Stonehenge

For centuries, historians and archaeologists have puzzled over the many mysteries of Stonehenge, a prehistoric
monument that took an estimated 1,500 years to erect. Located on Salisbury Plain in southern England, it is comprised
of roughly 100 massive upright stones placed in a circular layout.

Archaeologists believe England’s most iconic prehistoric ruin was built in several stages with the earliest constructed
5,000 or more years ago. First, Neolithic* Britons used primitive tools, which may have been fashioned out of deer
antlers, to dig a massive circular ditch and bank, or henge. Deep pits dating back to that era and located within the circle
may have once held a ring of timber posts, according to some scholars.

Several hundred years later, it is thought, Stonehenge’s builders hoisted an estimated 80 bluestones, 43 of which remain
today, into standing positions and placed them in either a horseshoe or circular formation. These stones have been
traced all the way to the Preseli Hills in Wales, some 300 kilometres from Stonehenge. How, then, did prehistoric
builders without sophisticated tools or engineering haul these boulders, which weigh up to four tons, over such a great
distance?

According to one long-standing theory among archaeologists, Stonehenge’s builders fashioned sledges and rollers out of
tree trunks to lug the bluestones from the Preseli Hills. They then transferred the boulders onto rafts and floated them
first along the Welsh coast and then up the River Avon toward Salisbury Plain; alternatively, they may have towed each
stone with a fleet of vessels. More recent archaeological hypotheses have them transporting the bluestones with
supersized wicker baskets on a combination of ball bearings and long grooved planks, hauled by oxen.

As early as the 1970s, geologists have been adding their voices to the debate over how Stonehenge came into being.
Challenging the classic image of industrious builders pushing, carting, rolling or hauling giant stones from faraway
Wales, some scientists have suggested that it was glaciers, not humans, that carried the bluestones to Salisbury Plain.
Most archaeologists have remained sceptical about this theory, however, wondering how the forces of nature could
possibly have delivered the exact number of stones needed to complete the circle.

The third phase of construction took place around 2000 BCE. At this point, sandstone slabs -known as ‘sarsens’-were
arranged into an outer crescent or ring; some were assembled into the iconic three-pieced structures called trilithons that
stand tall in the centre of Stonehenge. Some 50 of these stones are now visible on the site, which may once have
contained many more. Radiocarbon dating has revealed that work continued at Stonehenge until roughly 1600 BCE,
with the bluestones in particular being repositioned multiple times.

But who were the builders of Stonehenge? In the 17th century, archaeologist John Aubrey made the claim that
Stonehenge was the work of druids, who had important religious, judicial and political roles in Celtic** society. This
theory was widely popularized by the antiquarian William Stukeley, who had unearthed primitive graves at the site.
Even today, people who identify as modern druids continue to gather at Stonehenge for the summer solstice. However,
in the mid-20th century, radiocarbon dating demonstrated that Stonehenge stood more than 1,000 years before the Celts
inhabited the region.

Many modern historians and archaeologists now agree that several distinct tribes of people contributed to Stonehenge,
each undertaking a different phase of its construction. Bones, tools and other artefacts found on the site seem to support
this hypothesis. The first stage was achieved by Neolithic agrarians who were likely to have been indigenous to the
British Isles. Later, it is believed, groups with advanced tools and a more communal way of life left their mark on the
site. Some believe that they were immigrants from the European continent, while others maintain that they were
probably native Britons, descended from the original builders.

If the facts surrounding the architects and construction of Stonehenge remain shadowy at best, the purpose of the
striking monument is even more of a mystery. While there is consensus among the majority of modern scholars that
Stonehenge once served the function of burial ground, they have yet to determine what other purposes it had.
In the 1960s, the astronomer Gerald Hawkins suggested that the cluster of megalithic stones operated as a form of
calendar, with different points corresponding to astrological phenomena such as solstices, equinoxes and eclipses
occurring at different times of the year. While his theory has received a considerable amount of attention over the
decades, critics maintain that Stonehenge’s builders probably lacked the knowledge necessary to predict such events or
that England’s dense cloud cover would have obscured their view of the skies.

More recently, signs of illness and injury in the human remains unearthed at Stonehenge led a group of British
archaeologists to speculate that it was considered a place of healing, perhaps because bluestones were thought to have
curative powers.

Complete the notes below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.
Stonehenge
Construction
Stage 1:
● the ditch and henge were dug, possibly using tools made from 1………………..………….………….
● 2………………………………….………. may have been arranged in deep pits inside the circle
Stage 2:
● bluestones from the Preseli Hills were placed in standing position
● theories about the transportation of the bluestones:
– archaeological:
o builders used 3…………………………………….……. to make sledges and rollers
o 4……………………………………………. pulled them on giant baskets
– geological:
o they were brought from Wales by 5………………………………..…………….
Stage 3:
● sandstone slabs were arranged into an outer crescent or ring
Builders
● a theory arose in the 17th century that its builders were Celtic 6……………………….………………….
Purpose
● many experts agree it has been used as a 7………………………………………………. site
● in the 1960s, it was suggested that it worked as a kind of 8…………………………………………….
TREES IN TROUBLE
A. Big trees are incredibly important ecologically. For a start, they sustain countless other species. They provide
shelter for many animals, and their trunks and branches can become gardens, hung with green ferns, orchids and
bromeliads, coated with mosses and draped with vines. With their tall canopies (leaves and branches that form a
cover high above the ground) basking in the sun, they capture vast amounts of energy. This allows them to
produce massive crops of fruit, flowers and foliage that sustain much of the animal life in the forest.

