VOA标准英语2014--Ancient Papyrus Reed Could Hold Key to Water Conservation

 

Ancient Papyrus¹ Reed Could Hold Key to Water Conservation

Ancient Egyptians turned papyrus into paper and provided the world with it for thousands of years. Hundreds of thousands of books in the Royal Library in Alexandria and Rome's 58 public libraries were made of papyrus, almost all of the Western world’s literature and sacred texts at the time. 

But the value of papyrus is not limited to paper. Writer and ecologist John Gaudet says ancient scholars considered it the wonder of the age. Egyptian civilization, he adds, might not have developed without papyrus.   

“In the Nile Valley, to do things on a day-to-day basis, you also had to be able to get on the water so they used to use papyrus boats," he said. "And they used papyrus boats the way people today use fiberglass. People still make them in Ethiopia so we know what they’re like.

"Then they found they could also use the boats to build the houses on. They didn’t have to build their houses on land; they could build them on water. Then they found that they could do all kinds of things with papyrus; as you can imagine, you can make baskets out of it, you can make sandals, you can make rope. They made incredible amounts of rope, they exported the rope. So even before paper came to existence, papyrus helped the ancient Egyptians get along on a day-to-day basis.”

Over the centuries, though, many papyrus swamps were drained.  Gaudet says people saw them as “wasted” spaces that could be better used for farmland or housing.  In the process, he says, an incredible natural resource was lost. In addition to the variety of items that can be manufactured from the plant, the swamps provide habitat for birds and fish, and help control pollution.

“Papyrus actually filtered sewage and runoff and silt² all those years," he said. "And papyrus happens to be a very, very efficient plant in a filter swamp.”

Gaudet says papyrus - one of the fastest growing plant species on Earth - has recently started to make a comeback. He points to several projects in Egypt to restore the swamps to filter sewage.

“A lot of the scientists there, the engineers, are beginning to see the value of a filter swamp because it’s cheap. It can be put in place at all different levels," he said. "You can either have a simple swamp, you don’t touch it, you just leave the swamp and it works. Or you can have a managed system where you take a swamp, you take some concrete liners, you divert the polluted water into the swamp and you clean it up that way. So the managed system is what they’re working on now. This is the same filter swamp concept we have used in the United States." 

In his book, Papyrus, the Plant that Changed the World, Gaudet writes that papyrus swamps may hold the key to stability in some of the most unstable³ regions in the world. As fresh water becomes scarcer, he says papyrus can help preserve the resource.

“People always think of the wetlands or swamps as places where water goes in and never comes out," he said. "What I’m saying here is that the water seeps⁴ into the soil and therefore recharges the system underground that you don’t see. And also the papyrus, because the heads close over and form this canopy⁵, it creates this very humid barrier underneath⁶. It’s great because it actually prevents water from being lost. So it’s better to have papyrus than to have an open surface like a reservoir; if you have a reservoir in an arid⁷ zone, you tend to lose a lot of water by evaporation⁸.”

Gaudet has traveled to Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda and other places where papyrus grows. He works with water experts there, and encourages officials to preserve papyrus swamps or restore them. He says that can benefit local economies. 

“Wetlands in years to come are going to worth an awful lot of money for people in southern Sudan, throughout Sudan and central Africa and southern Africa, because it’s going to be a tourist resource, it's going to be a natural resource that they use for virtually everything, from local farming, small scale farming," he said. "They all use water from that system.”

Ecologist John Gaudet says he’s optimistic. As people rediscover the benefits of papyrus, he hopes the plant will once again flourish in the land it once ruled.

1 papyrus   

n.古以纸草制成之纸

参考例句：

• The Egyptians wrote on papyrus.埃及人书写用薄草纸。
• Since papyrus dries up and crumble,very few documents of ancient Egypt have survived.因草片会干裂成粉末所以古埃及的文件很少保存下来。

2 silt   

n.淤泥，淤沙，粉砂层，泥沙层；vt.使淤塞；vi.被淤塞

参考例句：

• The lake was almost solid with silt and vegetation.湖里几乎快被淤泥和植物填满了。
• During the annual floods the river deposits its silt on the fields.每年河水泛滥时都会在田野上沉积一层淤泥。

3 unstable   

adj.不稳定的，易变的

参考例句：

• This bookcase is too unstable to hold so many books.这书橱很不结实，装不了这么多书。
• The patient's condition was unstable.那患者的病情不稳定。

4 seeps   

n.（液体）渗( seep的名词复数 )；渗透；渗出；漏出v.（液体）渗( seep的第三人称单数 )；渗透；渗出；漏出

参考例句：

• Water seeps through sand. 水渗入沙中。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Water seeps out of the wall. 水从墙里沁出。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

5 canopy   

n.天篷，遮篷

参考例句：

• The trees formed a leafy canopy above their heads.树木在他们头顶上空形成了一个枝叶茂盛的遮篷。
• They lay down under a canopy of stars.他们躺在繁星点点的天幕下。

6 underneath   

adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面

参考例句：

• Working underneath the car is always a messy job.在汽车底下工作是件脏活。
• She wore a coat with a dress underneath.她穿着一件大衣，里面套着一条连衣裙。

7 arid   

adj.干旱的；(土地)贫瘠的

参考例句：

• These trees will shield off arid winds and protect the fields.这些树能挡住旱风,保护农田。
• There are serious problems of land degradation in some arid zones.在一些干旱地带存在严重的土地退化问题。

8 evaporation   

n.蒸发，消失

参考例句：

• Be careful not to lose too much liquid by evaporation.小心不要因蒸发失去太多水分。
• Our bodies can sweat,thereby losing heat by evaporation.我们的身体能出汗，由此可以蒸发散热。