Caral: an ancient South American city

Huge earth and rock mounds rise out of the desert of the Supe Valley near the coast of Peru in South America.
These immense mounds appear simply to be part of the geographical landscape in this arid region squeezed
between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes mountains.But looks deceive. These are actually human-made
pyramids strong evidence indicates they are the remains of a city known as Caral that flourished nearly 5,000
years ago. It true, it would be the oldest known urban center in the America and among the most ancient in the
world.
Research undertaken by Peruvian archaeologist Ruth Shady suggests that the 150-acre plex of pyramids, plazas
and residential buildings was a thriving metropolis when Egypt's great pyramids were still being built. Though
discovered in 1905, for years Caral attracted little attention, largely because archaeologists believed the
structures were rainy recent. But the monumental scale of the pyramids had long interested Shady, who began
excavations at the site in 1996, about 22 kilometers from the coast and 190 kilometers north of Peru's capital
city of Lima.
Shady and her crew searched for broken remains of the pots and containers that most such sites contain. Not
finding any only made her more excited: it meant Caral could be what archaeologists term pre-ceramic, that is,
existing before the advent in the area of pot-firing techniques. Shady's team undertook the task of excavating
Piramide Mayor, the largest of the pyramids. After carefully clearing away many hundreds of years' worth of
rubble and sand, they identified staircases, walls covered with remnants of colored plaster, and brickwork. In
the foundations, they found the remains of grass-like reeds woven into bags. The original workers, she
surmised, must have filled these bags with stones from a nearby quarry and laid them atop one another inside
retaining walls, gradually giving rise to the pyramid's immense structure. Shady had samples of the reeds
subjected to radiocarbon dating and found that the reeds were 4,600 years old. This evidence indicated that
Caral was, in fact, more than 1,000 years older than what had previously been thought to be the oldest urban
center in the Americas.
What amazed archaeologists was not just the age, but the complexity and scope of Caral. Piramide Mayor alone
covers an area nearly the size of four football fields and is 18 meters tall. A nine-meter-wide staircase rises from
a circular plaza at the foot of the pyramid, passing over three terraced levels until it reaches the top. Thousands
of manual laborers would have been needed to build such a project, not counting the many architects, craftsmen,
and managers. Shady's team found the remains of a large amphitheater, containing almost 70 musical
instruments made of bird and deer bones Clearly music plaved an important role in Caral's society. Around the
perimeter of Caral are a series of smaller mounds and various buildings. These indicate a hierarchy of living
arrangements: large, well-kept rooms atop pyramids for the elite, ground-level quarters for shabbier outlying
dwellings for workers
But why had Caral been built in the first place? Her excavations convinced Shady that Caral once served as a
trade center for the region, which extends from the rainforests of the Amazon to the high forests of the Andes.
Shady found evidence of a rich trading environment, including seeds of the cocoa bush and necklaces of shells,
neither of which was native to the immediate Caral area. This environment gave rise to people who did not take
part in the production of food, allowing them to become priests and planners, builders and designers. Thus
occupational specialization, elemental to an urban society, emerged.
But what sustained such a trading center and drew travelers to it? Was it food? Shady and her team found the
bones of small edible fish, which must have come from the Pacific coast to the west, in the excavations. But
they also found evidence of squash, sweet potatoes and beans having been grown locally. Shady theorized that
Caral's early farmers diverted the area's rivers into canals, which still cross the Supe Valley today, to irrigate
 their fields.But because she found no traces of maize, which can be traded or stored and used in times of crop
failure, she concluded that Caral's trade leverage was not based on stockpiling food supplies.
It was evidence of another crop in the excavations that gave Shady the best clue to Caral’s success. In nearly
every excavated building, her team discovered evidence of cotton - seeds, fibers and textiles. Her theory fell
into place when a large fishing net made of those fibers, unearthed in an unrelated dig on Peru's coast, turned
out to be as old as Caral. 'The farmers of Caral grew the cotton that the fishermen needed to make their nets,
Shady speculates. And the fishermen gave them shellfish and dried fish in exchange for these nets.' In essence,
the people of Caral enabled fishermen to work with larger and more effective nets, which made the resources of
the sea more readily available, and the fishermen probably used dried squash grown by the Caral people as
flotation devices for their nets.
Questions 1-6 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage ? In boxes 1 -6
on your answer sheet, write TRUE FALSE NOT GIVEN
1 Caral was built at the same time as the construction of the Egyptian pyramids.
2 The absence of pottery at the archaeological dig gave Shady a significant clue to the age of the site.
3 The stones used to build Piramide Mayor came from a location far away
4 The huge and complicated structures of Piramide Mayor suggest that its construction required an organised
team of builders.
5 Archaeological evidence shows that the residents of Caral were highly skilled musicians.
6 The remains of housing areas at Caral suggest that there were no class distinctions in residential areas.
Questions 7-13Complete the notes below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 7-13 on your answer sheet.
Caral as a trading centre
Items discovered at Caral but not naturally occurring in the area

 the 7 ……………..of a certain plant

 8……………. used to make jewellery
 the remains of certain food such as 9 ………………

Clues to farming around Caral

 10 …………. still in existence today indicate water diverted from rivers

 no evidence that 11………. was grown

Evidence of relationship with fishing communities

 the excavation findings and fishing nets found on the coast suggest Caral farmers traded 12 ………

 dried squash may have been used to aid 13 ………….