B. Only a small number of tree species have the genetic capacity to grow really big. The mightiest are native to
North America, but big trees grow all over the globe, from the tropics to the boreal forests of the high latitudes.
To achieve giant stature, a tree needs three things: the right place to establish its seedling, good growing
conditions and lots of time with low adult mortality(no. of deaths within a particular group). Disrupt any of
these, and you can lose your biggest trees.
C. In some parts of the world, populations of big trees are dwindling because their seedlings cannot survive or
grow. In southern India, for instance, an aggressive non-native shrub, Lantana camara, is invading the floor of
many forests. Lantana grows so thickly that young trees often fail to take root. With no young trees to replace
them, it is only a matter of time before most of the big trees disappear. Across much of northern Australia,
gamba grass from Africa is overrunning native savannah woodlands. The grass grows up to four metres tall and
burns fiercely, creating super hot fires that cause catastrophic tree mortality.

D. Without the right growing conditions trees cannot get really big, and there is some evidence to suggest tree
growth could slow in a warmer world, particularly in environments that are already warm. Having worked for
decades at La Selva Biological Station in Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui, Costa Rica, David and Deborah Clark and
colleagues have shown that tree growth there declines markedly in warmer years. “During the day, their
photosynthesis shuts down when it gets too warm, and at night they consume more energy because their
metabolic rate increases, much as a reptile’s would when it gets warmer,” explains David Clark. With less
energy produced in warmer years and more being consumed just to survive, there is even less energy available
for growth.

E. The Clarks’ hypothesis, if correct, means tropical forests would shrink over time. The largest, oldest trees would
progressively die off and tend not to be replaced. According to the Clarks, this might trigger a destabilisation of
the climate; as older trees die, forests would release some of their stored carbon into the atmosphere, prompting
a vicious cycle of further warming, forest shrinkage and carbon emissions.

F. Big trees face threats from elsewhere. The most serious is increasing mortality, especially of mature trees.
Across much of the planet, forests of slow-growing ancient trees have been cleared for human use. In western
North America, most have been replaced by monocultures of fast-growing conifers. Siberia’s forests are being
logged at an incredible rate. Logging in tropical forests is selective but the timber cutters usually prioritise the
biggest and oldest trees. In the Amazon, my colleagues and I found the mortality rate for the biggest trees had
tripled in small patches of rainforest surrounded by pasture land. This happens for two reasons. First, as they
grow taller, big trees become thicker and less flexible: when winds blow across the surrounding cleared land,
there is nothing to stop their acceleration. When they hit the trees, the impact can snap them in half. Second,
rainforest fragments dry out when surrounded by dry, hot pastures and the resulting drought can have
devastating consequences: one four-year study has shown that death rates will double for smaller trees but will
increase 4.5 times for bigger trees.

G. Particular enemies to large trees are insects and disease. Across vast areas of western North America,
increasingly mild winters are causing massive outbreaks of bark beetles. These tiny creatures can kill entire
forests as they tunnel their way through the inside of trees. In both North America and Europe, fungus-causing
diseases such as Dutch elm disease have killed off millions of stately trees that once gave beauty to forests and
cities. As a result of human activity, such enemies reach even the remotest corners of the world, threatening to
make the ancient giants a thing of the past.
Complete the sentences below.
Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

8. The biggest trees in the world can be found in _______________

9. Some trees in Northern Australia die because of ______________ made worse by gamba grass.

10. The Clarks believe that the release of ______________ from dead trees could lead to the death of more trees.

11. Strong ________________ are capable of damaging tall trees in the Amazon.

12. ________________ has a worse impact on tall trees than smaller ones.

13. In western Northern America, a species of _______________ has destroyed many tree
The Manchester University team have used the computer simulations to produce a model of a giant meat-eating
dinosaur. lt is called an acrocanthosaurus which literally means ‘high spined lizard’ because of the spines which run
along its backbone. It is not really known why they are there but scientists have speculated they could have supported
a hump that stored fat and water reserves. There are also those who believe that the spines acted as a support for a
sail. Of these, one half think it was used as a display and could be flushed with blood and the other half think it was
used as a temperature-regulating device. It may have been a mixture of the two. The skull seems out of proportion with
its thick, heavy body because it is so narrow and the jaws are delicate and fine. The feet are also worthy of note as they
look surprisingly small in contrast to the animal as a whole. It has a deep broad tail and powerful leg muscles to
aid locomotion. It walked on its back legs and its front legs were much shorter with powerful claws.
 ELEPHANT COMMUNICATION
O' Connell-Rodwell, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, has travelled to Namibia's first-ever wildlife reserve
to explore the mystical and complicated realm of elephant communication. She, along with her colleagues, is part of a
scientific revolution that started almost 20 years ago. This revolution has made a stunning revelation: elephants are
capable of communicating with each other over long distances with low-frequency sounds, also known as infrasounds,
which are too deep for humans to hear.

