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 have been found on the walls of caves in France and Spain. No one knows why they were painted there. Perhaps the painter 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 used became a kind of alphabet.
The Egyptians used to record information and to tell stories by putting picture-writing and pictures together. When 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 (连环漫画) stories. It has been said that Egypt is the home of the comic strip. But, for the Egyptians, pictures still had magic power. So they did not try to make their way of writing simple. The ordinary people could not understand it.
By the year 1,000 BC, people who lived in the area around the Mediterranean Sea had developed a simpler 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 letter of the Greek alphabet. The Romans copied the idea, and Roman alphabet is now used all over the world.
These days, we can write down a story, or record information, without using pictures. But we still need pictures of all kinds: drawings, photographs, signs and diagrams. We find them everywhere: 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.
55. Ancient people in France and Spain painted pictures on walls of caves probably because ______.
A. they loved animals B. they enjoyed seeing pictures
C. they preferred painting pictures to telling stories D. they thought pictures helpful
56. From this passage we know that ______.
A. the Egyptian signs made a particular alphabet come into being
B. the Roman alphabet was developed from Egyptian alphabet
C. Egypt is well-known for their comic-strip stories
D. people in other parts of the world copied their writing system from the Egyptians
57. In the last paragraph, the author thinks that pictures ______.
A. should be made comprehensible B. are of much use in our life
C. should be made interesting D. are disappearing from our life
58. The possible title of this article may be ______.
A. Pictures and Writing B. The Best Way of Writing
C. Home of the Comic-Strip Stories D. The Earliest Language in the World