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BEST IELTS Academic Reading Test 509
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST 509 – PASSAGE – 1
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST – 508
READING PASSAGE – 1
African Coins
A. In 1770, the explorer James Cook landed on the east coast of Australia and claimed the territory for Great Britain. It seems that, contrary to popular myth, he may not actually have been the first European to set foot on the continent. A new expedition, led by an Australian anthropologist, is investigating the possibility that ancient exploration may have taken place long before Cook and other Europeans ever journeyed to the continent.
The expedition will follow a seventy-year-old treasure map to a sandy beach where a cache of mysterious ancient coins was discovered in the 1940s. The researchers are setting out to discover how the coins ended up in the sand; whether they washed ashore following shipwrecks and whether they can provide more details about ancient trade routes.
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B. The coins were originally found by an Australian soldier named Maurie Isenberg, who was stationed in a remote area known as the Wessel Islands. The Wessel Islands are part of Arnhem Land, a region in Australia’s vast Northern Territory. Isenberg was assigned to a radar station located on the Wessel Islands, and during his off-duty hours, he often went fishing along the idyllic beaches. One day in 1944, he came across a few old coins and put them in a tin. He marked the spot where he’d found the coins with an X on a hand-drawn map, but didn’t think that he’d unearthed anything of great note.
C. Indeed, it wasn’t until 1979 that Isenberg sent the coins to be authenticated and learned that some of them were estimated to be of great age. As it turned out, five of them had been produced in the sultanate of Kilwa in East Africa and are thought to date back to the twelfth century. Kilwa was a prosperous trading centre in those days, located on an island that is part of present-day Tanzania.
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Australian anthropologist Mike Owen, a heritage consultant in Darwin, is leading the upcoming expedition, and he says that the coins, ‘have the capacity to redraft Australian history’. The copper coins, which were seldom used outside of East Africa, probably held very little monetary value in Kilwa: ‘Yet, there they were – on a beach ten thousand kilometres to the east.’
D.Along with the African coins, there were a number of seventeenth and eighteenth-century Dutch coins in the cache of the type known as duits. The first record of European activity in the islands actually dates back to 1623, when sailors aboard a Dutch ship called the Wesel gave the islands their current name. However, oral history from the indigenous Yolngu people who inhabit the islands suggests that they played host to many visitors over the centuries. The expedition’s main researcher is Australian anthropologist Dr Ian Mcintosh, who has spoken in depth with the Yolngu people. ‘There was much talk of the Wessel Islands as a place of intense contact history,’ he says.
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E. Mcintosh points out that Northern Australia may have drawn early visitors because it lies close to the terminus of the ancient Indian Ocean trade route that linked Africa’s east coast with Arabia, Persia, India and the Spice Islands (now part of Indonesia). ‘This trade route was already very active, a very long time ago, and this find may be evidence of early exploration by peoples from East Africa or the Middle East.’ According to Mcintosh, the shape of the Wessel Islands serves as a ‘big catching arm’ for any ships blown off course, which may point to the coins coming from a shipwreck, or even multiple shipwrecks.
F. It is difficult to tell whether there was routine contact with the outside world or whether there is any connection between the Dutch coins and the far older African coins, which may simply have ended up in the same place, but it is hoped that more evidence may come to light. Adding to the sense of anticipation is a persistent rumour that, in one of the many caves in the islands, there are more coins and antique weaponry.
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G. The expedition is sponsored by the Australian Geographic Society and intends to follow the hand-drawn map given to them by Isenberg. Included in the team is a geomorphologist, whose task is to examine how the coastal landscape has changed over time. If shipwrecks are involved, how the coins washed up may provide clues to the location of a wreck, say the experts.
Meanwhile, a heritage specialist has the job of looking after the documentation and ensuring that the site is protected, and anthropologists working with local indigenous people hope to identify likely sites of contact with foreign visitors. ‘There is great interest on the part of the Yolngu in this project, and in uncovering aspects of their own past,’ says Mcintosh.
Questions 1-7
Reading Passage 1 has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-G. Write the correct number, i-x.
i. A possible explanation for why a discovery was made in a particular location
ii. A recent study casts doubt on an accepted interpretation of events
iii. Analysis reveals the origins of objects discovered by chance
iv. Documentary evidence that supports the study’s initial findings
v. How the current study is going to be organised
vi. Evidence suggesting that traders once lived on the Wessel Islands
vii. A long-standing suggestion that further discoveries are possible
viii. The significance of a chance discovery goes undetected
ix. The aims of the current study
x. Written and anecdotal evidence of early trade in the region
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1. Paragraph A
2. Paragraph B
3. Paragraph C
4. Paragraph D
5. Paragraph E
6. Paragraph F
7. Paragraph G
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Questions 8-13
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.
8. Maurie Isenberg first discovered the coins in the year …………….. .
9. The African coins which Isenberg found were made of …………….. .
10. The African coins are thought to have been made in the …………….. century.
11. The later coins Isenberg found are called …………….. .
12. The islands where Isenberg found the coins are named after a …………….. .
13. Local people think there may be …………….. as well as more coins on the islands.
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IELTS Academic Reading Test
ANSWERS
1. IX
2. VIII
3. III
4. X
5. I
6. VII
7. V
8. 1944
9. COPPER
10. TWELFTH/12TH
11. DUITS
12. (DUTCH) SHIP
13. ANTIQUE WEAPONRY
IELTS Academic Reading Test