Материал: bardinskaia_tr_angliiskii_iazyk_v_sfere_kulturologii

2.What is another term for the “Paleolithic”?

3.Where did our ancestors live during the Paleolithic?

4.Where were most of the prehistoric men’s sites discovered?

5.What are the most striking works of the Paleolithic art?

6.What strikes us in the “Wounded Bison”?

7.How have the cave paintings survived over so many years?

8.What was the purpose of creating them?

9.How could the paintings be used for magic rituals?

10.Where were most of carvings in horn, bone and stone found? 11.What was the size of carvings in horn, bone or stone? 12.Where were the earliest figures of mammoth ivory found? 13.When were they made?

14.Why do we say that they must be the “fruit of an ar tistic tradition”? 15.What makes us think that the Old Stone Age men collected pebbles? 16.What kinds of pebbles attracted the Stone Age men?

17.Why does the “Venus of Willendorf’ amaze us?

18. Do you find learning the Paleolithic art interesting?

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U N I T 2 .

T H E N E W STONE AGE

Lead-in.

1. Answer the questions.

2. Discuss with your partner.

1.Why do you think the Neolithic revolution didn’t embrace the whole world at once?

2.It was domesticating animals and growing food grains that completely changed the life of the prehistoric men, wasn’t it? Why?

3.How could Stonehenge be built / used by ancient Englishmen?

What brought the Old Stone Age to a close has been termed the Neolithic Revolution. Its course lasted over several thousand years. It began in the Near East around 8 000 BC when they made their first successful attempts to domesticate animals and to grow food grains.

Paleolithic men had led the unsettled life of the hunter and food gatherer. But now, having learned how to assure a food supply by their own efforts, people settled down in permanent village communities.

The new style of life brought forth a number of important new crafts and inventions: pottery, weaving and spinning, basic methods of architectural construction in wood, brick and stone. It was accompanied by profound changes in man’s view of himself and the world. It certainly found expression in art. But Neolithic artists worked in wood and other impermanent materials. That’s why excavations couldn’t help us to know more.

Since 1961, excavations at Catal Huyuk in Anatolia have brought to light one

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of the Neolithic towns. Its inhabitants lived in houses built of mud bricks and timber, clustered around open courtyard. There were no streets, since the houses had no doors; people apparently entered through the roof. The settlement included a number of religious shrines and on their plaster-covered walls we can see the earliest paintings on a man-made surface. They show the rituals of honouring the male deity to whom the bull and stag were sacred. The animals are simplified and immobile, but the hunters are in energetic motion.

The Neolithic revolution progressed very slowly in Europe. But we know some facts that confirmed the progress there too. Baked clay figurines of fertility goddesses were found in the Balkans, such as very striking one from Cernavoda. What makes Cernavoda Goddess so memorable is the sculptor’s ability to simplify the shapes of woman’s body and yet retain its salient features (which, to him, did not include the face).

In Central and Northern Europe, the population continued to lead the simple tribal life. We can find in Neolithic Europe monumental stone structures of a different kind, called megalithic because they consist of huge blocks or boulders placed upon each other without mortar. Their purpose was religious. Even today these megalithic monuments have an awe-inspiring superhuman air about them, as if they were the work of giants.

Some known as “dolmens” are tombs, “houses of the d ead” with upright stones for walls and a single giant slab for a roof.

Others, the so-called cromlechs, may be from the setting of religious observances. The best preserved is Stonehenge in southern England. It has a great outer circle of evenly spaced uprights supporting horizontal slabs and two inner circles similarly marked with an altar-like stone in the center. It must have served a sunworshipping ritual.

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E X E R C I S E S

I. Enlarge your vocabulary.

Try to remember correct pronunciation of the new words.

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II. Form the nouns (showing the doers of the actions) from the given verbs with the help of the suffixes -er, -ant, -or. Translate them.

Inhabit ………………….

Gather ………………….

Worship ………………

Invent …………………

Weave …………………

Excavate ………………

III.Match the words to their synonyms.

IV. Fill in the correct word from the list given in the frame. Use the words only once.

profound ■ megalithic ■ fertility ■ clay ■ impermanent important ■ domesticate ■ male ■ unsettled - religious

1.………………… monument

2.………………… deity

3.………………... animals

4.……………….. goddess

5.………………. figurine

6.……………….. life

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