Региональный компонент на уроке английского языка в 10 классе. Текст для самостоятельного изучения с последующими заданиями.
учебно-методический материал по английскому языку (10 класс) по теме

Arkaim

The discovery in the southern Urals of a perfectly conserved city some 3,600 years old was not merely a significant archaeological event.

Nothing unusual was foreseen for 20 June 1987. During the summer of that year a team of archaeologists from Chelyabinsk State University headed by Gennady B. Zdanovich was to examine archaeological sites in the Bolshaya Karaganskaya river valley, where the construction of a reservoir had begun the previous autumn. The archaeological sites already known in the locality had yielded little and had not aroused any great hopes. The summer digging season appeared sufficient to provide a general outline of cultural evolution in a valley that was to be submerged in the spring of 1988.

The archaeologists saw in the steppe a circular fortified settlement, named Arkaim, roughly 150 metres in diameter, dating back to the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries B.C. It is surrounded by two concentric defensive ramparts of clay and adobe blocks on a log frame. Within the circle close to the ramparts are some sixty semi-dugout dwellings with hearths, cellars, wells and metallurgical furnaces. The dwellings open on to an inner circular street with wood-block paving. A drainage gutter with water-collecting pits was constructed along it and a rectangular ‘square’ graced the centre of the settlement. Entrance to the settlement was via four intricately constructed passages through which it would be difficult for enemies to gain access. All the evidence suggests that the settlement had been built to a common plan, which is indicative of a society with a developed social structure and local leaders with high authority. This impression is further strengthened by the fact that more than twenty circular and rectangular settlement sites dating from the eighteenth to sixteenth centuries B.C. have now been found in the southern Urals and northern Kazakhstan.

1. What is Arkaim?
2. When was Arkaim discovered?
3. Who discovered Arkaim?
4. When was the settlement built?
5. *  Make a short summary of the text (6-8 sentences).