As might be expected, African elephants able to detect seismic sound may have something to do with their ears. The
hammer bone in an elephant's inner ear is proportionally huge for a mammal, but it is rather normal for animals that use
vibrational signals. Thus, it may be a sign that suggests elephants can use seismic sounds to communicate.

Other aspects of elephant anatomy also support that ability. First, their massive bodies, which enable them to give out
low-frequency sounds almost as powerful as the sound a jet makes during takeoff, serve as ideal frames for receiving
ground vibrations and transmitting them to the inner ear. Second, the elephant's toe bones are set on a fatty pad, which
might be of help when focusing vibrations from the ground into the bone. Finally, the elephant has an enormous brain
that sits in the cranial cavity behind the eyes in line with the auditory canal. The front of the skull is riddled with sinus
cavities, which might function as resonating chambers for ground vibrations.

It remains unclear how the elephants detect such vibrations, but O' Connell-Rodwell raises a point that the pachyderms
are 'listening' with their trunks and feet instead of their ears. The elephant trunk may just be the most versatile
appendage in nature. Its utilization encompasses drinking, bathing, smelling, feeding and scratching. Both trunk and feet
contain two types of nerve endings that are sensitive to pressure – one detects infrasonic vibration, and another responds
to vibrations higher in frequencies. As O' Connell-Rodwell sees, this research has a boundless and unpredictable future.
'Our work is really interfaced of geophysics, neurophysiology and ecology,' she says. 'We're raising questions that have
never even been considered before.'

It has been well-known to scientists that seismic communication is widely observed among small animals, such as
spiders, scorpions, insects and quite a lot of vertebrate species like white-lipped frogs, blind mole rats, kangaroo rats and
golden moles. Nevertheless, O'Connell-Rodwell first argued that a giant land animal is also sending and receiving
seismic signals. 'I used to lay a male planthopper on a stem and replay the calling sound of a female, and then the male
one would exhibit the same kind of behaviour that happens in elephants—he would freeze, then press down on his legs,
move forward a little, then stay still again. I find it so fascinating, and it got me thinking that perhaps auditory
communication is not the only thing that is going on.'

Scientists have confirmed that an elephant's capacity to communicate over long distance is essential for survival,
especially in places like Etosha, where more than 2,400 savanna elephants range over a land bigger than New Jersey. It
is already difficult for an elephant to find a mate in such a vast wild land, and the elephant reproductive biology only
complicates it. Breeding herds also adopt low-frequency sounds to send alerts regarding predators. Even though grown-
up elephants have no enemies else than human beings, baby elephants are vulnerable and are susceptible to lions and
hyenas attack. At the sight of a predator, older ones in the herd will clump together to form protection before running
away.

We now know that elephants can respond to warning calls in the air, but can they detect signals transmitted solely
through the ground? To look into that matter, the research team designed an experiment in 2002, which used electronic
devices that enabled them to give out signals through the ground at Mushara. 'The outcomes of our 2002 study revealed
that elephants could indeed sense warning signals through the ground,' O'Connell-Rodwell observes.

Last year, an experiment was set up in the hope of solving that problem. It used three different recordings—the 1994
warning call from Mushara, an anti-predator call recorded by scientist Joyce Poole in Kenya and a made-up warble tone.
'The data I've observed to this point implies that the elephants were responding the way I always expected. However, the
fascinating finding is that the anti-predator call from Kenya, which is unfamiliar to them, caused them to gather around,
tense up and rumble aggressively as well—but they didn't always flee. I didn't expect the results to be that clear-cut.

Label the diagram below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 28-31 on
your answer sheet.

Complete the summary below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 32-38
on your answer sheet.
How the elephants sense these sound vibrations is still unknown, but O'Connell-Rodwell, a postdoctoral researcher at
Stanford University, proposes that elephants are 'listening' with their 32_______________ by two kinds of nerve
endings that respond to vibrations with both 33_______________ frequency and slightly higher frequencies. O'Connell-
Rodwell's work is at the combination of geophysics, neurophysiology and 34_______________ . It was known that
seismic communication existed extensively within small animals, but O'Connell-Rodwell was the first person to indicate
that a large land animal would send and receive 35_______________ too. Also, he noticed the freezing behaviour by
putting a male planthopper on a stem and play back a female call, which might prove the existence of other
communicative approaches besides 36_______________. Scientists have determined that an elephant's ability to
communicate over long distances is essential, especially, when elephant herds are finding a 37_______________ , or
are warning of predators. Finally, the results of our 2002 study showed us that elephants could detect warning calls
through the 38_______________.