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CHỦ ĐỀ: THROUGH THE AGES (HISTORY)

Độ khó các bài đọc: level C1
Reading passage 1 (994 words)
The unknown history of Black Uprisings
Since
the
declaration
of
Martin
Luther
King,
Jr.,’s
birthday
as
a
federal
holiday,
our
country
has
celebrated
the
civil-rights
movement,
valorizing
its
tactics
of
nonviolence
as
part
of
our
national
narrative
of
progress
toward
a
more
perfect
union.
 Yet
we
rarely
ask
about
the
short
life
span
of
those
tactics.
By
1964,
nonviolence
seemed
to
have
run
its
course,
as
Harlem
and
Philadelphia
ignited
in
flames
to
protest
police
brutality
,
poverty,
and
exclusion
,
in
what
were
denounced
as
riots.
Even
larger
and
more
 destructive
uprisings
followed,
in
Los
Angeles
and
Detroit,
and,
after
the
assassination
of
King,
in
1968,
across
the
country:
a
fiery
tumult
that
came
to
be
seen
as
emblematic
of
Black
urban
violence
and
poverty.
The
violent
turn
in
Black
protest
was
condemned
in
its
own
time
 and
continues
to
be
lamente
d
as
a
tragic
retreat
from
the
noble
objectives and
demeanor
of the church-based Southern
movement.
[...]
This
perception
of
riots
as
the
decline
of
the
nonviolent
movement
has
marginalized
the
study
of
them
within
the
field
of
history.
As
a
result,
our
conventional
wisdom
about
 “the
riots”
of
the
sixties
vastly
underestimates
the
scale
of
Black
insurgency
and
its
political
meaning.
In
her
new
book,
“America
on
Fire:
The
Untold
History
of
Police
Violence
and
Black
Rebellion
Since
the
1960s,”
the
Yale
historian
Elizabeth
Hinton
recovers
a
much
longer
and
more
intense
 period
of
Black
rebellion,
which
continued
into
the
nineteen-seventies.
In
doing
so,
she
challenges
the
dismissal
of
what
she
describes
as
the
“violent
turn”
in
Black
protest,
forging
new
ground
in
our
understanding
of
the
tactics
employed
by
African-Americans
in
response
to
the
extralega
l
violence
of
 white
police
and
residents
and
the
unresolved
issues
of
racial
and economic inequality.
[...]
In
the
summer
of
1968,
in
Stockton,
California,
two
police
officers
tried
unsuccessfully
to
break
up
a
party
in
a
public-housing
development.
The
situation
quickly
escalated
when
more
than
forty
more
white
cops
arrived,
Hinton
 writes,
turning
the
“party
into
a
protest.”
Police
ordered
the
crowd
to
disperse
;
instead
they
pelted
police
with
rocks
and
bottles.
The
police
made
some
arrests,
but
they
hardly
restored
order.
The
following
day,
two
officers
were
dispatched
to
investigate
reports
of
a
disturbance
at
the
 gym
in
the
housing
development;
residents
locked
the
cops
inside
the
gym,
and,
Hinton
writes,
for
more
than
two
hours,
a
crowd
of
two
hundred
and
fifty
people
“
hurled
firebombs,
rocks,
and
bottles
at
the
building
screaming
‘Pigs!’
and
other
expletives.”
More
than
a
hundred
police,
 sheriff’s
deputies,
and
highway
patrolmen
arrived
on
the
scene;
the
crowd
released
the
two
officers
but
continued
to
throw
firebombs
at
the
gymnasium,
nearby
cars,
and
even
an
elementary
school.
Many
of
them
were
teenagers.
Eventually,
police
called
their
parents,
a
strategy
that
worked
as
the kids finally went home.
[...]
 White
police
were
not
only
reluctant
to
arrest
white
perpetrators
;
in
many
instances,
they
participated
in
the
violence.
Hinton
dedicates
an
entire
chapter
to
the
ways
in
which
white
supremacists
and
police
converged
,
in
the
name
of
law
and
order,
to
dominate
rebellious
Black
communities.
