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This brings us to an important truth about garbage: there are no ways of
dealing with it that haven’t been known for many thousands of years. These
ways are essentially four: dumping it, burning it, converting it into something
that can be used again, and minimizing the volume of material goods – future
garbage – that is produced in the first place (“source reduction”, as it is called).
Every civilization of any complexity has used all four methods to varying
degrees.
From prehistory through the present day dumping has been the means of
disposal favored everywhere, including in the cities. The archaeologist C.W.
Blegen who dug into Bronze Age Troy in the 1950s found that floors had
become so littered that periodically a fresh supply of dirt or clay had been
brought in to cover up the refuse. Of course, after several layers had been
supplied the doors and roofs had to be adjusted upward. Over time the ancient
cities of the Middle East rose high above the landscape on massive mounds
called tells. In 1973 a civil engineer with the Department of Commerce, Charles
Gunnerson, calculated that the rate of uplift owing to the accumulation of debris
in Bronze Age Troy was about 4.7 feet per century. If the idea of a city rising
above its garbage at this rate seems extraordinary, it may be worth considering
that “street level” on the island of Manhattan is fully six feet higher today than it
was when Peter Minuit lived there.
After you have read the text and fully understood it, try to find the appropriate
explanations to a few word combinations. So, what is the implication for:
a) disposal scheme:
1) a garbage tin;
2) a way to dispose the left-overs and no longer necessary things;
3) a way to look for new clean areas;
b) a sedentary animal:
1) an animal trained and shown in circus;
2) an animal which lives at his master’s;
3) a saying which characterizes a human being that has started to settle
down;
Think over the question which historical facts have been revealed by
archaeological explorations and then render the text on the whole.
Another task: what’s the difference between these two sentences?
a) Over time the ancient cities of the Middle East rose high above the
landscape.
b) You know your boss thinks very highly of you, don’t you?
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