首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below. Whatever happened to the Harap
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below. Whatever happened to the Harap
admin
2018-07-28
45
问题
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.
Whatever happened to the Harappan Civilisation?
New research sheds light on the disappearance of an ancient society
A The Harappan Civilisation of ancient Pakistan and India flourished 5,000 years ago, but a thousand years later their cities were abandoned. The Harappan Civilisation was a sophisticated Bronze Age society who built ’megacities’ and traded internationally in luxury craft products, and yet seemed to have left almost no depictions of themselves. But their lack of self-imagery - at a time when the Egyptians were carving and painting representations of themselves all over their temples - is only part of the mystery.
B There is plenty of archaeological evidence to tell us about the rise of the Harappan Civilisation, but relatively little about its fall,’ explains archaeologist Dr Cameron Petrie of the University of Cambridge. ’As populations increased, cities were built that had great baths, craft workshops, palaces and halls laid out in distinct sectors. Houses were arranged in blocks, with wide main streets and narrow alleyways, and many had their own wells and drainage systems. It was very much a "thriving" civilisation.’ Then around 2100 BC, a transformation began. Streets went uncleaned, buildings started to be abandoned, and ritual structures fell out of use. After their final demise, a millennium passed before really large-scale cities appeared once more in South Asia.
C Some have claimed that major glacier-fed rivers changed their course, dramatically affecting the water supply and agriculture; or that the cities could not cope with an increasing population, they exhausted their resource base, the trading economy broke down or they succumbed to invasion and conflict; and yet others that climate change caused an environmental change that affected food and water provision. ’It is unlikely that there was a single cause for the decline of the civilisation. But the fact is, until now, we have had little solid evidence from the area for most of the key elements,’ said Petrie. ’A lot of the archaeological debate has really only been well-argued speculation.’
D A research team led by Petrie, together with Dr Ravindanath Singh of Banaras Hindu University in India, found early in their investigations that many of the archaeological sites were not where they were supposed to be, completely altering understanding of the way that this region was inhabited in the past. When they carried out a survey of how the larger area was settled in relation to sources of water, they found inaccuracies in the published geographic locations of ancient settlements ranging from several hundred metres to many kilometres. They realised that any attempts to use the existing data were likely to be fundamentally flawed. Over the course of several seasons of fieldwork they carried out new surveys, finding an astonishing 198 settlement sites that were previously unknown.
E Now, research published by Dr Yama Dixit and Professor David Hodell, both from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences, has provided the first definitive evidence for climate change affecting the plains of north-western India, where hundreds of Harappan sites are known to have been situated. The researchers gathered shells of Melanoides tuberculata snails from the sediments of an ancient lake and used geochemical analysis as a means of tracing the climate history of the region. ’As today, the major source of water into the lake is likely to have been the summer monsoon,’ says Dixit. ’But we have observed that there was an abrupt change about 4,100 years ago, when the amount of evaporation from the lake exceeded the rainfall - indicative of a drought.’ Hodell adds: ’We estimate that the weakening of the Indian summer monsoon climate lasted about 200 years before recovering to the previous conditions, which we still see today.’
F It has long been thought that other great Bronze Age civilisations also declined at a similar time, with a global-scale climate event being seen as the cause. While it is possible that these local-scale processes were linked, the real archaeological interest lies in understanding the impact of these larger-scale events on different environments and different populations. ’Considering the vast area of the Harappan Civilisation with its variable weather systems,’ explains Singh, ’it is essential that we obtain more climate data from areas close to the two great cities at Mohenjodaro and Harappa and also from the Indian Punjab.’
G Petrie and Singh’s team is now examining archaeological records and trying to understand details of how people led their lives in the region five millennia ago. They are analysing grains cultivated at the time, and trying to work out whether they were grown under extreme conditions of water stress, and whether they were adjusting the combinations of crops they were growing for different weather systems. They are also looking at whether the types of pottery used, and other aspects of their material culture, were distinctive to specific regions or were more similar across larger areas. This gives us insight into the types of interactive networks that the population was involved in, and whether those changed.
H Petrie believes that archaeologists are in a unique position to investigate how past societies responded to environmental and climatic change. ’By investigating responses to environmental pressures and threats, we can learn from the past to engage with the public, and the relevant governmental and administrative bodies, to be more proactive in issues such as the management and administration of water supply, the balance of urban and rural development, and the importance of preserving cultural heritage in the future.’
Questions 27-31
Reading Passage 3 has eight paragraphs, A-H.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
a difference between the Harappan Civilisation and another culture of the same period
选项
答案
A
解析
题目:哈拉帕文明与同时代另一文明的区别。文中提到哈拉帕文明缺乏能够展示自我的形式,而同时代的埃及人用雕刻和绘画将他们存在的证据完好地展示在神殿中。是否存在自我展示的手段即为题干所说的difference,在审题时通过another culture也可知,这一段会出现可与哈拉帕文明进行类比的其他文明,扫读到Egyptians时便会引起注意。因此答案为A。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/q4NO777K
本试题收录于:
雅思阅读题库雅思(IELTS)分类
0
雅思阅读
雅思(IELTS)
相关试题推荐
Afool,especiallyifhehasthemisfortuneofknowinganything,should______itaswellashecan.
Akeyfeatureofquantuminformationscienceistheunderstandingthatgroupsoftwoormorequantumobjectscanhavesta
Whiletheambitiontodrawanimmediateconclusionis______,itisnotnecessarilycorrect,forthesearchforthetruthdepends
Relativismamountstothedenialofanobjectiveworldaboutwhichtrueandfalsestatementscanbemade;thereisnoabs
Relativismamountstothedenialofanobjectiveworldaboutwhichtrueandfalsestatementscanbemade;thereisnoabs
MEETING:MINUTES::
Sendingarobotintospacetogatherinformationiscertainlyaviableoption,Linebutshouldberegardedonlyasthat--anopt
(Thispassagewaswrittenpriorto1950)Wenowknowthatwhatconstitutespracticallyallofmatterisemptyspa
Directions:Eachofthefollowingreadingcomprehensionquestionsisbasedonthecontentofthefollowingpassage.Readthepas
ThispassageisadaptedfromTheAmericanRepublic:Constitution,Tendencies,andDestinybyO.A.Brownson,1866.Thean
随机试题
教师对一些特殊家庭的儿童进行家访属于()
《五代史伶官传序》是一篇史论典范,其作者是
诊断癌的主要依据是
男,57岁,胸骨后阵发性针刺样疼痛2年,近3个月咽下食物哽咽感而来诊。查体见右锁骨上淋巴结肿大。行食管吞钡检查,下列征象有助于确定前述之诊断的是
心脏病患者,下列哪项不宜妊娠
患者,女,45岁。诉头晕,心悸,全身乏力。体查:体温38℃,面色苍白,巩膜轻度黄染,脾脏肋下2cm。血常规:血红蛋白80g/L,网织红细胞12%。如患者为冷抗体型自身免疫溶血性贫血,则抗体类型主要为
凡违法事实确凿,有法定依据,对公民处50元以下罚款,对法人或者其他组织处以1000元以下罚款或警告的行政处罚可适用一般程序。()。
如图所示(单位:mm),图形对x、y轴的惯性积为()。
一个主机有多个IP地址,其中一个地址是192.168.12.11,则它的其他地址可能是()。
FiveCommonMistakesinConversationandTheirSolutionsI.NotlisteningA.Problem:mostpeopledon’tlisten—waiteagerlyf
最新回复
(
0
)