学进去

Words in the Snow

In the time of the Yellow Emperor, there were no written words. People recorded things by tying knots（打结）in ropes and carving（雕刻） shapes on stone walls. One day, the Yellow Emperor discussed an event with a wise man named Cang Jie. Cang took out a piece of knotted rope, but found it was rotten（腐烂的）. It was impossible for him to remember the event clearly. Then he turned to a stone wall, but could hardly read the shapes on it. They had been carved by another person except himself.

“The ropes will be rotten. And the shapes can only be read by a few people, "the emperor said to Cang. “Can you come up with something better?”

Cang thought over the matter for days and nights. On the morning after a heavy snowfall, the earth was completely white. He saw the footmarks of some different animals by accident. These footmarks helped him to recognize what animals had passed by. Cang suddenly had an idea. He picked a stick and drew on the snow-covered ground. He first drew a tiger and a bear to show that they had passed by. But soon, he found this was taking too much time. He realized that he had to make the drawings easier.

All the shapes on the stone walls flashed through his mind. Cang kept making all kinds of shapes on the ground easier. To show the sun, for example, he used a circle with a dot（小点）in the middle. A half-circle and a vertical line（竖线）made up the moon. And three curves（曲线） were used to show water. Later, the sun appeared. These simple marks shone brightly in the snow.

In the end, Cang created a whole set of symbols to record things. People could easily understand these symbols. Since then, they have been able to record their own history.

根据短文内容，选择最佳答案。
1．Cang Jie couldn’t remember the event clearly because he couldn’t ________.

A．record things by tying knots in ropes

B．carve shapes on the stone walls

C．read the rotten rope or the shapes about it

2．The underlined word “recognize” in Paragraph 4 probably means “________”.

A．know

B．praise

C．accept

3．In Paragraph 4, the writer explains Cang’s simple marks by ________.

A．giving some advice

B．giving several examples

C．asking a few questions

4．The passage mainly tells us _________.

A．what reminded Cang Jie to use shapes or marks to show different things

B．why Cang Jie was asked to come up with better ways to record things

C．how Cang Jie created a whole set of symbols to record things