People have been painting pictures for at least 30,000 years. The earliest pictures were painted by people who hunted animals. They used to paint pictures of the animals they wanted to catch and kill. Pictures of this kind 【小题1】 (find) on the walls of caves in France and Spain. No【小题2】 knows why they were painted there. Perhaps the painters thought that their pictures would help them to catch these animals. Or perhaps human beings have always wanted to tell stories in pictures.

About 5,000 years ago, the Egyptians and other people in the Near East began to use pictures as a kind of writing. They drew simple pictures or signs to represent things and ideas, and also to represent the sounds of their language. The signs these people 【小题3】 (use) became a kind of alphabet. The Egyptians used to record information and to tell stories by putting picture writing and pictures together. 【小题4】 an important person died, scenes and stories from his life were painted and carved on the walls of the place where he was buried. Some of these pictures are like modern comic strip stories. It has been said that Egypt is home 【小题5】 comic strips. But, for the Egyptians, pictures still had magic power. So they did not try to make their way of writing simple. The ordinary people 【小题6】 not understand it. By the year 1,000 BC, people who lived in the area around the Mediterranean Sea had developed a 【小题7】 (simple) system of writing. The signs they used were very easy to write, and there were fewer of them than in the Egyptian system. This was because each sign, or letter, represented only one sound in their language. The Greeks developed this system and formed the letters of the Greek alphabet. The Romans copied【小题8】 idea, and the Roman alphabet is now used 【小题9】 the world.

These days, we can write down a story, or record information, without using pictures. But we still need pictures of all kinds: drawing, photographs, signs and diagrams. We find them【小题10】: in books and newspapers, in the street, and on the walls of the places where we live and work. Pictures help us to understand and remember things more easily, and they can make a story much more interesting.

It is important first to understand the history of Russia and its former Soviet allies. Following World War II, the U.S. and Western European forces formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization(北约NATO), an intergovernmental military alliance(联盟) initially created 【小题1】(stop) the Soviet Union’s growing influence. Most importantly, NATO members agree to Article 5 of the treaty, 【小题2】 states that an attack on any NATO member 【小题3】 (consider) an attack on all members. This was enough to prevent the Soviet Union from ever invading(侵略) countries who had joined NATO. Starting in 1999 - 8 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union - NATO began expanding its boundaries, and by 2020 【小题4】 (add) an additional 14 members, with many of 【小题5】 once Soviet-controlled countries.

Experts say that Vladimir Putin(普京) has seen this 【小题6】 a western provocation(挑衅) to limit post-Soviet Russian influence, with the country’s geographic buffer(缓冲区) against NATO decreasing 【小题7】 (considerable). Ukraine - Europe’s【小题8】 (large) country that shares a sizeable land border with Russia - has long voiced its intention to join NATO, though many of these 【小题9】 (plan) were shelved(被搁置)as political destabilization(不稳) bothered Ukraine for much of the last decade. But at a 2021 NATO conference, the member nations repeated their intention to acquire Ukraine, 【小题10】 (cause) the most recent Russian military invasion.

The Silk Road is in fact a【小题1】(relative) recent term. These ancient roads had no particular name 【小题2】 the mid-nineteenth century. Baron Ferdinand von Richthoften named the trade and communication network the Silk Road. Since then the term 【小题3】(accept)globally.

In the nineteenth century, a new type of travelers stepped onto the Silk Road: archaeologists and geographers, enthusiastic explorers who were eager 【小题4】(look) for adventure. Researchers who came from many countries traveled through the Taklamakan Desert,【小题5】 is now in Xinjiang, to explore ancient sites along the Silk Road，【小题6】(lead) to many discoveries and studies, and most of all, a renewed interest in the history of these routes.

Today, many historic 【小题7】(build) and monuments still stand, marking the passage of the Silk Road through hotels, ports and cities. What's more, the long-standing legacy of this 【小题8】(impress) network is reflected in a large number of cultures, languages, customs and religions .The passage of merchants and travelers of many different nationalities resulted not only in commercial exchange, 【小题9】in a widespread and continual process of cultural interaction. Obviously, it has become 【小题10】 driving force in the formation of diverse societies.