 Outside
of
large
metropolitan
areas,
understaffed
police
forces
deputized
white
citizens
to
patrol
and
control
Black
protests.
According
to
Hinton,
in
August
of
1968,
in
Salisbury,
Maryland,
the
police
department
“installed
an
all-white,
216-member
volunteer
force
to
aid
the
regular
40-man
force
in
the
event
of
a
 riot.”
In
other
instances,
white
cops
allowed
white
residents
to
harass,
beat,
shoot,
and
even
murder
African-Americans
with
no
reprisals
.
In
the
small
town
of
Cairo,
Illinois,
a
Black
rebellion
in
1967
brought
together
white
police
and
white
vigilantes
in
a
concerted
effort
to
isolate
and
 suppress
African-Americans.
After
the
initial
uprising
,
sparked
by
the
suspicious
death
of
a
Black
soldier
in
the
city
jail,
white
residents
formed
a
vigilante
group
dubbed
the
Committee
of
Ten
Million—a
name
inspired
by
a
letter
written
by
the
former
President
Dwight
Eisenhower,
which
called
for
 a
“committee
of
ten
million
citizens”
to
restore
law
and
order
after
the
uprisings
in
Detroit
and
Newark.
Cairo
police
deputized
this
group
to
patrol
Black
neighborhoods,
including
the
public-housing
development
Pyramid
Courts,
where
the
majority
of
the
nearly
three
thousand
Black
people
of
Cairo
lived.
In
 1969,
the
“white
hats,”
as
the
committee
members
had
taken
to
calling
themselves,
fired
shots
into
Pyramid
Courts.
When
Black
residents
took
up
arms
in
self-defense,
periodically
curfews
were
imposed
but
applied
only
to
Pyramid
Courts
residents.
In
response,
the
National
Guard
was
periodically
deployed
to
police
 Pyramid
Courts.
But
local
police
would
also
fire
into
the
development
with
machine
guns
from
an
armored
vehicle
(described
by
Black
locals
as
the
Great
Intimidator).
No
one
was
killed,
but
Black
families
would
sometimes
sleep
in
bathtubs
to
avoid
the
gunfire.
Black
men
also
shot
out
 the
street
lights
to
obscure
the
view of white snipers.
[...]
There
are
no
easy
answers
to
the
question
of
how
to
end
the
cycle
of
racist
and
abusive
policing,
but
the
force
of
resistance
and
rebellion
has
been
the
most
effective
way
of
both
exposing
the
problem
and
pressuring
 authorities
to
act.
The
biggest
difference
between
now
and
the
earlier
crucible
period
of
rebellion
is
that
today’s
uprisings
are
increasingly
multiracial
.
Since
the
uprising
in
Los
Angeles
in
1992
and
certainly
the
rebellions
of
last
summer,
Latinx
and
ordinary
white
people
have
been
inspired
by
 rebellion
as
a
legitimate
form
of
protest.
The
rebellions
of
last
summer
involved
thousands
of
white
people
who
were
also
angered
by
the
abuses
of
police
and
by
the
deepening
unfairness
of
our
society.
Protesters’
demands
to
“defund
the
police”
brought
together
new
coalitions
to
challenge
the
 entwined
political
realities
of
funding
law
enforcement
and
ignoring
social-welfare
services
while
injecting
new
arguments
into
the
public
discussion
of
this
very
old
problem
of
racist
police
abuse.
This
won’t
end
police
brutality,
but
it
can
expand
the
number
of
people
who
also
see
themselves
as
victimized
 by
deformed
public
policies.
The
larger
the
movement,
the
harder it is to maintain the
status quo.
Reading passage 2 (987 words)
Coins, the overlooked keys to History
Loose
change
was
scarce
last
year.
Retail
and
restaurant
industries
collected
less
cash
from
customers,
so
had
fewer
coins
to
deposit
with
their
banks,
while
limited
hours
and
new
safety
protocols
at
mints
 around
the
country
slowed
coin
production.
