First listen and then answer the following question. 
听录音，然后回答以下问题。
Why are legends handed down by storytellers useful?

We can read of things 
   that happened 5,000 years ago in the Near East, 
   where people first learned to write. 
   
But there are some parts of the world 
    where even now people cannot write. 
    
The only way 
   that they can preserve their history 
is to recount it as sagas 
   -- legends handed down
           from one generation of storytellers to another. 
   
These legends are useful 
       because they can tell us
            something about migrations of people 
                    who lived long ago, 
but none could write down what they did. 

Anthropologists wondered
             where the remote ancestors
                      of the Polynesian peoples 
                             now living in the Pacific Islands 
            came from. 

The sagas of these people explain
          that some of them came from Indonesia
               about 2,000 years ago. 

But the first people 
   who were like ourselves 
lived so long ago that even their sagas,
           if they had any,
are forgotten. 

So archaeologists have neither history nor legends
         to help them to find out
               where the first 'modern men' came from. 

Fortunately, however,
 ancient men made tools of stone, especially flint, 
because this is easier to shape than other kinds. 

They may also have used wood and skins,
but these have rotted away. 
Stone does not decay,
and so the tools of long ago have remained 
when even the bones of the men 
   who made them 
have disappeared without trace. 

ROBIN PLACE Finding fossil man

New words and expressions 生词和短语

fossil man (title) adj. 化石人 
recount v. 叙述 
saga n. 英雄故事 
legend n. 传说，传奇 
migration n. 迁移，移居 
anthropologist n. 人类学家 
archaeologist n. 考古学家 
ancestor n. 祖先 
Polynesian adj.波利尼西亚（中太平洋之一群岛）的 
Indonesia n. 印度尼西亚 
flint n. 燧石 
rot n. 烂掉

参考译文 
我们从书籍中可读到5,000 年前近东发生的事情，那里的人最早学会了写字。但直到现在,世界上有些地方，人们还不会书写。 他们保存历史的唯一办法是将历史当作传说讲述，由讲述人一代接一代地将史实描述为传奇故事口传下来。人类学家过去不清楚如今生活在太平洋诸岛上的波利尼西亚人的祖先来自何方，当地人的传说却告诉人们：其中一部分是约在2,000年前从印度尼西亚迁来的。 
但是，和我们相似的原始人生活的年代太久远了，因此，有关他们的传说既使有如今也失传了。于是，考古学家们既缺乏历史记载，又无口头传说来帮助他们弄清最早的“现代人”是从哪里来的。 

然而，幸运的是，远古人用石头制作了工具，特别是用燧石，因为燧石较之其他石头更容易成形。他们也可能用过木头和兽皮，但这类东西早已腐烂殆尽。石头是不会腐烂的。因此，尽管制造这些工具的人的骨头早已荡然无存，但远古时代的石头工具却保存了下来。