2015年1月10日托福阅读真题P2+题目+答案：Disease and History

2015年1月10日托福阅读真题P2+题目+答案：Disease and History

What is the relationship between disease and the evolution of human societies?

Epidemiology is the study of the causes, distribution, and control of diseases in populations. Throughout history, there have been general trends in the relationship between diseases and the human species. Anthropologist George Armelogos has outlined these trends and refers to them as three “epidemiological transitions.”

For most of our species’ history, we lived in small, widely dispersed, nomadic groups. Our ancestors certainly experienced diseases of various sorts and would have come into contact with new diseases as they migrated to new environments. But infectious disease may not have had serious effects on large numbers of people or many different populations, since diseases would have had little chance of being passed on to many other humans.

1. The word “dispersed” in the passage is closet in meaning to

A.active

B.scattered

C.varied

D.linked

2 According to paragraph 2, why were infectious diseases not a serious problem for most of human history?

A.There were very few infectious diseases early in human history.

B.Population groups did not move around enough to be exposed to new diseases.

C.Many disease-causing organisms had features that made them difficult to pass on to other humans.

D.Population groups did not have enough contact with each other to spread diseases widely.

When some people began to settle down and produce their food through farming and animal domestication—starting about 10,000 years ago—the first epidemiological transition occurred. Infectious diseases increased in impact, as larger and denser concentrations of people provided greater opportunity for disease to be passed from host to host. Animal domestication may have brought people into contact with new diseases previously limited to other species. Working the soil would have exposed farmers to insects and other pathogens. Irrigation in some areas provided breeding places for mosquitoes, increasing the incidence of malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases. Sanitation problems caused by larger, more sedentary populations would have helped transmit diseases in human waste, as would the use of animal dung for fertilizer. In addition, agriculture also led to a narrowing of food sources, as compared to the varied diets of hunters and gatherers. This could have resulted in nutritional deficiencies; moreover, the storage of food surpluses attracted new disease carriers such as insects and rats. Trade between settled communities helped spread diseases over large geographic areas, as in the case of the Black Death in Europe. Epidemics, in the sense of diseases that affect a large number of populations at the same time, were essentially nonexistent until the development of agricultural economies.

3. The word “deficiencies” in the passage is closet in meaning to

A.complications

B.illnesses

C.shortages

D.irregularities

4. According to paragraph 3, which of the following contributed to the use of epidemics?

A.The development of more deadly forms of human disease

B.The spread of ineffective treatments for infectious disease

C.The spread of mosquito-borne diseases to other disease carriers

D.The practice of exchanging goods between settled areas

5. Which of the following is NOT mentioned in paragraph 3 as a reason that agriculture led to greater exposure to disease?

A.Irrigation created areas where disease-carrying mosquitoes could reproduce.

B.People increasingly came into contact with disease-carrying animals attracted to food storage areas.

C.Agricultural products spoiled more readily, leading to more frequent episodes of disease.

D.Farming exposed humans to disease-carrying insects in the soil.

6. According to paragraph 3, how did sanitation problems in early farming societies lead to the spread of infectious diseases?

A.Water used for irrigation crops was not always clean.

B.Larger populations were increasingly exposed to human and animal waste.

C.Farm products that spoiled in fields attracted insects and animals with diseases.

D.Lack of varied food sources occasionally forced communities to eat food that carried diseases.

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