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  劍橋雅思11Test2閱讀原文READING PASSAGE 2

  What destroyed the civilisation of Easter Island?

  A Easter Island, or Rapu Nui as it is known locally, is home to several hundred ancient human statues ?— the moai. After this remote Pacific island was settled by the Polynesians, it remained isolated for centuries. All the energy and resources that went into the moai — some of which are ten metres tall and weigh over 7,000 kilos — came from the island itself. Yet when Dutch explorers landed in 1722, they met a Stone Age culture. The moai were carved with stone tools, then transported for many kilometres, without the use of animals or wheels, to massive stone platforms. The identity of the moai builders was in doubt until well into the twentieth century. Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer, thought the statues had been created by pre-lnca peoples from Peru. Bestselling Swiss author Erich von Daniken believed they were built by stranded extraterrestrials. Modern science — linguistic, archaeological and genetic evidence — has definitively proved the moai builders were Polynesians, but not how they moved their creations. Local folklore maintains that the statues walked, while researchers have tended to assume the ancestors dragged the statues somehow, using ropes and logs.

  B When the Europeans arrived, Rapa Nui was grassland, with only a few scrawny trees. In the 1970s and 1980s, though, researchers found pollen preserved in lake sediments, which proved the island had been covered in lush palm forests for thousands of years. Only after the Polynesians arrived did those forests disappear. US scientist Jared Diamond believes that the Rapanui people — descendants of Polynesian settlers — wrecked their own environment. They had unfortunately settled on an extremely fragile island — dry, cool, and too remote to be properly fertilised by windblown volcanic ash. When the islanders cleared the forests for firewood and farming, the forests didn’t grow back. As trees became scarce and they could no longer construct wooden canoes for fishing, they ate birds. Soil erosion decreased their crop yields. Before Europeans arrived, the Rapanui had descended into civil war and cannibalism, he maintains. The collapse of their isolated civilisation, Diamond writes, is a ‘worst-case scenario for what may lie ahead of us in our own future’.

  C The moai, he thinks, accelerated the self-destruction. Diamond interprets them as power displays by rival chieftains who, trapped on a remote little island, lacked other ways of asserting their dominance. They competed by building ever bigger figures. Diamond thinks they laid the moai on wooden sledges, hauled over log rails, but that required both a lot of wood and a lot of people. To feed the people, even more land had to be cleared. When the wood was gone and civil war began, the islanders began toppling the moai. By the nineteenth century none were standing.

  D Archaeologists Terry Hunt of the University of Hawaii and Carl Lipo of California State University agree that Easter Island lost its lush forests and that it was an ‘ecological catastrophe’ — but they believe the islanders themselves weren’t to blame. And the moai certainly weren’t. Archaeological excavations indicate that the Rapanui went to heroic efforts to protect the resources of their wind-lashed, infertile fields. They built thousands of circular stone windbreaks and gardened inside them, and used broken volcanic rocks to keep the soil moist. In short, Hunt and Lipo argue, the prehistoric Rapanui were pioneers of sustainable farming.

  E Hunt and Lipo contend that moai-building was an activity that helped keep the peace between islanders. They also believe that moving the moai required few people and no wood, because they were walked upright. On that issue, Hunt and Lipo say, archaeological evidence backs up Rapanui folklore. Recent experiments indicate that as few as 18 people could, with three strong ropes and a bit of practice, easily manoeuvre a 1,000 kg moai replica a few hundred metres. The figures’ fat bellies tilted them forward, and a D-shaped base allowed handlers to roll and rock them side to side.

  F Moreover, Hunt and Lipo are convinced that the settlers were not wholly responsible for the loss of the island’s trees. Archaeological finds of nuts from the extinct Easter Island palm show tiny grooves, made by the teeth of Polynesian rats. The rats arrived along with the settlers, and in just a few years, Hunt and Lipo calculate, they would have overrun the island. They would have prevented the reseeding of the slow-growing palm trees and thereby doomed Rapa Nui’s forest, even without the settlers’ campaign of deforestation. No doubt the rats ate birds’ eggs too. Hunt and Lipo also see no evidence that Rapanui civilisation collapsed when the palm forest did. They think its population grew rapidly and then remained more or less stable until the arrival of the Europeans, who introduced deadly diseases to which islanders had no immunity. Then in the nineteenth century slave traders decimated the population, which shrivelled to 111 people by 1877.

  G Hunt and Lipo’s vision, therefore, is one of an island populated by peaceful and ingenious moai builders and careful stewards of the land, rather than by reckless destroyers ruining their own environment and society. ‘Rather than a case of abject failure, Rapu Nui is an unlikely story of success’, they claim. Whichever is the case, there are surely some valuable lessons which the world at large can learn from the story of Rapa Nui.

  Questions 21-24

  Complete the summary below.

  Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

  Write your answers in boxes 21-24 on your answer sheet.

  Jared Diamond’s View

  Diamond believes that the Polynesian settlers on Rapa Nui destroyed its forests, cutting down its trees for fuel and clearing land for 21 __________. Twentieth-century discoveries of pollen prove that Rapu Nui had once been covered in palm forests, which had turned into grassland by the time the Europeans arrived on the island. When the islanders were no longer able to build the 22 __________ they needed to go fishing, they began using the island’s 23 __________ as a food source, according to Diamond. Diamond also claims that the moai were built to show the power of the island’s chieftains, and that the methods of transporting the statues needed not only a great number of people, but also a great deal of 24 __________.