Some
coin-based
transactions
evolved
right
away:
cashless
tipping
became
more
common,
even
more
toll
booths
were
converted
to
pay-by-plate
systems,
and
plenty
of
places
began
rounding
up
or
down
to
simplify
payment.
But
it
wasn’t
enough.
Only
a
few
months
into
 the
pandemic,
cafés
were
putting
up
signs
begging
customers
for
change,
laundromat
owners
were
crossing
state
lines
to
buy
quarters,
banks
were
offering
rewards
for
clients
who
surrendered
their
coins,
and
the
Federal
Reserve
formed
the
U.S. Coin Task Force to address the crisis.
Even
though
the
Fed
was,
and
still
is,
rationing
coins,
 the
agency
insists
that
the
country
is
facing
a
circulation
problem,
not
a
shortage:
like
so
many
Americans
over
the
past
year,
American
coins
have
simply
stayed
home.
Plenty
of
coins
exist—some
forty-eight
billion
dollars’
worth—they
just
aren’t
moving
around
the
economy
the
way
they
should.
Instead,
 they’re
sitting
in
jars
and
hiding
under
couch
cushions,
inadvertently hoarded
by millions of American households.
[...]
According
to
Holt,
the
average
American
household
has
around
sixty-eight
dollars’
worth
of
coins
in
their
nuisance
jars.
Collectively
they
throw
away
another
sixty
million
dollars’
worth
every
year,
vacuuming
them
up
or
dropping
them
 into
trash
bins
with
lint
and
straw
wrappers.
But
we
do
cash
in
some
of
our
change,
including,
on
average,
forty-one
billion
coins
a
year
to
Coinstar
counting
machines
alone.
Many
banks
no
longer
convert
change
for
customers
unless
it
arrives
wrapped
and
counted,
but,
since
1991,
 seventeen
thousand
or
so
Coinstar
kiosks
have
proliferated
in
grocery
stores
around
the
country,
and
they
now
convert
some
three
billion
dollars
annually,
sorting
coins
from
debris
for
a
fee
of
roughly
twelve
percent,
spitting
out
a
voucher
that
customers trade in for cash or gift cards.
[...]
Almost
every
civilization
has
had
some
 form
of
currency,
but
coins
first
proliferated
nearly
three
thousand
years
ago
among
the
Lydians,
in
what
is
today
modern
Turkey.
Called
croesids,
in
honor
of
the
Lydian
king
Croesus,
these
early
coins
were
quickly
copied
by
the
Greeks,
who
found
them
easier
to
exchange
than
land,
 cattle,
or
any
of
the
other
commodities
of
the
ancient
world.
Everyday
objects
had
long
served
the
same
purpose,
but
coins
were
more
durable
than
the
cowrie
shells
of
Africa
and
more
portable
than
the
fei
stones
of
Micronesia,
although
less
delicious
than
the
cocoa
seeds
of
 Central
America.
Parallel
money
systems
took
shape
in
Asia
around
the
same
time
as
in
Lydia,
with
decorative
karshapana
circulating
in
stamped
and
unstamped
forms
in
ancient
India
and
coins
that
were
not
round
but
ornately-shaped
to
resemble
knives
and
farming
implements
changing
hands
in
China.
The
 earliest
incarnations
did
not
display
the
year
or
the
denomination
;
instead,
their
value
was
understood
through
material
or
convention—
n
o
m
o
s
—and
their
study,
first
described
by
Herodotus,
became
known as
n
o
m
i
s
m
a
t
a
.
Not
everyone
was
 a
fan,
though.
The
civilizational
slope
has
been
slippery
for
much
longer
than
most
of
us
realize,
and,
long
before
the
advent
of
smartphones
or
typewriters
or
railroads,
the
Roman
denarius
was
considered
a
threat
to
the
social
order.
In
“
Antigone
,”
Sophocles
depicts
King
Creon
 battling
not
only
his
niece
but
also
numismatists,
calling
coins
the
worst
invention
of
all
time
and
claiming
that
currency
“lays
cities
low
.
.
.
drives
men
from
their
homes
.
