托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Cassava in the Caribbean

托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Cassava in the Caribbean

Cassava, also called manioc or yuca, is a woody shrub whose edible, starchy roots were a staple food of the Saladoid people who inhabited islands in the Caribbean Sea (near Central America) from around 500 B.CE to 600 C.E. Cassava is not indigenous to the Caribbean but rather a plant domesticated in Brazil about 4,000 years ago. It was introduced to the islands by Arawakan-speaking people from South America, along with the technologies appropriate to its cultivation, processing, and cooking. It was, in many ways, revolutionary. As the most important food plant introduced intentionally before 1492, cassava represented a new attitude to life in the islands. Rather than hunting and gathering whatever already existed on land and sea, the carrying of cassava to the Caribbean manifested an interest in settling with food sources that were already familiar and offered superior yields. Equally important, it represented a new attitude to the manipulation of the landscape, a willingness to transform natural land and water resources to extract a living. To this extent, the Saladoid people were similar to many migrating agricultural communities. Cassava also possessed specific qualities that made its cultivation and consumption seem to represent a mastery over nature and its hazards. It led the way in making demands on local forests, through the clearing of land for cultivation and the use of wood as fuel and building material. Not only did cassava play a large role in the food culture and food security of the people, but it also facilitated sedentary settlement in many new places, underpinned greater population densities, and enabled the emergence of complex societies.

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

A.significantly

B.deliberately

C.on a large scale

D.successfully

2.According to paragraph 1, cassava cultivation in the Caribbean was revolutionary in part because

A.it made it possible for people to live on the islands for the first time

B.it introduced new thinking about changing the environment to meet human needs

C.it created pressure to increase the yields of foods that already existed on the islands

D.it required the development of new technologies for cultivating, processing, and cooking cassava

3.All of the following are identified in paragraph 1 as ways in which cassava cultivation affected Saladoid people in the islands EXCEPT:

A.It made permanent settlements possible in parts of the island where there were none before.

B.It reduced the demands that people made on the natural environment.

C.It allowed greater numbers of people to live together in an area.

D.It made the development of complex societies possible.

The central role of cassava requires explanation. It is the only staple crop, anywhere in the world, to be highly poisonous. The part of the plant eaten is its starchy roots (tubers) and in the preferred variety of the species, known as bitter cassava, these contain toxic cyanide and must be processed carefully to be made safe for consumption. Both cultivation and processing made heavy demands on labor. ▋The roots had to be peeled with a seashell grated, and then placed in a woven container to squeeze out the poisonous juice using a weight. ▋The juice might then be boiled to make a sauce capable of preserving both plant and animal foods, though the relative absence of land animals made this practice less common in the islands than it had been in South America.▋The pulp was dried and cooked on a buren or griddle (the ceramic remnants of which are common in Saladoid archaeological sites) and formed into large, flat, circular cakes. ▋What cassava had to offer in the face of these hazards and this heavy labor was the ability to tolerate droughts, grow well on soils where other crops would fail, give several high-yield crops from a single planting, and offer excellent storage qualities both in the ground and after processing. The dried cakes could be kept for two or three years and were an important voyaging food, light weight and long-lasting, enabling a canoe to be paddled the many days that the Saladoid people needed to reach the northern islands.

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