托福机经：2014年10月18托福阅读真题解析

　　 2014年10月18，希望对各位考生的备考有所帮助，祝每位烤鸭考试顺利，都能取得好成绩！

　　第一篇：

　　版本一：Writing的发展。开始讲专家们主要分析的都是苏美尔人的文字，虽然说埃及人有文字，但是是写在纸上的，不易保存。但是苏美尔人用clay。虽然不方便带但是能够保存时间长(有题)，而且在大火的适合不会坏，不像纸和皮(有题)。之后说他们的楔形文字很棒，很简单的符号但是组合起来有很多文字。有题考到楔形文字的特点，包括只有很少的人会用(因为太难了)。后来别的文化页借鉴传承了楔形文字，给文字赋予了自己文化的含义，还有读音…后面的记不清了，记得考了一个词汇virtue

　　版本二：1. writing的起源

　　文章主旨是writing起源于苏美尔人，不久后埃及人也发明了writing，但历史无法追溯，因为埃及人用paprus(不知道拼没拼对)，但是苏美尔人的地盘没有这个东西，他们用clay，这种定系特别好，不象其他的记录的东西特别脆，clay特别durable，baked之后更好什么的。然后又说这种方法影响了其他地区的人(都是离苏美尔比较近的)

　　后来，苏美尔被另一个文明(不记得具体名字了)给灭了，但是他们没有使苏美尔的writing被灭，他们保存了下了，就像欧洲人在罗马灭亡后把拉丁语保存下来一样

　　解析：本文讲述的是writing的发展，在TPO里目前还没有专门写writing的文章，但是在一些有关文明的文章中有涉及到，比如Sumer and the First Cities in Ancient Middle East等，同时在老托中也有类似题材，具体请看参考阅读部分。

　　参考阅读：

　　Archaeological discoveries have led some scholars to believe that the first Mesopotamian inventors of writing may have been a people the later Babylonians called Subarians. According to tradition, they came from the north and moved into Uruk in the south. By about 3100B.C, They were apparently subjugated in southern Mesopotamia by the Sumerians, whose name became synonymous with the region immediately north of the Persian Gulf, in the fertile lower valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. Here the Sumerians were already well established by the year 3000B.C. They had invented bronze, an alloy that could be cast in molds, out of which they made tools and weapons. They lived in cities, and they had begun to acquire and use capital. Perhaps most important, the Sumerians adapted writing (probably from the Subarians) into a flexible tool of communication.

　　Archacologists have known about the Sumerians for over 150 years. Archacologists working at Nineveh in northern Mesopotamia in the mid-nineteenth century found many inscribed clay tablets. Some they could decipher because the language was a Semitic one (Akkadian), on which scholars had already been working for a generation. But other tablets were inscribed in another language that was not Semitic and previously unknown. Because these inscriptions mad reference to the king of Sumer and Akkad, a scholar suggested that the mew language be called Sumerian. But it was not until the 1890's that archaeologists excavating in city-states well to the south o f Nieveh found many thousands of tablets inscribed in Sumerian only. Because the Akkadians thought of Sumerian as a classical language (as ancient Greek and Latin are considered today), they taught it to educated persons and they inscribed vocabulary, translation exercised, and other study aids on tablets. Working from known Akkadian to previously unknown Sumerian, scholars since the 1890's have learned how to read the Sumerian language moderately well. Vast quantities of tablets in Sumerian have been unearthed during the intervening years from numerous sites.

