Official Unit 2 Descriptive Passage

The passages in the IELTS Reading paper gradually become more difficult, with Section 1 being the easiest.

1.1 Spend ONE minute skim reading the following passage to get a sense of the overall meaning. What is the main topic?

Ochre find reveals ancient knowledge of chemistry

South Africa’s Blombos Cave lies within a limestone cliff on the southern Cap coast, 300 km east of Cape Town. It’s known for its 75,000-year-old rich deposits of artefacts such as beads, bone tools and ochre engravings. Some engravings date as far back as 100,000 years.

Archaeologist Christopher S. Henshilwood from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and University of Bergen, Norway has been excavating at the site since 1992, and has reported the discovery of a mixutre, rich in ochre, stored in two abalone shells. It dates back to the Middle Stone Age – 100,000 years ago. Ochre is a term used to describe a piece of earth or rock containing red or yellow oxides or hydroxides of iron. It can be used to make pigments, or paints, ranging from golden-yellow and light yellow-brown to a rich red. Its use spans the history of humans – from those living more than 200,000 years ago, to modern indigenous communities.

Made from an array of materials, this mixture, which could have functioned as wall, object and skin decoration or skin protection (acting in a similar way to modern-day sunscreen), indicates the early developments that occurred in the people who originally used the site.

“[Judging from] the complexity of the material that has been collected from different parts of the landscape and brought to the site, they [the people] must have had an elementary knowledge or chemistry to be able to combine these materials to produce this form. It’s not a straightforward process,” said Henshilwood.

Scanning involves searching a text quickly for a specific piece of information. Practice scanning the passage for the words/numbers in the box.

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