托福阅读真题Official 46 Passage 1（二）

托福阅读真题Official 46 Passage 1（二）

The Origin 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 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.

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 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.Mesopotamia’s 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 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 durable.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 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 yielding,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 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 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.The Babylonians and Assyrians did the same,and so did peoples in Syria and Asia Minor.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 the fall of Rome.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.

The contents of the earliest clay tablets are simple notations of numbers of commodities—animals,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.

Archaeologists 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 factual matters were kept in storage to be available for reference—they 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 matter 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.

Question 3 of 14

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.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 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.

正确答案：A

题目详解

题型分析：简化句子题

原文分析：原文中的句子首先强调了clay的几个特性：1.cheap便宜；2.Forming...easy...易塑形。然后再说，所以，clay才不仅仅在Mesopotamia地区，在其他地方也得到了广泛的应用。

选项分析：

A选项包含1、2两个特性，且符合原文的因果逻辑关系，故为正确选项。

B选项丢失了clay的第2个特性。

C选项丢失了clay的1、2两个特性，只有“果”没有“因”，且原文的逻辑关系没有说明。

D选项因果逻辑关系颠倒。

Question 4 of 14

What can be inferred from paragraph 2 about clay as a writing material?

A.It 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.

正确答案：B

题目详解

题型分类：推论题

原文定位：原文当中从第三句Mesopotamia’s rivers boasted no such...开始都在讲clay作文书写材料的特点，后面的语段和例子都在谈论这些特点。

选项分析：

第二段的第四句：Though clumsy and bulky it has a virtue dear to archaeologists:it is durable.这个让步转折的句子，说明了尽管clay比较笨重，但是具有很耐用的有点。且第七句中又强调了clay具有便宜cheap，易塑形forming...easy的特点。因此我们可以看出原文中clay作为书写材料，它的优点要比缺点多，因此选项B为正确选项。

A选项张冠李戴，原文说clay经过火烧会更坚硬，更耐用，和书写并没有任何关系。

C选项无中生有，原文并没有提及哪一个特性是clay最重要的。

D选项无中生有，原文未提及clay和埃及的关系。