Reading in Depth There is a short passage with 10 blanks. You are required to select one word or phrase for each blank from a list of choices given in the word bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices. You may not use any of the words or phrases in the bank more than once. 1. _________ and our interest in the sky are almost as old as human history. Nearly every ancient civilization had a connection to the sky as a calendrical tool. Almost all also saw their gods, goddesses, and other heroes and heroines reflected in the 2. ____________, or in the motions of the Sun, Moon, and stars. As civilizations formed and spread across the continents, their interest in the heavens grew as 3. ________ kept records of what they saw, and humanity moved from merely charting and worshipping the sky to actually learning more about 4. _______ objects and considering our place in the universe. Some of the earliest known charts of the sky were created by the Chinese over 4,000 years ago. The Babylonians also kept track of the sky, and were the first civilization to record a solar 5. ______. The ancient Greeks began exploring the scientific 6. _________ of the universe around 500 BCE, when the mathematicians Pythagoras suggested that the Earth was not a flat object, but a sphere. Meanwhile, in Egypt, Euclid looked to the sky to inspire his development of some of the earliest concepts of 7. ________. While many of ancient concepts about the universe were insightful, they were not always correct. For example, many ancient philosophers believed that the Earth was the centre of the universe. It was not until the 8. __________, when in 1514, the astronomer Copernicus suggested that the Earth moves around the Sun, an idea that did not sit well with much of European society, which had long established that humans and the Earth were superior to all other things. Even Galileo’s use of the 9. ________ to prove that the planet Jupiter had its own moons did little to change this mindset. However, his telescope would continue to encourage the 10. ______ of scientific knowledge and reason that continues to this day.