.
.
trains
and
warps
honest
souls
till
they
set
themselves
to
works
of
shame
 .
.
.
and
to
know
every
godless
deed.”
Part
of
the
proper
burial
that
Antigone
sought
for
her
brother
involved
placing
an
obol
in
his
mouth
so
that
he
could
pay
Charon’s
ferry
toll
into
the
underworld;
inflation
and
imagination
turned
this
into
the
common
misunderstanding
 that
the
dead
need
two
coins,
one
on
each
eye.
The
early
Greeks
also
sometimes
carried
small
coins
in
their
mouths
while
alive,
before
there
were
change
purses
and
pockets.
But
others
objected
to
carrying
coins
at
all.
Pliny
the
Elder
hated
how
coinage
had
displaced
the
 agrarian
tradition
of
trading
livestock
and
hides
and
slaves,
writing
in
his
“
Natural
History
”
that
the
minting
of
the
first
denarius
was
a
“crime
committed
against
the
welfare
of
mankind.”
[...]
Although
Holt
acknowledges
the
evolution
of
currency
across
the
ages,
he
dismisses
the
idea
 that
we
are
on
the
verge
of
a
cashless
economy,
something
predicted
for
decades
now,
since
long
before
the
arrival
of
Bitcoin
,
Bytecoin,
Dogecoin,
SwiftCoin,
or
any
other
blockchain
currency.
Such
names,
and
talk
of
“
mining
”
digital
coins
or
“coining”
computer
code,
are
part
 of
why
Holt
is
convinced
that
there
will
always
be
a
parallel
physical-money
system:
such
language
is
meant
to
reassure
investors
that
dematerialized
currency
is
safe
and
reliable
even
while
approximately
twenty
percent
of
all
the
bitcoin
in
existence—somewhere
around
a
hundred
and
forty
billion
dollars’
worth—are
 lost
or
locked
in
abandoned
wallets
,
and
more
than
a
hundred
thousand
users
of
Canada’s
largest
cryptocurrency
exchange,
QuadrigaCX
,
lost
all
their
holdings
when
the
exchange’s
founder,
Gerald
Cotton,
died
without
passing
along
the
password
to their assets.
But,
even
if
Holt
is
wrong
and
all
coinage
 eventually
ends
up
in
museums,
he
suggests
that
coin
studies
will
always
be
relevant.
His
book
ends
with
a
preview
of
an
interdisciplinary
field
that
he
calls
cognitive
numismatics,
a
theoretical
approach
to
the
study
of
history
that
uses
material
artifacts
to
try
to
reconstruct
how
people
 thought
about
money
in
the
past.
Eventually,
as
he
points
out,
those
people
will
include
us.
Holt
imagines
a
time
in
which
coins
are
protected
objects
in
a
cashless
society,
and
an
even
more
distant
future
in
which
aliens
will
study
our
quarters
and
pennies
to
try
 to
understand
our
extinct
society,
trying
to
make
sense
of
who
we
were
through
numismatics, the “beautiful science of civilizations here and beyond.”
Reading passage 3 (1044 words)
“A remarkable history”:
inside the exhibition bringing Peru’s past to life
The
British
Museum’s
landmark
show
Peru:
A
Journey
in
Time
has
been
a
decade
in
the
making
and
enables
the
museum
to
foreground
objects
from
its
own
collections
 and
present
them
alongside
treasures
from
Peru
seen
for
the
first
time
in
the
UK.
Its
opening
coincides
with
the
200th
anniversary
of
Peru
declaring
its
independence
from
Spain,
with
the
UK
being
one
of
the
first
countries
to
recognise
the
new
nation’s
sovereignty
.
But
the
 neatness
of
this
chronology
is
perhaps,
to
a
western
audience,
almost
the
only
familiar
aspect
of
a
show
that
consistently
challenges
the
most
basic
notions
of
how
the
world
works
and
how
it
can,
and
should,
be
lived
in.
Not
the
least
of these challenges is to the concept of time itself.
