2014年5月24日托福阅读考试机经2014年5月24日托福阅读考试机经.doc

2014年5月24日托福阅读考试机经 南京环球雅思 考试日期：2014年5月24日 Reading Passage 1 Title: 苏美尔人 Question types: 文章内容回顾： 主题：历史文化类话题 本文讲述了苏美尔文明。苏美尔人的居住地土壤贫瘠，但是每年的洪水泛滥留下了肥沃的淤泥用来耕作，繁荣来自农业生产力的提高。由此产生了统治阶级，后来统治阶级组织农民工作，但是S地区除了农业再无其他优势，所以要开展贸易。他们的生活都是围绕temple展开，而统治阶层为了记录管理情况逐渐发明楔形文字。 难度分析： 苏美尔文明是托福常考的古代文明之一，阅读量较大的同学应该对这一背景和题材并不陌生。考生要善于抓住历史演进的主线，把握文明发展的进程，特别注意细节题的一一对应。 相关背景内容： Sumer was the southernmost region of ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq and Kuwait) which is generally considered the cradle of civilization. The name comes from Akkadian, the language of the north of Mesopotamia, and means “land of the civilized kings”. The Sumerians called themselves “the black headed people” and their land, in cuneiform script, was simply “the land” or “the land of the black headed people”. In the biblical Book of Genesis Sumer is known as Shinar. According to the Sumerian King List, when the gods first gave human beings the gifts necessary for cultivating society, they did so by establishing the city of Eridu in the region of Sumer. While the Sumerian city of Uruk is held to be the oldest city in the world, the ancient Mesopotamians believed that it was Eridu and that it was here that order was established and civilization began. The Ubaid Period The region of Sumer was long thought to have been first inhabited around 4500 BCE. This date has been contested in recent years, however, and it now thought that human activity in the area began much earlier. The first settlers were not Sumerians but a people of unknown origin whom archaeologists have termed the Ubaid people (from the excavated mound of al-Ubaid where the artifacts were uncovered which first attested to their existence) or the Proto-Euphrateans (which designates them as earlier inhabitants of the region of the Euphrates River). Whoever these people were, they had already moved from a hunter-gatherer society to an agrarian one prior to 5000 BCE. Excavations from al-Ubaid and other sites throughout southern Iraq have uncovered ston