1. Find English equivalents in the text:

Будущие историки, в особом положении, увековечивать историю, выбирать факты, множество доказательств, полагаться только на, магнитные ленты, попытка воссоздать, далекое прошлое, сталкиваться с задачей, пролить свет на историю, появиться, возникновение, последние научные доказательства, неверное предположение, ломать голову над; линии и символы, выгравированные на стенах и камнях; слоновые бивни мамонтов, жить охотой и рыбной ловлей, до нашей эры, примитивный календарь, определённое значение, определённая связь, рисунки и знаки, времена года.

2. Suggest Russian equivalents to the following:

To be in unique position, to record the history, to select facts from the great mass of evident, to rely solely on the written word, to provide with a bewildering amount of information, to see and us in action, attempting to reconstruct the distant past, to be fased with a difficult task, from the few scanty clues

available, insignificant remaine, to shed light on the history, to come into being with the advent of agriculture, recent scientific evidence, to puzzled by smth, to be engraved on walls, ivory tuske of mammoth, to live by hunting and fishing, a primitive type of calendar hunting scenes, a form of artistic expression, a definite meaning, a real effort to understand the seasons.

3. Find historical terms in the text, pick them out.

4. Give definitions to the following:

Historian, history, calendar, scientific evidence, mammoth, Ancient History, remains, Ice Age.

5. Rend the text and find all the sentences containing modal verbs. Explain the meaning of the modal verbs in them.

6. Translate the following sentences paying special attention to the underlined parts of the sentences:

A. 1. Up to now, historians have assumed that calendars came into being with the advent of agriculture.

2. The devision of labour came into being with the improvement of working tools.

3. The slave society came into being when war prisoners could be left alive.

4. When did a state system come into being and why?

B. 1. Recent scientific evidence seems to indicate that this assumption is incorrect.

2. Man seems to have been making efforts to understand the seasons 20,000 years earlier than it has been supposed.

3. Those markings seem to be a primitive type of calendar.

4. The hunting scenes depicted on cave walls seem to have a definite meaning.

5. This seems to be a very interesting find.

Interpretation of the text

1. Answer the questions:

1. Why will future historians be in a unique position?

2. What will they rely on when they come to record the history of our times?

3. Why is the historian's attempt to reconstruct the distant past always faced with a difficult task?

4. When did the last Ice Age begin and when was it over?

5. How did the nomads live during the last Ice Age?

6. What was engraved on walls, bones and the ivory tusks of mammoth?

7. Who did these markings?

8. What did these markings mean?

9. What do the historians think about these markings?

10. When did a man begin to make a real effort to understand the seasons?