2021年12月18日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：The Agricultural Revolution

2021年12月18日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：The Agricultural Revolution

During a relatively warm climatic period between 8000 and 6000 B.C.. humans on the fringes of Mesopotamia began to shift from a hunting-gathering existence and started to control the animals and plants they would eat, thus initiating the Agricultural (or Neolithic Revolution. That it was a revolution there can be no dispute. It transformed the way human beings lived and shattered a tradition over two million years old. However, why the Agricultural Revolution occurred at this precise time is still largely a matter of conjecture. Why. for instance, did it not occur during one of the earlier interglacial periods (intervals of relatively warm climate that occurred periodically between ice ages over millions of years) when, presumably, the same conditions prevailed? It is difficult to find any uniformly satisfying answers. We know that agriculture developed more or less simultaneously in many different parts of the globe, so it is unlikely that it resulted from any single cause such as climatic change or population growth, although both have been offered as explanations. We also know that the move to agriculture was not always permanently successful. In some places it was tried for a while and then abandoned. It is even possible that certain plants and animals were domesticated more than once and by different peoples

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

O consistently

O logically

O permanently

O truly

2.Paragraph 1 supports which of the following statements about the hunting-gathering way of life?

O Humans practiced it for more than two million years.

O It was most successful during relatively warm periods

O It was first replaced by agriculture during an ice age.

O It made significant population growth impossible

Most modern explanations of the origins of agriculture tend to emphasize the role of microenvironments and long-standing human-plant and human-animal relationships. Such factors as changing climatic conditions, the presence of animals and plants that offered good potential for domestication, and the cultural and technological levels of achievement of the human populations present undoubtedly played important roles in the development of agriculture.

3.According to paragraph 2. all of the following have been proposed as contributing to the Agricultural Revolution EXCEPT

O cultural diversity within human populations

O human relationships with plants and animals

O changing environmental conditions

O availability of plants and animals suitable for domestication

The key to understanding agriculture is the process known as domestication. Domestication was the essential technological breakthrough that allowed human beings to escape the age-old system of hunting and gathering and to control the production of food. rather than being at the mercy of what sustenance the terrain might offer at any given moment.

Domestication can be defined as a primitive form of genetic engineering in which certain plants and animals are brought under human control, their objectionable characteristics eliminated. their favorable ones enhanced. and in the case of animals. inducing them to reproduce in captivity. If wild animals cannot be induced to breed in captivity, they cannot be domesticated. Modern domesticated cattle, sheep, and pigs, for example, look only remotely like their leaner. meaner, and faster-moving ancestors. Domestication is best viewed as the creation of an artificial environment in which the chosen plants or animals come to exist exclusively. Left alone, domesticated species either die or revert to their original wild forms. Because herds. farms, orchards. and gardens are permanent, static entities, once they came into being, the old hunting-gathering forms of social organization had to be replaced

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