2015年1月25日托福阅读真题P1+题目+答案：The Origins of Plant and Animal Domestication

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.

1. The word “monumental” in the passage is closet in meaning to

A.innovative

B.surprising

C.complex

D.enormous

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.

2. According to paragraph 2, phrases such as “plant and animal domestication” and “the invention of agriculture” encourage which of the following wrong ideas?

A Early farmers were fairly advanced in their knowledge of plants and animals.

B Agriculture and animal domestication arose as a result of systematic study and experimentation.

C The change from hunting and gathering to farming and raising animals occurred quickly.

D Early efforts to raise plants and animals were generally successful.

3. The word “manipulated” in the passage is closet in meaning to

A observed

B consumed

C skillfully used

D protected

4. 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 information.

A The change to land cultivation was a slow process because humans were familiar with the needs of relatively few plants and animals.

B The cultivation of land occurred gradually as it was the product of extensive human experience observing plants and animals of value to humans.

C Gardens, fields, and pastures were outgrowths of the desire for plants and animals that humans knew from long familiarity were good to eat, wear, or ride.

D. People learned about environmental requirements, growth cycles, and reproductive mechanisms through their long familiarity with plants and animals that they liked to eat,ride, and wear.

For years, scholars argued that the practices of cultivation and animal domestication were invented in one or two locations on Earth and then diffused from those centers of innovation. Genetic studies are now showing that many different groups of people in many different places around the globe learned independently to create especially useful plants and animals through selective breeding. Probably both independent invention and diffusion played a role in agricultural innovation. Sometimes the ideas of domestication and cultivation were relayed to new places. In other cases the farmers or herders themselves moved into new zones, taking agriculture or improvements such as new tools or new methods or new plants and animals with them.

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