2015年6月13日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Olmec Art

2015年6月13日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Olmec Art

1. The earliest Mesoamerican art and architecture to combine ideological complexity, craft, and permanence was that of the Olmecs, whose civilization flourished between about 1500 B.C. and 100 B.C. The early Olmecs established major ceremonial centers along the rich lowlands of the modern Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco. At distant Teopantecuanitlan, the Olmecs established a sacred precinct, the first monumental evidence of the Olmecs in the highlands. But the Olmecs had an advanced social and economic system, with networks for commerce extending far to the west and south. The fertile gulf plain probably allowed for an agricultural surplus, controlled by only a handful of individuals. From the art and architecture of their ceremonial centers (we know too little about Olmec domestic life to call their sites cities), it is clear that for the Olmecs, social stratification was sufficiently advanced for their society to place great importance on the records of specific individuals, particularly in the form of colossal heads (enormous stone sculptures of human heads and faces).

2. Long before modern radiocarbon dating testified to the antiquity of this culture, archaeologists and art historians had become aware of the power of Olmec art through individual objects. Some even identified the Olmec culture as the oldest of Mesoamerican civilizations, perhaps a mother culture from which all others derived, as the art historian Miguel Covarrubias once thought. Eventually the antiquity of Olmec culture was confirmed, and today many important elements of Mesoamerican art and architecture can be seen to have had a probable Olmec origin: ball courts, pyramids, portraiture, and mirrors. Some later Mesoamerican deities probably derive from Olmec gods, and even the famous Maya calendar was already in use by peoples in the Olmec area at the dawn of Maya civilization.

3. One of the first important Olmec objects to come to modern attention was the Kunz axe, acquired in the 1860s in Oaxaca, Mexico. The ceremonial axe puzzled and intrigued investigators for years because on the one hand, it was clearly neither Aztec nor Maya, the best-known ancient Mesoamerican cultures, and in fact it had no features that could be linked with any known civilization, while on the other hand, it had surely been made in Mesoamerica in antiquity.

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托福阅读真题题目：

1..The word that in the passage refers to

A. Mesoamerican art and architecture

B. the ideological complexity, craft, and permanence

C. the earliest civilization

D. the permanent art and architecture

2..The word surplus in the passage is closest in meaning to

A. advantage

B. excess quantity

C. system

D. supply

3..According to paragraph 1, which of the following is true about the ceremonial centers established by the Olmecs

A. The centers served as the burial places of ancient Olmec rulers.

B. The inhabitants of each center had little or no contact with those in other centers.

C. The centers featured major works of art and architecture that were made to last.

D. The first and most important centers were built in the highlands.

4..Paragraph 1 supports which of the following ideas about Olmec society

A. Major artists and successful traders had roughly equal status.

B. The most important members of Olmec society resided in the highlands.

C. More people were engaged in producing monumental works of art than were engaged in agriculture.

D. There was a well developed social structure in which some individuals held more power than others.

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