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发表于 2015-8-11 16:09:58
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2013年1月27日托福考试真题分享——阅读部分
第一篇：
亚欧交界地带(Eurasia)早期文明起源：
1、气候寒冷，需要掌握用火技术来保暖。
2、气候寒冷，冬季植物枯死，只能以打猎为生。但打猎有种种困难，比如野兽会反抗。
3、为了过冬，需要有储藏食物的设施，这需要较高的技术水平。
4、打猎、过冬都依赖于传递信息、组织和计划等较高级的人类活动。
以上需求共同作用，刺激当地人发展出早期文明。
解析：
hunting and gathering culture
also called foraging culture
A foraging economy usually demands an extensive land area; it has been estimated that people who depend on such methods must have available 18 to 1,300 square km (7 to 500 square miles) of land per capita, depending upon local environmental conditions. Permanent villages or towns are generally possible only where food supplies are unusually abundant and reliable; the numerous rivers and streams of the Pacific Northwest, for instance, allowed Native Americans access to two unusually plentiful wild resources—acorns and fish, especially salmon—that supported the construction of large permanent villages and enabled the people to reach higher population densities than if they had relied upon terrestrial mammals for the bulk of their subsistence.
Conditions of such abundance are rare, and most foraging groups must move whenever the local supply of food begins to be exhausted. In these cases possessions are limited to what can be carried from one camp to another. As housing must also be transported or made on the spot, it is usually simple, comprising huts, tents, or lean-tos made of plant materials or the skins of animals. Social groups are necessarily small, because only a limited number of people can congregate together without quickly exhausting the food resources of a locality; such groups typically comprise either extended family units or a number of related families collected together in a band. An individual band is generally small in number, typically with no more than 30 individuals if moving on foot, or perhaps 100 in a group with horses or other means of transport. However, each band is known across a wide area because all residents of a given region are typically tied to one another through a large network of kinship and reciprocity; often these larger groups will congregate for a short period each year.
第二篇：
古代历法的发展：
1、最初没有历法，人类靠数日子计算日期。
2、早期的历法靠记录重大事件划分日期，比如天气变化及新月、满月等月相变化。此类历法的缺陷在于不同地区对重大事件的观测结果往往不同。
3、后来，通过观测月相和太阳运行规律发展出了新历法。但新历法难以解决闰年和大小月等需要微调日期的问题，难以完全吻合地球自转、公转周期。
4、为了解决一年难以用整数天来衡量的问题，东西方人设计了不同的历法。
解析：
calendar
any system for dividing time over extended periods, such as days, months, oryears, and arranging such divisions in a definite order. A calendar is convenient for regulating civil life and religious observances and for historical and scientific purposes. The word is derived from the Latin calendarium, meaning “interest register” or “account book,” itself a derivation from calendae (or kalendae), the first day of the month in the Roman republican calendar, the day on which future market days, feasts, and other occasions were proclaimed.
The development of a calendar is vital for the study of chronology, since this is concerned with reckoning time by regular divisions, or periods, and using these to date events. It is essential, too, for any civilization that needs to measure periods for agricultural, business, domestic, or other reasons. The first practical calendar to evolve from these requirements was the Egyptian, and it was this that the Romans developed into the Julian calendar that served western Europe for more than 1,500 years. The Gregorian calendar was a further improvement and has been almost universally adopted because it satisfactorily draws into one system the dating of religious festivals based on the phases of the Moon and seasonal activities determined by the movement of the Sun. Such a calendar system is complex, since the periods of the Moon's phases and the Sun's motion are incompatible; but by adopting regular cycles of days and comparatively simple rules for their application, the calendar provides a year with an error of less than half a minute.
第三篇：
北美原住民文化：
1、北美西北海岸地区自然环境优越，易于生存，遂产生许多原始部落文化。
2、部落之间通过婚姻实现文化交流。
3、一种文化产物——图腾柱(totem pole)，作用是表达对祖先与自身的敬意，而非偶像崇拜(worship)。图腾柱互相很相似，但没有两个是完全相同的。
4、另一种文化产物——面具(mask)。不同部落制作的面具有不同特点，但现在已经很难辨别。
totem pole
carved and painted log, mounted vertically, constructed by the Indians of the Northwest Coast of the United States and Canada. There are seven principal kinds of totem pole: memorial, or heraldic, poles, erected when a house changes hands to commemorate the past owner and to identify the present one; grave markers (tombstones); house posts, which support the roof; portal poles, which have a hole through which a person enters the house; welcoming poles, placed at the edge of a body of water to identify the owner of the waterfront; mortuary poles, in which the remains of the deceased are placed; and ridicule poles, on which an important individual who had failed in some way had his likeness carved upside down.
The carving on totem poles separates and emphasizes the flat, painted surfaces of the symbolic animals and spirits depicted on them. Each pole generally has from one (as with a grave marker) to many (as with a family legend) animal images on it, all following standardized forms which are familiar to all Indians of the Northwest Coast; beavers, for example, always include cross-hatched tails, and eagles show downward curved beaks.
The word totem refers to a guardian or ancestral being, usually supernatural, that is revered and respected, but not always worshipped. The significance of the real or mythological animal carved on a totem pole is its identification with the lineage of the head of the household. The animal is displayed as a type of family crest, much as an Englishman might have a lion on his crest, or a rancher a bull on his brand. More widely known, but in fact far less common, are the elaborately carved tall totem poles that relate an entire family legend in the form of a pictograph. This legend is not something that can be read in the usual sense of the word; only with an understanding of what the symbols mean to the Indians and a knowledge of the history and customs of the clan involved can the pole be interpreted. Each animal or spirit carved on the pole has meaning, and when combined on the pole in sequence, each figure is an important symbol constituent of a story or myth. An exact interpretation of any set of symbols, however, would be almost impossible without the help of a knowledgeable narrator from the family.
The totem pole was also a sign of the owner's affluence, for hiring an artist to make a pole was an expensive proposition. The carving of totem poles reached its peak in the early and middle 19th century, when the introduction of good metal tools and the wealth gained from the fur trade made it possible for many chiefs to afford these displays. Few examples of this period remain, however, as the moist coastal atmosphere causes the cedar poles to rot and fall in about 60 to 70 years.
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发表于 2015-8-11 15:56:19
