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1、 为了帮助大家高效备考托福， 为大家带来托福 TPO46 阅读 Passage1 原文文本+题目+答案 解析，希望对大家备考有所帮助。 The Origins of Writing It was in Egypt and Mesopotamia(modern-day Iraq)that civilization arose,and it is there that we find the earliest examples of that key feature of civilization,writing.These examples,in the form of inscribed cl
2、ay tablets that date to shortly before 3000 B.C.E.,have been discovered among the archaeological remains of the Sumerians,a gifted people settled in southern Mesopotamia. The Egyptians were not far behind in developing writing,but we cannot follow the history of their writing in detail because they
3、used a perishable writing material.In ancient times the banks of the Nile were lined with papyrus plants,and from the papyrus reeds the Egyptians made a form of paper;it was excellent in quality but,like any paper,fragile.Mesopotamias rivers boasted no such useful reeds,but its land did provide good
4、 clay,and as a consequence the clay tablet became the standard material.Though clumsy and bulky it has a virtue dear to archaeologists:it is durable.Fire,for example,which is death to papyrus paper or other writing materials such as leather and wood,simply bakes it hard,thereby making it even more d
5、urable.So when a conqueror set a Mesopotamian palace ablaze,he helped ensure the survival of any clay tablets in it.Clay,moreover,is cheap,and forming it into tablets is easy,factors that helped the clay tablet become the preferred writing material not only throughout Mesopotamia but far outside it
6、as well,in Syria,Asia Minor,Persia,and even for a while in Crete and Greece.Excavators have unearthed clay tablets in all these lands.In the Near East they remained in use for more than two and a half millennia,and in certain areas they lasted down to the beginning of the common era until finally yi
7、elding,once and for all,to more convenient alternatives. The Sumerians perfected a style of writing suited to clay.This script consists of simple shapes,basically just wedge shapes and lines that could easily be incised in soft clay with a reed or wooden stylus;scholars have dubbed it cuneiform from
8、 the wedge-shaped marks(cunei in Latin)that are its hallmark.Although the ingredients are merely wedges and lines,there are hundreds of combinations of these basic forms that stand for different sounds or words.Learning these complex signs required long training and much practice;inevitably,literacy
9、 was largely limited to a small professional class,the scribes. The Akkadians conquered the Sumerians around the middle of the third millennium B.C.E.,and they took over the various cuneiform signs used for writing Sumerian and gave them sound and word values that fit their own language.A The Babylo
10、nians and Assyrians did the same,and so did peoples in Syria and Asia Minor.B The literature of the Sumerians was treasured throughout the Near East,and long after Sumerian ceased to be spoken,the Babylonians and Assyrians and others kept it alive as a literary language,the way Europeans kept Latin
11、alive after the fall of Rome.C For the scribes of these non-Sumerian languages,training was doubly demanding since they had to know the values of the various cuneiform signs for Sumerian as well as for their own language.D The contents of the earliest clay tablets are simple notations of numbers of
12、commoditiesanimals,jars,baskets,etc.Writing,it would appear,started as a primitive form of bookkeeping.Its use soon widened to document the multitudinous things and acts that are involved in daily life,from simple inventories of commodities to complicated governmental rules and regulations. Archaeol
13、ogists frequently find clay tablets in batches.The batches,some of which contain thousands of tablets,consist for the most part of documents of the types just mentioned:bills,deliveries,receipts,inventories,loans,marriage contracts,divorce settlements,court judgments,and so on.These records of factu
14、al matters were kept in storage to be available for referencethey were,in effect,files,or,to use the term preferred by specialists in the ancient Near East,archives.Now and then these files include pieces of writing that are of a distinctly different order,writings that do not merely record some mat
15、ter of fact but involve creative intellectual activity.They range from simple textbook material to literature and they make an appearance very early,even from the third millennium B.C.E. Paragraph 1 It was in Egypt and Mesopotamia(modern-day Iraq)that civilization arose,and it is there that we find
16、the earliest examples of that key feature of civilization,writing.These examples,in the form of inscribed clay tablets that date to shortly before 3000 B.C.E.,have been discovered among the archaeological remains of the Sumerians,a gifted people settled in southern Mesopotamia. 1.The word“key”in par
17、agraph 1 is closest in meaning to A.frequent B.essential C.original D.familiar Paragraph 2 The Egyptians were not far behind in developing writing,but we cannot follow the history of their writing in detail because they used a perishable writing material.In ancient times the banks of the Nile were l
