【正文】 anoke SettlementOnly a few Europeans lived in North America in the 16th century. Most of them settled on the northeast coast. In 1587, a small group of about 100 people decided to 11/20go south. They moved to the small island of Roanoke. That area later became part of the state of North Carolina.Unfortunately, the Roanoke settlers weren39。t well prepared. They didn39。t have enough food for the winter, and there wasn39。t enough grain for future crops. Their leader, Captain White, decided to sail back to England to get supplies. However, there was a war in Europe, and three years passed before he returned to North America.When Captain White came back to Roanoke in 1590, he was eager to see the settlers. He looked out from his ship, but no one was there to meet him. There were no signs of life. The settlement was deserted.No one knows why the Roanoke settlers disappeared. Many people thought that hostile Native Americans killed them, but there were no signs of a fight. Some thought that the settlers died from hunger or disease, but they couldn39。t explain the absence of bodies.Many years later, more settlers came to North Carolina. One of them met a Native American group called the Lumbee. They were unusual looking pared to the blackhaired, browneyed Native Americans in the north. Some Lumbee had blonde hair and gray eyes. Then he listened to their speech and almost fell off his horse. They seemed to speak an odd kind of English!He asked where they were from. None of them knew, but they said that their grandparents talked from a book. Did they mean that their grandparents were able to read? As he rode back home, he asked himself a question: Were the Lumbee people the descendants of the Roanoke settlers?People are still asking the identical question. Because there are no written records, we can39。t be certain. However, there is one interesting fact. Today, some of the Lumbee people have names like Sampson, Dare, and Cooper. They are identical to the names of the vanished settlers of Roanoke Island.(350 words)18 The Easter Island StatuesWhen the first sailing ship came to Easter Island in 1722 the captain and crew were afraid to land. They saw giants looking down at them from the high cliffs. The giants didn39。t move, so the ship slowly moved closer. Finally, the sailors realized that the giants were statues. Who made these huge statues? How did they get there?Easter Island is a very small island in the Pacific Ocean. It is more than 2,000 miles from the nearest continent (South America). It is one of the most isolated places on earth.The biggest statue on Easter Island is over 60 feet high and weighs over 100 tons.There are hundreds of smaller ones, about 15 feet high. All of the statues are made of stone, and some wear stone hats. Their faces are solemn and unsmiling.Earlier inhabitants of Easter Island made the statues from the rocks in a volcanic crater. Next, they had to move the statues a long distance. In some cases, they moved the statues to locations more than ten miles away.No one knows for certain how the inhabitants were able to move the statues. Some scientists say that palm trees grew on Easter Island in the past. They think the inhabitants cut the trees down and placed the heavy statues on the trees. Then groups of 70 or more people rolled the statues to their present locations. Other scientists disagree with this theory because there are no palm trees on the island today. More important, the purpose of the statues is still a mystery. Was the purpose of the statues to prevent strangers from landing on the island?The result, however, has been the opposite. Large groups of eager people e to look at the statues. Easter Island now has a modern airport, and people e from all over the world to visit.(309 words)19 The Tunguska FireballThe Tunguska plateau is an isolated area in central Siberia. On the morning of June 30, 1908, inhabitants of the area saw and heard a mysterious explosion. Fire covered the sky, and the earth shook violently. In the following nights, there were strange lights in the sky. The night sky was so bright that people could read the newspaper outdoors. Far away in Europe, many people reported seeing unusual lights in the night sky.The Tunguska plateau is very difficult to reach, so no one went to inspect the site of the explosion. Most people thought the explosion was probably an earthquake, and they soon forgot about it.Nineteen years passed before Leonid Kulik, a Russian scientist, went to look for the site of the explosion. With great difficulty, he traveled on foot to the Tunguska plateau. What he saw there amazed him. As far as he could see, the trees were black. Many lay flat on the ground. The explosion burned perhaps 80 million trees over an area of about 1,000 square miles. After seeing the destruction, Kulik decided that a meteor probably caused the explosion.For many years, the meteor theory was the most popular explanation for the Tunguska explosion. However, there were problems with this theory. No one could find the crater where the meteor hit the ground, and no one could find any pieces of a meteor. In addition, some of the trees at the center of the explosion weren39。t burned.Over the years, there were many explanations for the Tunguska explosion. Some people thought it was a huge bomb. Others suggested that it was an exploding spaceship. One recent theory is that the meteor exploded in the air before it hit the ground. That explains the missing crater, but it doesn39。t explain the missing pieces of a meteor. A more recent theory suggests something pletely different. Perhaps it wasn39。t something from outer space that destroyed the area. Instead, some scientists now think gas from the center of the earth caused the explosion.Scientists continue to travel to the Tunguska plateau looking for clues to the cause of the explosion. Every few years newspapers report that scientists finally have a solution to the Tungus