Questões de Concurso

INSTRUCTIONS: Read the following text carefully and then choose the correct answer.
Leonardo da Vinci

Known as the greatest artist in the history of mankind, Leonardo da Vinci was also a great philosopher and scientist. Leonardo is the most influential figure in the Italian Renaissance and he is considered to be an inventive multi-genius.

Leonardo was born in 1452 in Vinci, Italy, as the child of Piero da Vinci, a notary, and Caterina, a country girl. He stayed with his father's family and they moved to Florence when he was just 12. At the age of 14, Leonardo started out his artist's apprenticeship at the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488), an Italian sculptor, goldsmith and painter.

The art of painting made Leonardo knowledgeable about anatomy and perspective. In addition to painting, Verrocchio's studio also offered technical and mechanical arts and sculpture. Leonardo had developed an interest in architecture so he went on to study engineering.

After a decade of highly original work as an artist, Leonardo wrote to several wealthy men to help finance his projects. The Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza (1452-1508), accepted his offer as Leonardo told him that he could design war weapons like guns and mines, and also structures like collapsible bridges. He lived in Milan with the Duke from 1482 to 1508, reportedly creating very innovational war machines. He also did painting and sculpture, as well as urban planning for large-scale water projects. There, he also wrote about making a telescope to view the moon.

Available at: <http://www.famousscientists.org/leonardo-da-vinc> (Edited).

Mysterious ancient cemetery in Egypt could contain a million mummies


A mysterious ancient cemetery in Egypt could contain more than a million mummified human remains, archaeologists have claimed.
Around 1,700 bodies have so far been uncovered at the Fag el-Gamous (Way of the Water Buffalo) site, around 60 miles south of Cairo. But experts believe that countless more are contained in the burial ground.
“We are fairly certain we have over a million burials within this cemetery. It's large, and it's dense, ” said project director Kerry Muhlestein, an associate professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University (BYU), which has been examining the site for around 30 years. They were placed there between the 1st and the 7th centuries AD, but the scale of the site has left many baffled. A nearby village has been deemed too small to warrant such a large cemetery, while the closest major settlements had their own burial grounds.
“It's hard to know where all these people were coming from, ” Professor Muhlestein told Live Science.
Another interesting find was that the corpses appeared to be grouped together by hair colour, with one section containing the remains of those with blonde hair and another for those with red hair. The bodies, which included a man of more than seven feet in height, are thought to be of ordinary citizens, rather than the royalty found at many famous Egyptian sites. They were not buried in coffins, according to Muhlestein, and were in fact mummified not by design but by the arid natural environment.
“The people in the cemetery represent the common man. They are the average people who are usually hard to learn about because they are not very visible in written sources. A lot of their wealth, or the little that they had, was poured into these burials.”
His team discovered objects including glassware, jewellery and linen. The findings were presented to the Scholars Colloquim at the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities in Toronto last month.
The Telegraph, London.

(http://www.traveller.com.au/mysterious-ancient-cemetery-in-egypt-could-contain-a-
million-mummies-12aaq7.)

Mysterious ancient cemetery in Egypt could contain a million mummies


A mysterious ancient cemetery in Egypt could contain more than a million mummified human remains, archaeologists have claimed.
Around 1,700 bodies have so far been uncovered at the Fag el-Gamous (Way of the Water Buffalo) site, around 60 miles south of Cairo. But experts believe that countless more are contained in the burial ground.
“We are fairly certain we have over a million burials within this cemetery. It's large, and it's dense, ” said project director Kerry Muhlestein, an associate professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University (BYU), which has been examining the site for around 30 years. They were placed there between the 1st and the 7th centuries AD, but the scale of the site has left many baffled. A nearby village has been deemed too small to warrant such a large cemetery, while the closest major settlements had their own burial grounds.
“It's hard to know where all these people were coming from, ” Professor Muhlestein told Live Science.
Another interesting find was that the corpses appeared to be grouped together by hair colour, with one section containing the remains of those with blonde hair and another for those with red hair. The bodies, which included a man of more than seven feet in height, are thought to be of ordinary citizens, rather than the royalty found at many famous Egyptian sites. They were not buried in coffins, according to Muhlestein, and were in fact mummified not by design but by the arid natural environment.
“The people in the cemetery represent the common man. They are the average people who are usually hard to learn about because they are not very visible in written sources. A lot of their wealth, or the little that they had, was poured into these burials.”
His team discovered objects including glassware, jewellery and linen. The findings were presented to the Scholars Colloquim at the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities in Toronto last month.
The Telegraph, London.

(http://www.traveller.com.au/mysterious-ancient-cemetery-in-egypt-could-contain-a-
million-mummies-12aaq7.)