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  3. Next to its sheer size, the profound isolation of its many small islands

Next to its sheer size, the profound isolation of its many small islands

游客2024-01-05  14
问题         Next to its sheer size, the profound isolation of its many small islands is the most
    distinctive feature of the Pacific Ocean. Over 25,000 islands are scattered across the
    surface of the Pacific, more than in all the other oceans combined, but their land area
    adds up to little more than 125,000 square kilometers, about the size of New York State,
5   and their inhabitants total less than two million people, about a quarter of the number that
    live in New York City. The oceanic islands of the Pacific are some of the most isolated
    places on Earth. Many are uninhabitable, by virtue of their small size and particular
    characteristics, but even the most favored are very isolated fragments of land, strictly
    circumscribed by the ocean, strictly limited in terms of the numbers of people they can
10  support. This basic fact of environmental circumstance has been the most pervasive
    influence in determining the social arrangements, and cultural practices of the people that
    settled in the Pacific Islands.
        The peopling of the Pacific Islands has been described as the greatest feat of maritime
    colonization in human history. Contrary to the conclusions of Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki
15  expedition of 1946, the evidence of plant dispersal, archaeology, linguistics, and genetics
    now shows quite conclusively that the Pacific Islands were not populated from tile east by
    South Americans who drifted on balsa-wood rafts and the prevailing wind and current, but
    from the west, by groups from mainland Asia who gradually spread from island to island
    out into the Pacific. The process began over 40,000 years ago and reached Easter Island
20  the most isolated place on Earth-about 1.500 years ago. It ended about 1,000 years ago,
    when people first settled in Hawaii and New Zealand.
        Simply surviving those ocean crossings of indeterminate length, in open canoes, to
    arrive on the shores of uninhabited and hitherto unknown islands, was a formidable
    achievement. But having found an oasis of land in a watery wilderness, crossed its reef,
25  and landed, on its shores, the survivors then faced a series of pressing problems for which
    solutions had to be found quickly if the small group was to become a vigorous, self-
    sustaining island population.
选项 A、widely known
B、usually estimated
C、rarely inhabited
D、irregularly distributed
答案 D
解析
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