2017年6月3日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Lenape Horticulture

2017年6月3日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Lenape Horticulture

Older scholarship on Native Americans assumed that, at the time of their first contact with Europeans, native Americans in the northeastern United States were farmers whose main food source was maize (corn). This view was based on evidence of extensive fields inland. It was also consistent with reports from early European explorers, including Henry Hudson who sailed for the Dutch, about trading with Native Americans for “Turkish wheat,” the explorers’ term for maize. However, in the 1970s a persuasive archaeologist, Lynn Ceci, challenged this orthodoxy.▋She argued that for the people living in coastal New York, such as the Lenape occupying Manhattan Island when Dutch explorers arrived in the early seventeenth century, the environment was so abundant with resources that horticulture was an adjunct to the diet, not the primary source of calories. She argued along several lines of evidence. First, she noted that “flotation tests” --in which prehistoric fire pits are flooded with water--caused relatively few seeds and corn kernels to float to the surface in coastal sites compared to inland sites.▋Second, she argued that the the soils in coastal regions, generally sandy and rocky, are not particularly productive and would require a lot of work to cultivate (an observation also noted by the Dutch). ▋Third, she argued from ecological evidence that it really was not necessary for coastal people to adopt an agricultural way of life, given the year-round abundance of shellfish, fish, mammals, nuts, and berries. ▋Other archaeologists corroborated these views by testing Lenape primarily ate local plants, not maize, and a lot of seafood, and were generally healthy. (Adopting agriculture often leads to a reduction in the health of a population.)

1.The word “persuasive” in the passage is closest in meaning to

A.convincing

B.important

C.ambitious

D.brilliant

2.The word “corroborated” in the passage is closest in meaning to

A.developed

B.spread

C.examined

D.confirmed

3.According to paragraph 1, Ceci considered all of the following facts to be evidence that maize was less important on the coast EXCEPT:

A.Old fire pits along the coast reveal few traces of seeds and maize.

B.The soil along the coast was not well suited for growing maize.

C.Many different sources of food were available on the coast.

D.Maize fields on the coast were frequently flooded with water.

Research has added a couple of twists to Ceci’s hypothesis. A Columbia University student used a modern crop model to simulate maize horticulture on Manhattan, using representative soil types, climate, and maize varieties. He found that when maize was grown by itself, productivity was uneven, and there was a modest but significant probability of total crop failure each year. Soil nitrogen plant maize in monoculture (as a single crop), rather they practiced team planting (also known as multicropping); that is, they grew maize in combination with beans and squash--the traditional “three sisters” garden.

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