The success of cellulose

{A} Not too long ago many investors made the bet that renewable fuels from bio-mass would be the next big
thing in energy. Converting corn, sugarcane, and soybeans into ethanol or diesel-type fuels lessens our
nation’s dependence on oil imports while cutting carbon dioxide emissions. But already the nascent industry
faces challenges. Escalating demand is hiking food prices while farmers clear rainforest habitats to grow fuel
crops. And several recent studies say that certain biofuel-production processes either fail to yield net energy
gains or release more carbon dioxide than they use.

{B} A successor tier of start-up ventures aims to avoid those problems. Rather than focusing on the starches,
sugars, and fats of food crops, many of the prototype bioethanol processes work with lignocellulose, the
“woody” tissue that strengthens the cell walls of plants, says University of Massachusetts Amherst chemical
engineer George W. Huber. Although cellulose breaks down less easily than sugars and starches and thus
requires a complex series of enzyme-driven chemical reactions, its use opens the industry to nonfood plant
feedstocks such as agricultural wastes, wood chips, and switchgrass. But no company has yet demonstrated a
cost-competitive industrial process for making cellulosic biofuels.
{C} So scientists and engineers are working on dozens of possible biofuel-processing routes, reports Charles
Wyman, a chemical engineer at the University of California, Riverside, who is a founder of Mascoma
Corporation in Cambridge, Mass., a leading developer of cellulosic ethanol processing.” There’s no miracle
process out there,” he remarks. And fine-tuning a process involves considerable money and time. “The oil
companies say that it takes 10 years to fully commercialize an industrial processing route,” warns Huber,
who has contributed some thermochemical techniques to another biomass start-up, Virent Energy Systems in
Madison, Wis.
{D} One promising biofuel procedure that avoids the complex enzymatic chemistry to break down cellulose
is now being explored by Coskata in Warrenville, Ill., a firm launched in 2006 by high-profile investors and
entrepreneurs (General Motors recently took a minority stake in it as well). In the Coskata operation, a
conventional gasification system will use heat to turn various feedstocks into a mixture of carbon monoxide
and hydrogen called syngas, says Richard Tobey, vice president of Engineering and R&D. The ability to
handle multiple plant feedstocks would boost the flexibility of the overall process because each region in the
country has access to certain feedstocks but not others.

{E} Instead of using thermochemical methods to convert the syngas to fuel- a process that can be
significantly more costly because of the added expense of pressurizing gases, according to Tobey – the
Coskata group chose a biochemical route. The group focused on five promising strains of ethanol-excreting
bacteria that Ralph Tanner, a microbiologist at the University of Oklahoma, had discovered years before in
the oxygen-free sediments of a swamp. These anaerobic bugs make ethanol by voraciously consuming
syngas.
{F} The “heart and soul of the Coskata process,” as Tobey puts it, is the bioreactor in which the bacteria live.
“Rather than searching for food in the fermentation mash in a large tank, our bacteria wait for the gas to be
delivered to them,” he explains. The firm relies on plastic tubes, the filter-fabric straws as thin as human hair.
The syngas flows through the straws, and water is pumped across their exteriors. The gases diffuse across the
selective membrane to the bacteria embedded in the outer surface of the tubes, which permits no water
inside. “We get an efficient mass transfer with the tubes, which is not easy,” Tobey says. “Our data suggest
that in an optimal setting we could get 90 percent of the energy value of the gases into our fuel.” After the
bugs eat the gases, they release ethanol into the surrounding water. Standard distillation or filtration
techniques could extract the alcohol from the water.
{G} Coskata researchers estimate that their commercialized process could deliver ethanol at under $1 per
gallon-less than half of today’s $2-per-gallon wholesale price, Tobey claims. Outside evaluators of Argonne
National Laboratory measured the input-output “energy balance” of the Coskata process and found that,
optimally, it can produce 7.7 times as much energy in the end product as it takes to make it.
{H} The company plans to construct a 40,000-gallon-a-year pilot plant near the GM test track in Milford,
Mich., by the end of this year and hopes to build a full-scale, 100-million-gallon-a-year plant by 2011.
Coskata may have some company by then; Bioengineering Resources in Fayetteville, Ark., is already
developing what seems to be a similar three-step pathway in which syngas is consumed by bacteria isolated
by James Gaddy, a retired chemical engineer at the University of Arkansas. Considering the advances in
these and other methods, plant cellulose could provide the greener ethanol everyone wants.
Questions 1-6 Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-D) with opinions or deeds
below. Write the appropriate letters A-D in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet. NB you may use any letter
more than once
(A) George W. Huber (B) James Gaddy
(C) Richard Tobey (D) Charles Wyman
1 A key component to gain success lies in the place where the organisms survive.
2 Engaged in separating fixed procedures to produce ethanol in the homologous biochemical way.
3 Assists to develop certain skills.
4 It needs arduous efforts to achieve highly efficient transfer.
5 There is no shortcut to expedite the production process.
6 A combination of chemistry and biology can considerably lower the cost needed for the production
company.
Questions 7-10 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In
boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet, write T F NG
7 A shift from conventionally targeted areas of the vegetation to get ethanol takes place.
8 It takes a considerably long way before a completely mature process is reached.
9 The Coskata group sees no bright future for the cost advantage available in the production of greener
ethanol.
10 Some enterprises are trying to buy the shares of Coskata group.
Questions 11-13 Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using No More
than Three words from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 11-13 on your
answer sheet.
Tobey has noticed that the Coskata process can achieve huge success because it utilizes 11 ………… as the
bioreactor on whose exterior surface the bacteria take the syngas going through the coated 12 ………. To
produce the ethanol into the water outside which researchers will later 13………… by certain techniques. The
figures show a pretty high percentage of energy can be transferred into fuel which is actually very difficult to
achieve.