托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Jomon Pottery

托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Jomon Pottery

The oldest known pottery in the world comes from Japan, and is known as Jomon, which means "cord marks, after its typical decorations made by impressing cords into the wet clay. The earliest Jomon pottery is dated to around 14,000 B.C., considerably earlier than any pottery produced in Europe and western Asia, the earliest of which dates to approximately 8,000 B.C. The oldest known pottery in the world comes from Japan, and is known as Jomon, which means "cord marks", after its typical decorations made by impressing cords into the wet clay. The earliest Jomon pottery is dated to around 14,000 B.C., considerably earlier than any pottery produced in Europe and western Asia, the earliest of which dates to approximately 8,000 B.C.

Why should the Jomon people have been so inventive? Why were they making pottery so much earlier than anywhere else in the world? Only pottery from China comes remotely close to it in date, and there it is explained by the requirements of rice cultivation. Melvin Aikens, an authority on the Jomon period, believes that Japanese pottery was invented to cook and store the produce of the thick broad-leaved woodlands that had already covered Kyushu, Japan's southernmost main island, by 13,000 B.C. The relationship is evident, he argues, from the simultaneous spread of broad-leaved woodlands and pottery into the northern islands of Japan, both appearing on the northernmost island of Hokkaido at around 7,000 B.C.

1.Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in the passage? Incorrect choices change the meaning in important ways or leave out essential information.

O Aikens argues that his view is proved by the fact that broad-leaved woodlands spread quickly into the northern islands.

O Aikens argues that his theory is supported by the fact that pottery and broad-leaved woodlands arrived at the same time in the northern islands.

O Aikens argues that the northern islands did not have pottery until after broad-leaved woodlands arrived there around 7,000 B.C.

O Aikens argues that the relationship between pottery and broad-leaved woodlands was most evident in Hokkaido, where pottery appeared around 7,000 B.C

There are,however, two problems with this idea. First, there is no necessity for hunter-gatherers to have pottery when living in wooded environments-the inhabitants of other villages of this era, such as Ain Mallaha in western Asia at 12,500 B.C. and Star Carr in northern Europe at 9, 500 B.C., flourished by relying entirely on vessels made from bark, skins, wood, and stone. Rottery no doubt made life easier for those who did the cooking in the woodlands of Kyushu, and we know from food residues that pottery vessels had indeed been used to make vegetable, meat, and fish stews. But people could have easily survived without such vessels.

2.Which of the following is mentioned in paragraph 3 as contradicting the idea that Jomon pottery was invented for cooking?

O The discovery that people in northern Europe and western Asia invented pottery for purposes of decoration

O The use of non-pottery vessels for essential activities by people living in woodlands outside of Japan at the same time as the Jomon period

O The absence of any remains of food in pottery vessels found in Jomon woodlands

O The ease with which the Jomon people living in woodlands were able to survive without cooking certain kinds of food

A second problem for Aikens' theory arose in 1999 when a new sample of pottery was found in northern Honshu(Japan's largest island). Radiocarbon dates on the residues stuck to the interior of the pot dated to 14, 500 B.C., pushing back the origin of pottery by at least another thousand years. At this date Honshu would have had no more than a sparse covering of pine trees. And so the theory that Japanese pottery was invented to store and cook the produce of broad-leaved woodlands cannot be correct.

3.The word “sparse” in the passage is closest in meaning to

O easily removed

O ineffective

O ordinary

O thinly distributed

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