　　第二篇：

　　版本一：化肥。第一段先提出了三种天然化肥，animalgreen和compxxx(记不清单词了)，然后第二段说animal的很好，但是美国不怎么用了，提出了三个原因(有题)大概是不方便运输、机器化生产、养殖和种植不在一起了。第三段说另外两种化肥。第四段讲了一种新的方法，mushroom。说这个更好因为相对更便宜而且弄一次可以管一年(有题)。第五段说因为crop等农作物会上海土壤，所以就有了轮种的方法，一年种农作物，一年种可以给土壤提供营养的植物，而且还能防止土壤流失、迷惑种子(因为种农作物的地方变了)(有题)。接着说现在人民用合成的花费(差不多是这意思)，这种化肥很重要，因为养活了很多人。最后一段说的是这种化肥的缺点，有很多项还标了号。有题问了最后两段的关系。

　　版本二：说的是肥料，先是讲动物肥很好，后来由于现代农业的生产方式改变，动物肥不适用了。然后介绍了一系列可以加强土地肥力的措施，其中有轮作制度，蘑菇真菌肥等等，最后两段介绍了commercial inorganic fertilizers的利弊。利是大大提升了粮食产量，弊是会造成污染等等。

　　解析：本文讲解不同种类的肥料，重复20120923ML题，属于最近比较高频的农业类型文章。在TPO里没有专门有关肥料的文章，有关农业的文章也不是太多，比较相关的是TPO23的Seventeenth-Century Dutch Agriculture，文中有讲述Crop rotation和fertilizer的问题可做参考。

　　参考阅读：

　　Some people are concerned that our soils are becoming depleted of trace minerals by continuous agricultural use and hence that foocte are becoming depleted in vital minerals. This is a complex issue about which not a great deal is known, but the lack of evidence of mineral deficiencies in our population speaks to the adequacy of our soils. Furthermore, soils are replenished in trace minerals by rainwater and especially by irrigation water that is obtained from rivers or wells that draw water from other soil or rock formations far away from the farm.

　　On the other hand, agricultural practices that remove the total crop from the field year after year with no replenishment of trace minerals can over time result in a crop poor in these minerals. Of course, the fanner could supply chemical fertilizer to the fields but with most fertilizers this practice would replenish only potassium, phosphates, and nitrogen. Rotating a "green manure" crop such as clover, which is plowed under after the end of the growing season, would renew only nitrogen in the soil, not trace elements. There is a growing realization, therefore, (hat so-called organic farming makes good commercial sense and would help minimize mineral depletion: Organic fanning essentially refers to farming that does not depend on chemical fertilizers; rather, soils are invigorated by applying manure and by plowing in crop wastes, such as corn stalks and bean vines, and compost. These techniques return organic material and trace minerals back to the soils and are to be commended. However, for maximum yields, a chemical fertilizer may be required in addition to manure and plant waste.

　　Some critics of modern farming methods fear that the hardier varieties of fruits and vegetables that have been developed to make shipment easier have resulted in loss of vitamin content. This concern is unfounded because the creation of vitamins by plants is an automatic biological process. Any variety of plant will make the full complement of vitamins it needs, regardless of species.#p#副标题#e#

　　第三篇：

　　版本一：讲玛雅文明的消失。开始说到玛雅人特别多，所以她们就发展了两种方法，一种是灌溉系统，还有一种是在坡上种农作物，但是问题是让环境变得更脆弱。(有题)，然后提到有探索者看到了建的特别好的城市和到处的杂草，推理出这地方应该不是一个single sudden的因素倒的。后来分析原因，开始想social，稳重说确实会影响，但毕竟玛雅人经历了500多年的战乱(有题问为什么说这个)，所以虽然有影响，但不是最终因素。然后说道食物缺乏。列举了很多原因，包括建造各种纪念性的建筑等。最后又提到不只是人类活动的作用，自然页有影响。因为800-1000AD格外干燥，没有食物，而且人口还特别多(有题)，所以造成了玛雅文明快速的消失。(这篇考的单词abandon elaborate document)

　　版本二：玛雅文明灭亡的原因。有自然环境和人类活动两方面的原因，尚在讨论中。为了满足大量人口的需求，玛雅人采取密集农业，确定解决了粮食问题，但同时也使生态恶化。自然因素有旱灾，人为因素则是为了与其他文明竞争而大兴土木、战争等等。最后说要不是因为这些人为因素，就算旱灾也不至于让玛雅文明遭受毁灭性的打击。