18、ined with papyrus plants,and from the papyrus reeds the Egyptians made a form of paper;it was excellent in quality but,like any paper,fragile.Mesopotamias rivers boasted no such useful reeds,but its land did provide good clay,and as a consequence the clay tablet became the standard material.Though c
19、lumsy and bulky it has a virtue dear to archaeologists:it is durable.Fire,for example,which is death to papyrus paper or other writing materials such as leather and wood,simply bakes it hard,thereby making it even more durable.So when a conqueror set a Mesopotamian palace ablaze,he helped ensure the
20、 survival of any clay tablets in it.Clay,moreover,is cheap,and forming it into tablets is easy,factors that helped the clay tablet become the preferred writing material not only throughout Mesopotamia but far outside it as well,in Syria,Asia Minor,Persia,and even for a while in Crete and Greece.Exca
21、vators have unearthed clay tablets in all these lands.In the Near East they remained in use for more than two and a half millennia,and in certain areas they lasted down to the beginning of the common era until finally yielding,once and for all,to more convenient alternatives. 2.The word“virtue”in pa
22、ragraph 2 is closest in meaning to A.price B.design C.desirable quality D.physical characteristic 3.Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in the passage?Incorrect choices change the meaning in important ways or leave out essential informati
23、on. A.In part because of its low cost and ease of use,clay became the preferred writing material throughout Mesopotamia and well beyond it B.Clay was cheap throughout Mesopotamia,so clay tablets from Mesopotamia became the preferred writing material as far as the Mediterranean. C.For a while,the day
24、 clay tablet was the preferred writing material in Crete and Greece. D.Moreover,because clay was used as the writing material of choice in Mesopotamia,Syria,Asia Minor,Persia,and the Mediterranean,it was cheap and popular. 4.What can be inferred from paragraph 2 about clay as a writing material? A.I
25、t had to be baked before it could be written on B.Its good points outweighed its bad points. C.Its durability was its most important feature for its users. D.It was not available in Egypt. 5.In paragraph 2,why does the author discuss the Egyptian use of papyrus as a writing material? A.To describe t
26、he superiority of papyrus over leather and wood as a writing material B.To explain why writing in Egypt did not develop as quickly as it did in Mesopotamia C.To explain why archaeologistsknowledge of the early history of writing relies mainly on Sumerian cuneiform D.To explain why the Sumerians pref
27、erred clay tablets for writing over papyrus Paragraph 3 The Sumerians perfected a style of writing suited to clay.This script consists of simple shapes,basically just wedge shapes and lines that could easily be incised in soft clay with a reed or wooden stylus;scholars have dubbed it cuneiform from
28、the wedge-shaped marks(cunei in Latin)that are its hallmark.Although the ingredients are merely wedges and lines,there are hundreds of combinations of these basic forms that stand for different sounds or words.Learning these complex signs required long training and much practice;inevitably,literacy
29、was largely limited to a small professional class,the scribes. 6.According to paragraph 3,all of the following are true of cuneiform writing EXCEPT: A.It was composed of very simple shapes B.It was perfected by the ancient Sumerians. C.It influenced the choice of material on which it was written. D.
30、It was understood by very few Sumerians. Paragraph 4 The Akkadians conquered the Sumerians around the middle of the third millennium B.C.E.,and they took over the various cuneiform signs used for writing Sumerian and gave them sound and word values that fit their own language.A The Babylonians and A
31、ssyrians did the same,and so did peoples in Syria and Asia Minor.B The literature of the Sumerians was treasured throughout the Near East,and long after Sumerian ceased to be spoken,the Babylonians and Assyrians and others kept it alive as a literary language,the way Europeans kept Latin alive after
32、 the fall of Rome.C For the scribes of these non-Sumerian languages,training was doubly demanding since they had to know the values of the various cuneiform signs for Sumerian as well as for their own language.D 7.According to paragraph 4,how did the Akkadians use the Sumerian language? A.They used
33、Sumerian for speaking but used their own national language for writing. B.They used the complex cuneiform signs developed by the Babylonians and Assyrians rather than the Sumerian signs. C.They developed their own cuneiform shapes on clay tablets to replace those used by the Sumerians. D.They assign
