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听力文稿 ( Transcript )
They are the "bad boys" in the Bible, and their seafaring skills are legendary. But who exactly were the Phoenicians, what became of them and what was the secret of their success?
Hidden beneath the Greek and Roman ruins of modern Lebanon lie the remains of an ancient civilization almost lost to history. Beginning in twelve hundred BC and lasting for a thousand years, this civilization dominated a vital part of the ancient world, but unlike their rivals in Egypt, Greece and Rome, they had almost no land empire, instead, theirs was an empire of the waves.
They ruled the most important body of water known to the ancients, the Mediterranean sea. They were the most skilled and audacious seafarers of their time, an enigmatic race of mariners known as the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians were the first great shipping tycoons. Their vessels were coveted by their ancient rivals, and they developed a phonetic alphabet that influenced the way we write today. But their success made them the envy of the ancient world and that envy led to their destruction. The Greeks and Romans crushed the Phoenicians, and most damning of all, rewrote their history, leaving dark slanted accounts of the Phoenicians to live on. Ancient text described them as a morally corrupt race of people, who prostituted their daughters and butchered their infant children to placate their Gods.
What is the real story of the Phoenicians? And who are the modern people who can boast their legacy? Now more than two thousand years after they disappeared, two high-tech quests begin to find one of the most elusive peoples of the ancient past: first, a search for ancient Phoenician ships using revolutionary machines deep beneath the sea they once ruled.
"The ancient Phoenicians were the greatest mariners of their time. I would have loved to sail with them."
And the second, using the latest genetic tools, in a bid to find them within the blood of the modern people of the Mediterranean.
Archeologists may dig in their dirts. We dig in the blood.
At sea and on land can new technology and new science finally solve the mystery of the ancient Phoenicians?
enigmatic adj. Of or resembling an enigma; puzzling 谜一般的；难以捉摸的 prostitute vt. To offer (oneself or another) for sexual hire. 卖淫，使卖淫为愿付钱的嫖客提供某人自己或另外一个人 elusive adj. Difficult to define or describe 难于定义或描述的
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