The
subtitle
of
the
 exhibition
is
both
a
prosaic
description
of
a
chronological
examination
of
many
different
cultures
over
3,500
years,
but
also
an
introduction
to
how
Andean
time
was
experienced.
“We
generally
think
that
we’re
in
the
present,
the
past
is
behind
us
and
the
future
is
ahead
of
us,”
 explains
its
co-curator
Jago
Cooper.
“Whereas
in
Andean
societies,
the
past,
present
and
future
are
parallel
lines
happening
contemporaneously
.
So
the
past
isn’t
dead,
it’s
happening
at
the
same
time
as
the
present,
which
can
therefore
change
it.
And
it
is
by
accepting
the
interrelationship
between the past and present that
 you can best plan for the future.”
Other
points
of
divergence
in
ancient
(pre-Columbus)
Peru
include
a
lack
of
a
script-based writing tradition or a system of
monetary
exchange.
“There
is
also
the
extreme
diversity
of
the
environment,”
explains
Cooper’s
fellow
curator,
Cecilia
Pardo.
“Negotiating
life
on
the
Pacific
coast,
or
in
arid
deserts,
the
high
Andes
or
the
 rainforest
all
required
deeply
sophisticated
and
sustainable
innovation
and
technologies
that
prompted
unique
ways
of
societies
being
successful.”
Evidence
of
this
success
comes
in
a
wide
range
of
stunning
artefacts
on
display:
from
remarkably
well
preserved
textiles,
some
of
them
more
than
2,000
years
old,
to
wooden
 sculptures
that
cast
a
new
light
on
ritual
killings,
extensive
collections
of
ceramics
and
intricate
uses of precious metals.
With
the
economic
underpinning
of
societies
not
reliant
on
the
arbitrary
valuation
of
currency,
it
was
systems
of
reciprocal
obligation
that
largely
powered
progress
and
production.
“People
had
an
obligation
to
 maintain
and
sustain
each
other
and
the
world
around
them,”
says
Cooper.
“That
had
profound
implications
for
the
way
resources
were
managed
and
also
how
things
were
made.
Textiles
and
other
small
items
were
made
communally
but
large
structures
were
also
built
communally
and
voluntarily, and not by slave labour as in other parts of the world.”
And
without
 a
written
culture,
the
objects
themselves
acquired
a
heightened
importance
as
carriers
of
cultural
knowledge,
ideas
and
beliefs.
Many
of
the
pieces
in
the
show
have
survived
as
a
result
of
them
being
funerary
offerings
preserved
in
sealed
graves,
and
they
cast
light
on
belief
systems
and
 practices.
But,
as
Cooper
reminds
us,
at
the
heart
of
the
show
is
an
acknowledgment
that
this
is
a
culture
in
which the past is alive and only created in the present.
There
is
so
much
more
to
learn,
adds
Pardo:
“It
is
likely
that
fewer
than
10%
of
potential
sites
have
been
excavated
in
Peru.
Many
 more
digs
are
under
way
with
both
Peruvian
and
foreign
archaeologists
studying
different
aspects
of
this
very
long
story.
This
exhibition
offers
a
wonderful
snapshot
of
what
has
been
found
and
what
we
know
now,
but
the
curators
are
both
humble
and
excited
about
what
the
future
 might
bring. The remarkable history of these cultures is still being made.”
Out of the past: four ancient Peruvian artefacts
Large red mantle
This
funerary
blanket
is
one
of
the
oldest
artefacts
in
the
exhibition
and
was
used
by
the
Nasca
people
who
traditionally
buried
their
dead
in
a
sitting
position,
wrapped
in
layers
of
cloth.
The
repeated
figure,
wearing
feline
masks
and
carrying
human
heads,
 is
embroidered
on
to
the
cloth
and
is
probably
a
representation
of
an
ancestor
who
would
take
care
of
the
deceased
in
the
afterlife.
The
burial
would
have
taken
place
in
the
arid
deserts
of
southern
Peru
and
the
lack
of
humidity
has
allowed
the
survival
of
the textile for close to 2,000 years.