　　解析：本文关注托福阅读历来常考题材玛雅文明，重复20120512ML题。在TPO里有篇Maya Water Problems，涉及到玛雅的旱灾和水问题可做参考。同时本文属于因果型文章，在阅读时重点抓原因，理清因果关系。

　　参考阅读：

　　For 1200 years, the Maya dominated Central America. At their peak around 900 A.D., Maya cities teemed with more than 2,000 people per square mile -- comparable to modern Los Angeles County. Even in rural areas the Maya numbered 200 to 400 people per square mile. But suddenly, all was quiet. And the profound silence testified to one of the greatest demographic disasters in human prehistory -- the demise of the once vibrant Maya society.

　　"They did it to themselves," says veteran archeologist Tom Sever.

　　"The Maya are often depicted as people who lived in complete harmony with their environment,' says PhD student Robert Griffin. "But like many other cultures before and after them, they ended up deforesting and destroying their landscape in efforts to eke out a living in hard times."

　　A major drought occurred about the time the Maya began to disappear. And at the time of their collapse, the Maya had cut down most of the trees across large swaths of the land to clear fields for growing corn to feed their burgeoning population. They also cut trees for firewood and for making building materials.

　　"They had to burn 20 trees to heat the limestone for making just 1 square meter of the lime plaster they used to build their tremendous temples, reservoirs, and monuments," explains Sever.

　　He and his team used computer simulations to reconstruct how the deforestation could have played a role in worsening the drought. They isolated the effects of deforestation using a pair of proven computer climate models: the PSU/NCAR mesoscale atmospheric circulation model, known as MM5, and the Community Climate System Model, or CCSM.

　　"We modeled the worst and best case scenarios: 100 percent deforestation in the Maya area and no deforestation," says Sever. "The results were eye opening. Loss of all the trees caused a 3-5 degree rise in temperature and a 20-30 percent decrease in rainfall."

　　The results are telling, but more research is needed to completely explain the mechanisms of Mayan decline. Archeological records reveal that while some Maya city-states did fall during drought periods, some survived and even thrived.

　　"We believe that drought was realized differently in different areas," explains Griffin. "We propose that increases in temperature and decreases in rainfall brought on by localized deforestation caused serious enough problems to push some but not all city-states over the edge."

　　The Maya deforested through the use of slash-and-burn agriculture – a method still used in their old stomping grounds today, so the researchers understand how it works.

　　"We know that for every 1 to 3 years you farm a piece of land, you need to let it lay fallow for 15 years to recover. In that time, trees and vegetation can grow back there while you slash and burn another area to plant in."

　　But what if you don't let the land lay fallow long enough to replenish itself? And what if you clear more and more fields to meet growing demands for food?

　　see caption"We believe that's what happened," says Griffin. "The Maya stripped large areas of their landscape bare by over-farming."

　　Not only did drought make it difficult to grow enough food, it also would have been harder for the Maya to store enough water to survive the dry season.

　　"The cities tried to keep an 18-month supply of water in their reservoirs," says Sever. "For example, in Tikal there was a system of reservoirs that held millions of gallons of water. Without sufficient rain, the reservoirs ran dry." Thirst and famine don't do much for keeping a populace happy. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

　　"In some of the Maya city-states, mass graves have been found containing groups of skeletons with jade inlays in their teeth – something they reserved for Maya elites – perhaps in this case murdered aristocracy," he speculates.

　　No single factor brings a civilization to its knees, but the deforestation that helped bring on drought could easily have exacerbated other problems such as civil unrest, war, starvation and disease.

　　Many of these insights are a result of space-based imaging, notes Sever. "By interpreting infrared satellite data, we've located hundreds of old and abandoned cities not previously known to exist. The Maya used lime plaster as foundations to build their great cities filled with ornate temples, observatories, and pyramids. Over hundreds of years, the lime seeped into the soil. As a result, the vegetation around the ruins looks distinctive in infrared to this day."

　　"Space technology is revolutionizing archeology," he concludes. "We're using it to learn about the plight of ancients in order to avoid a similar fate today."