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Passage 1

TopicSumerian Contribution(重复机经2014.5.24-2014.12.28-)

Content Review

Paragraph 1： B efore about 4500 B.C., lower Mesopotamia, the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers just north of the Persian Gulf, was much less densely populated than other inhabited regions of the Near and Middle East. Its marshy soil, subject to annual inundations floods from the rivers, was not suited to the primitive hoe culture of early agriculture, in which land was cultivated without domestic animals or beasts. Moreover, the land was virtually treeless and lacked building stone and mineral resources. During the next thousand years, however, this unpromising area became the seat of Sumer, the first great civilization known to history, with large concentrations of people, bustling cities, monumental architecture, and a wealth of religious, artistic, and literary traditions that influenced other ancient civilizations for thousands of years. The exact sequence of events that led to this culmination is unknown, but it is clear that the economic basis of this first civilization lay in its highly productive agriculture.

Paragraph 2: The natural fertility of the rich black soil was renewed annually by the silt left from the spring floods of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Harnessing its full productive power, however, required an elaborate system of drainage and irrigation, which in turn required a large and well-disciplined workforce as well as skilled management and supervision. The latter were supplied by a class of priests and warriors who ruled a large population of peasants and artisans. Through taxation and other means the rulers extracted wealth from the population and then used it to construct temples and other public buildings and to create works of art. That gave them or some of them the leisure to perfect the other refinements of civilization.

Passage 2

TopicStone Tools and Pottery Fragments(重复机经2014.11.19)

Content Review

Aside from ancient buildings, in sheer bulk the largest part of the archaeological record is made up of stone tools and pottery fragments (shards). Stone tools are the earliest known artifacts, having been first used more than two million years ago, and they have remained in use to the present day. When a chunk of fine-grain stone is struck with sufficient force at the proper angle with another rock or with a wood or bone baton, a shock wave will pass through the stone and detach a flake of the desired size and shape. In analyzing ancient stone tools, many archaeologists have mastered the skills needed to make stone tools themselves. Few things are sharper than a fragment struck from fine-grain flint or from obsidian (volcanic glass). Obsidian is so fine grained that flakes of it can have edges only about twenty molecules thick—hundreds of times thinner than steel tools.

Through experimentation, some archaeologists are able to produce copies of almost every stone tool type used in antiquity. A common research strategy is to make flint tools, use them to cut up meat, saw wood, clean hides, bore holes, etc, and then compare the resulting wear traces with the marks found on ancient artifacts. Sometimes electron-scanning microscopes are used to study minute variations in these use marks. Some rough correspondence can be found between the types of uses and the characteristics of wear marks, but there are many ambiguities.

Passage 3

TopicThe Origins of plant animal domestication(重复机经2015.1.25)

Content Review

Paragraph 1: The emergence of plant and animal domestication represented a monumental change in the ways that humans interacted with Earth’s resources: the rate at which Earth’s surface was modified and the rates of human population growth. The development of agriculture was accompanied by fundamental changes in the organization on human society: disparities in wealth, hierarchies of power, and urbanization.

Paragraph 2: Phrases like “plant and animal domestication” and “the invention of agriculture” create the impression that humans made the transition to cultivating plants and tending animals rather abruptly, maybe with a flash of insight. Most scholars don’t think so. It seems more likely that humans used and manipulated wild plants and animals for many hundreds of thousands of years. The transition to gardens, fields, and pastures was probably gradual, the natural outgrowth of a long familiarity with the environmental requirements, growth cycles, and reproductive mechanisms of whatever plants and animals humans liked to eat, ride, or wear.

Passage 4

TopicThe plow and the horse in medieval Europe

Content Review

Paragraph 1: One of the most important factors driving Europe’s slow emergence from the economic stagnation of the Early Middle Ages (circa 500-1000 B.C.E.) was the improvement of agricultural technology. One innovation was a new plow, with a curved attachment (moldboard) to turn over wet, heavy soils, and a knife (or coulter) in front of the blade to allow a deeper and easier cut. This more complex plow replaced the simpler “scratch” plow that merely made a shallow, straight furrow in the ground. In the lands around the Mediterranean, with light rains and mild winters, this had been fine, but in the wetter terrain north and west of the Danube and the Alps, such a plow left much to be desired, and it is to be wondered if it was used at all. Cleared lands would more likely have been worked by hand tilling, with little direct help from animals, and the vast forests natural to Northern Europe remained either untouched, or perhaps cleared in small sections by fire, and the land probably used only so long as the ash-enriched soil yielded good crops and then abandoned for some other similarly cleared field. Such a pattern of agriculture and settlement was no basis for sustained cultural or economic life.

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

A. instability

B. lack of growth

C. dependence on others

D. decline

2. According to paragraph 1, what was the main advantage of the new plow over the scratch plow?

A. The new plow created straighter rows.

B. The new plow was easier for animals to pull.

C. The new plow could dig deeper into the soil.

D. The new plow was easier to make

Passage 5

TopicThe Farming and Pastorium in Africa

Content Review

段，人们主要靠hunting和gathering维生，stone age开始人们开始planting, domesticating animals

第二段，在农业方面，人们最开始只是去保护一些野生植物，只有当人们开 始种植一些适应能力强的植物，真正的种植才开始。畜养动物也是一样，人们最开始保护一些野生动物，后来开始真正驯养

第三段，种植使得人们的生活更加稳定，种植后的作物也可以提供额外的食物，可以供养孩子，另外孩子多劳动力也就多了

第四段，生活稳定后，人们就会建造更多固定的住所，比如会造石屋。这使得工具种类越来越多，也衍生出来一些不参与到农业中的职业，比如牧师。另外人们还制造出来各种pottery，对目前的考古学相当重要

第五段，农业的改变产生了比较重大的社会影响。社群中人们需要更好的合作协调

第六段，农业发展也带来的不好的方面，使得贫富差距更加大，那些控制生产的人更加富有

第七段，农业发展不仅对农业有好处对于herding也有好处。牛可以产牛奶，自然灾害时还可以作为肉吃，而且迁徙过程中，动物还可以carry things around

词汇题：

1，implication=consequently

2.perpetually=constantly

3，suitably=adequately

4.remnant=remain

Passage 6

TopicIndustrial Revolution In Britain

Content Review

工业革命率先在英国发生，因为森林被开垦成farm了，coal更便宜大家都开始用coal取暖。然后英国开始出口，然后coal在地表的用完了，挖煤不容易，因为有groundwater什么的，为了开采发明了一个机器(蒸汽机的前身)，好像讲了好处在glass制造方面等等，还说了蒸汽机一开始很浪费被瓦特改进以后很大程度上推动纺织业发展，spin wheel转的快了，loom也不用人了。