toward the "penny paper" — a term referring to papers made widely available to the public. It meant any inexpensive newspaper, perhaps more importantly it meant newspapers that could be bought in single copies on the street.

This development did not take place overnight. It had been possible (but not easy) to buy single copies of newspapers before 1830, but this usually meant the reader had to go down to the printer's office to purchases a copy. Street sales were almost unknown. However, within a few years, street sales of newspapers would be commonplace in eastern cities. At first the price of single copies was seldom a penny — usually two or three cents was charged — and some of the older well-known papers charged five or six cents. But the phrase "penny paper" caught the public's fancy, and soon there would be papers that did indeed sell for only a penny.

This new trend of newspapers for "the man on the street" did not begin well. Some of the early ventures (企业) were immediate failures. Publishers already in business, people who were owners of successful papers, had little desire to change the tradition. It took a few youthful and daring businessmen to get the ball rolling.