Unit 3: Part 3 Vocabulary

Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.

And I
in terror
but not in doubt of
what I must do
in anguish, in haste,
wrenched from the earth root after root

It is forbidden to go to any of the Dead Places except to search for metal, and then he who touches the metal must be a priest or the son of a priest. Afterwards, both the man and the metal must be purified!

That was when I was very young—nevertheless, my brothers would not have done it, though they are good hunters.

Looking down from where I lay, I saw a dog sitting on his haunches.

The dinner dishes manipulated like magic tricks, and in the study a click.

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white

In the last instant under the fire avalanche, other choruses, oblivious, could be heard announcing the time, playing music, cutting the lawn by remote-control mower, or setting an umbrella frantically out...

At a distance in July or August the steaming foliage seems almost to writhe in fire.

They acquired horses, and their ancient nomadic spirit was suddenly free of the ground.

However tenuous their wellbeing, however much they had suffered and would suffer again, they had found a way out of the wilderness.

Located in the county of Wiltshire, at the center of England’s densest complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments, Stonehenge has been the subject of myth, legend and—more recently—scientific research for more than eight centuries.

The site, which measures less than half a hectare, is characterized by numerous prone pillar stones with clear signs of working.

According to the archaeologist, the huge stones were taken on such a journey from their Welsh location because they were believed to harbor great powers.

Population growth forced people to adopt intensified means of agricultural production (such as irrigation, double-cropping, or terracing), and to expand farming from the prime lands first chosen onto more marginal land, in order to feed the growing number of hungry mouths.

Obviously, though, this grim trajectory is not one that all past societies followed unvaryingly to completion: different societies collapsed to different degrees and in somewhat different ways, while many societies didn’t collapse at all.

Let’s consider these five sets of factors one by one, in a sequence not implying any primacy of cause but just convenience of presentation.