34、ed new sound and word values to the signs of Sumerian cuneiform. 8.Paragraph 4 answers all the following questions about Sumerian writing in the period after the Sumerians were conquered EXCEPT: A.Did Sumerian literature continue to be read? B.Did Sumerian continue to be spoken? C.Did scribes compos
35、e new texts in Sumerian? D.Did Sumerian have the same fate as Latin had after the fall of Rome? Paragraph 5 The contents of the earliest clay tablets are simple notations of numbers of commoditiesanimals,jars,baskets,etc.Writing,it would appear,started as a primitive form of bookkeeping.Its use soon
36、 widened to document the multitudinous things and acts that are involved in daily life,from simple inventories of commodities to complicated governmental rules and regulations. 9.The word“document”in the paragraph 5 is closest in meaning to A.include B.influence C.organize D.record 10.According to p
37、aragraph 5,writing was first used for A.simple bookkeeping B.descriptions of daily events C.counting the contents of clay tablets D.government reports Paragraph 6 Archaeologists frequently find clay tablets in batches.The batches,some of which contain thousands of tablets,consist for the most part o
38、f documents of the types just mentioned:bills,deliveries,receipts,inventories,loans,marriage contracts,divorce settlements,court judgments,and so on.These records of factual matters were kept in storage to be available for referencethey were,in effect,files,or,to use the term preferred by specialist
39、s in the ancient Near East,archives.Now and then these files include pieces of writing that are of a distinctly different order,writings that do not merely record some matter of fact but involve creative intellectual activity.They range from simple textbook material to literature and they make an ap
40、pearance very early,even from the third millennium B.C.E. 11.The phrase“Now and then”in paragraph 6 is closest in meaning to A.always B.occasionally C.sooner or later D.first and last 12.According to paragraph 6,large batches of clay writing tablets were stored because the tablets A.were being produ
41、ced quickly and in large quantities B.did not serve any practical purpose for most Mesopotamians C.contained information that needed to be available for future reference D.could not be used again once they had been written on Paragraph 4 The Akkadians conquered the Sumerians around the middle of the
42、 third millennium B.C.E.,and they took over the various cuneiform signs used for writing Sumerian and gave them sound and word values that fit their own language.A The Babylonians and Assyrians did the same,and so did peoples in Syria and Asia Minor.B The literature of the Sumerians was treasured th
43、roughout the Near East,and long after Sumerian ceased to be spoken,the Babylonians and Assyrians and others kept it alive as a literary language,the way Europeans kept Latin alive after the fall of Rome.C For the scribes of these non-Sumerian languages,training was doubly demanding since they had to
44、 know the values of the various cuneiform signs for Sumerian as well as for their own language.D 13.Look at the four squaresthat indicate where the following sentence could be added to the passage. However,the Sumerian language did not entirely disappear. Where would the sentence best fit?Click on a
45、 squareto add the sentence to the passage 14.Directions:An introductory sentence for a brief summary of the passage is provided below.Complete the summary by selecting the THREE answer choices that express the most important ideas in the passage.Some sentences do not belong in the summary because th
46、ey express ideas that are not presented in the passage or are minor ideas in the passage.This question is worth 2 points. Drag your answer choices to the spaces where they belong.To remove an answer choice,click on it. To review the passage,click VIEW TEXT The earliest examples of writing have been
47、found in Mesopotamia and date to shortly before 3000 B.C.E. Answer Choices A.Writing was invented in the same areas in which civilization began by the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia,Asia Minor and the Mediterranean. B.The development of cuneiform is known because it was written on a long-lasti
48、ng material and because it was long and widely used throughout the ancient Near East. C.Cuneiform tablets generally dealt with business and factual matters,but other topics,including literature,were also recorded and valued. D.Writing was developed first by the Sumerians using wedge shaped marks(cun
49、eiform)on clay tablets and then by the Egyptians using papyrus paper. E.Scribes using cuneiform in Assyria,Babylon,Syria and Asia Minor had to learn all the languages that used the cuneiform script. F.Batches of clay tablets,sometimes with as many as a thousand tablets each,are often found by archaeologists. 译文： 书写的起源 在埃及和美索不达米亚平原(现今的伊拉克)产生了文明，也正是在这里，我们发现了文 明的关键性特征文字的最早证据。 这些证据出自苏美尔人(定居于美索不达米亚南部 地区的比较聪明的民族)的考古遗迹中， 以泥板文书的形式存在， 可追溯到公元前 3000 年前。 埃及产生文字的时间和上述时间接近，但是我们不能很细致地研究埃及文字的历史，因 为埃及人使用一种比较容易老化的记录文字的材料。在古代，尼罗河的两岸生长着纸莎草， 埃及人将纸莎草杆制成了一种纸;它的质量很好，但是就像所有的纸张一样，易碎易坏。美索 不达