IGP 2017 — Questão 11 · Vocabulário

UNEARTHED: REMAINS OF THE EARLIEST KNOWN TSUNAMI VICTIM

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By Charles Choi | October 25, 2017 1:00 pm

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Paragraph 1 $$ Tsunamis have claimed hundreds of

thousands of lives in the past two decades.

Now a new study finds that a 6,000-year-old

skull may come from the earliest known

victim of these killer waves.

Paragraph 2 $$ The partial human skull was discovered in

1929 buried in a mangrove swamp outside

the small town of Aitape Papua New Guinea,

about 500 miles north of Australia.

Scientists originally thought it belonged to an

ancient extinct human species, Homo

erectus. However, subsequent research

dated it to about 5,000 or 6,000 years in age,

suggesting that it instead belonged to a

modern human.

A Rare Specimen

Paragraph 3 $$ The skull is one of just two examples of

ancient human remains found in Papua New

Guinea after more than a century of work

there. As such, archaeologists wanted to

learn more about this skull to elucidate how

people settled this region.

Paragraph 4 $$ The scientists went back to where this skull

was found and sampled the soil in which it

was discovered. They focused on details

such as sediment grain size and

composition.

Paragraph 5 $$ In the sediment, the researchers discovered

a range of microscopic organisms from the

ocean known as diatoms. These were similar

to ones found in the soil after a 1998 tsunami

killed more than 2,000 people in Papua New

Guinea — for instance, their shells of silica

were broken, likely by extremely powerful

forces.

Paragraph 6 $$ These diatom shells, combined with the

chemical compositions and the size ranges

of the grains, all suggest that a tsunami

occurred when the skull was buried. The

researchers suggested the catastrophe

either directly killed the person or ripped

open their grave.

Paragraph 7 $$ Tsunamis, which are giant waves caused by

earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or

underwater landslides, are some of the

deadliest natural disasters known. The 2004

tsunami in the Indian Ocean killed more than

230,000 people, a higher death toll than any

fire or hurricane.

Paragraph 8 $$ The site where the skull was found is

currently about 7.5 miles away from the

coast. Still, the researchers noted that back

when whoever the skull belonged to was

alive, sea levels were higher, and the area

would have been just behind the shoreline.

Paragraph 9 $$ The waves of the tsunami that hit Papua

New Guinea in 1998 reached more than 50

feet high and penetrated up to three miles

inland. “If the event we have identified

resulted from a similar process, it could have

also resulted in extremely high waves,” study

co-lead author Mark Golitko, an

archaeologist at the University of Notre

Dame in Indiana and the Field Museum in

Chicago.

Paragraph 10 $$ These results show “that coastal populations

have been vulnerable to such events for

thousands of years,” Golitko said. “People

have managed to live with such

unpredictable and destructive occurrences,

but it highlights how vulnerable people living

near the sea can be. Given the far larger

populations that live along coastlines today,

the potential impacts are far more severe

now.”

Paragraph 11 $$ Golitko plans to return to the area over the

next few years “to further study the

frequency of such events, how the

environment changed over time, and how

people have coped with the environmental

challenges of living in that environment.” He

and his colleagues detailed their findings

Wednesday in the journal PLOS O.

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Retrieved and adapted from: <http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2017/10/25/first-tsunami-victim/#.WfYiYmhSzIU> Accessed on October, 29th, 2017.

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