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What is the lecture mainly about? [br] According to the professor, why was the a
What is the lecture mainly about? [br] According to the professor, why was the a
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2024-01-02
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问题
What is the lecture mainly about? [br] According to the professor, why was the archeological evidence found in New Guinea during the 1960s and 1970s inconclusive? Choose 2 answers.
Listen to part of a lecture in an anthropology class.
Professor:
We are aware that early agriculture arose independently in several regions of the world, for example, the Middle East, China, Southeast Asia, and parts of the Americas, roughly 10,000 years ago. And then agriculture spread from those areas to the rest of the world.
Now, some archeologists hypothesize that agriculture also developed independently in New Guinea. Up here, you can see a huge island on this map located in the Southwest Pacific, north of Australia. So, for many years, it was considered that New Guinea domesticated crops and animals introduced from Southeast Asia about 3,500 years ago. Then, in the 1960s and 70s, researchers explored sites in the island hoping to find some evidence of independent agriculture development. Unfortunately, though, the research was unsuccessful to gather some conclusive evidence to support their speculation. For example, although evidence was found in deforestation, which is from at least 7,000 years ago—that is long before we’ve thought previously—it was unclear whether the forest had been cleared by farmers to plant crops or by hunter-gatherers to hunt more easily. And most plant remains, like seeds and fruits don’t preserve well in swampy grounds. You know, New Guinea has a very humid environment. So, really the proof was limited.
But, recently, a group of archeologists have come up with some pretty convincing support from a site that had been previously examined: Kuk swamp. As its name implies, it is located on a wetland margin, in the upper Wahgi Valley of the New Guinea highlands. On the basis of their findings, they identified a succession of phases of agriculture development in the wetland and it actually predated the earliest known agricultural influence from Southeast Asia.
By using a modern archeological method, they were able to analyze the sediment samples from each layer of the earth at the site in Kuk. From the oldest soil layer, dating back to 9,000 years ago, they found some features such as pits, postholes and irrigation draining ditches which provide evidence for very early phase of agriculture. That is, these all indicate that crops were being planted. From a higher layer of soil, the second phase, they identified regularly distributed mounds. Mounds were constructed in order to plant crops that don’t grow well in wet soil, such as bananas. Because remember, Kuk is a swampy wetland, and bananas can’t, tolerate the conditions there. And in the layer from Kuk’s third phase, an extensive network of ditches and drainage channels have been found. They were excellent examples of transformation of agricultural practices.
Since the archeologists had more advanced techniques than were available from earlier researchers, the archeologists also were able to identify microfossils in the soil from banana plants, and also grains of starch from taro dating from about 10,000 years ago. It was really significant to find taro remains because it meant that it must have been planted there, brought from the low areas, because taro doesn’t ordinarily grow in the high lands. When it comes to the bananas, in sediment samples dating back from 7,000 years ago, researchers also found a high percentage of fossils from banana plants. This proved that bananas were deliberately planted because where bananas grow naturally, the concentration of the plant fossil is lower. Bananas don’t naturally grow so densely. As a matter of fact, recent genetic comparison research suggests that the type of banana grown in New Guinea was domesticated there, and then brought to South East Asia.
Well, usually, we expect to see certain social changes brought about by the development of agriculture, structural changes in the society like… rapid population surges, and different social classes. But New Guinea? It’s largely unchanged. It remained an egalitarian society. So, what does that tell us about the usual presumption?
选项
A、Construction of agricultural drainage ditches had damaged much of the archeological evidence.
B、Plant remains were not well preserved in the climate of New Guinea.
C、Ancient types of domestic plants were no longer grown by modern farmers.
D、It was unclear whether evidence of early deforestation suggested planting or hunting.
答案
B,D
解析
题目询问20世纪60、70年代在新几内亚发现的考古证据无法得出定论的原因,在讲座中,教授举了一些例子来说明原因:在7,000多年前发生的森林砍伐中发现了证据,但不清楚是农民为了种植作物而砍伐森林,还是狩猎采集者为了更方便狩猎而为之,这对应D项;随后,教授又说,大多数植物残体都没办法在沼泽地带被很好地保存,因为新几内亚非常潮湿,对应B项,因此,本题选B、D两项。A项“建造农业排水沟渠破坏了许多考古证据”中的drainage ditches是后来发现的遗迹,是能证明新几内亚有独立发展农业的有力证据,A项的表述是将个别词胡乱拼凑的干扰项。C项“现代农民不再种植古代的家庭作物”在讲座中没有被提及。
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