  Questions 25 and 26

  Choose TWO letters, A-E.

  Write the correct letters in boxes 25 and 26 on your answer sheet.

  On what points do Hunt and Lipo disagree with Diamond?

  A the period when the moai were created

  B how the moai were transported

  C the impact of the moai on Rapanui society

  D how the moai were carved

  E the origins of the people who made the moai

  雅思劍11Test2 Passage 2閱讀答案解析

  Question 14

  答案: ii

  關鍵詞: undisputed answer

  定位原文: A段的第6、9句“The identity of.. ” 摩艾像的建造者身份直到20世紀才確定，現代科學(語言學等)確認建造者是波利尼西亞人。

  解題思路: A段首先介紹了摩艾像的背景，之后探討了摩艾像建造者的身份問題。第六句中說到20世紀時人們才對這一問題有了確定的答案，之后描述了人們對這個問題存在的一些猜測;但在本段第九句中明確說到現代科學給出了確定的答案，即摩艾像的建造者是波利尼西亞人。

  Question 15

  答案: ix

  關鍵詞: food resources

  定位原文: B段的第6、7、8句。“When the islanders…”當島上居民為了木柴和農耕清除了樹林，森林便不再生長。隨著樹木的減少，他們不再能夠建造獨木舟來捕魚，轉而以鳥類為食。水土流失降低了他們的作物產量。

  解題思路: 文章B段重點描述了美國科學家Jared Diamond對于拉帕努伊環境破壞的觀點，他認為是當地人自己造成了這種情況，并且從不同的方面進行了分析。其中在第六、七句提到由于島上居民將樹林用作木柴和農耕，樹木受到破壞不再生長，從而無法繼續造船捕魚;之后也在第八句提到了作物產量減少的問題，這與ix選項所表達的減少食物資源一致。因此本題答案為ix。

  Question 16

  答案： viii

  關鍵詞： the statues, worse

  定位原文： C段第1句“The moai, he thinks…”他認為摩艾像加速了當地的自我毀滅。

  解題思路: 本段首句提4摩艾像加i 了當地的自我毀滅， 之后Diamond在本段中具體解釋了這一觀點， 選項中viii的表述與本段內容一致。因此本題 答案為viii。

  Question 17

  答案： i

  關鍵詞：innovative, environment, management, practices

  定位原文： D段第3、4句“Archaeological excavations...”考古發掘表明拉帕努伊人做出了巨大的努力去保護他們受狂風席卷且并不肥沃的土地。他們建造了上千的環形石頭防風林，在其中栽培花木，并使用破碎的火山巖保持土壤濕潤。

  解題思路：本段Terry Hunt和Carl Lipo提出了不同的觀點，即他們認為生態破壞并非是當地居民或摩艾像的責任，相反他們還做出了巨大的努力。 其中第3句表達了這一觀點，而第4句則是具體地寫到circular stone windbreaks, 以證明他們的努力。因此本題答案為i。

  Question 18

  答案: iv

  關鍵詞： a local belief

  定位原文： E段第3句 “On that issue, Hunt…” Hunt和Lipo說，在這個問題上，考古學證據支持拉帕努伊的民間說法。

  解題思路: 本段講的是摩艾像的移動方式。Hunt和Lipo 對此提出了不同的看法，他們認為由于摩艾像特殊的形狀，不需要太多的人力和木頭就可以移動它們，并且提出這與當地的民間說法一致。 因此本題答案為iv。

  Question 19

  答案: vii

  關鍵詞： outside the inhabitants， control

  定位原文： F段第1句 “Moreover, Hunt…” 此外，Hunt和Lipo相信樹木破壞并非完全由島上居民所致。

  解題思路：本段中Hunt和Lipo的觀點是島上環境的破壞并不是島上居民造成的，而是由于鼠類的泛濫以及歐洲人的登陸，而這是當地居民無法控制的，與 vii 選項 Destruction outside the inhabitants' control一致。因此本題答案為vii。

  Question 20

  答案： vi

  關鍵詞： opposing views

  定位原文： G段第1、2句 “Hunt and Lipo’s vision…” 因此，以Hunt和Lipo的觀點來看，這個島嶼上居住著和平的有獨創性的摩艾像建造者們以及小心翼翼的土地維護者，而不是不計后果毀掉自己的環境與社會的破壞者。他們認為“拉帕努伊是一個不太可能的成功故事，而非一個不幸的失敗事件”。

  解題思路：在G段的第1句和第2句中，都提到了與 opposing views about the Rapanui people 相關的內容，同時Hunt和Lipo再次持積極的態度，相當于對自己的觀點進行了總結。因此本題答案為vi。

  Question 21

  答案： farming

  關鍵詞： cutting down its trees for fuel, clearing land

  定位原文： B段第6句“When the islanders cleared the forests for firewood and farming…” 當島上居民為了木柴和農耕清除了樹林，森林便不再生長。

  解題思路：Jared Diamond的觀點在B段出現。本題提到了當地人破壞森林，并且cutting down trees 和clearing land, 這一信息出現在原文中B段第6句，這一行為的目的是為了 firewood and farming; 這一并列結構在題目中被for fuel同義替換，clearing land的目的也可以就此找到， 因此本題答案為farming。

  Question 22

  答案： canoes

  關鍵詞：go fishing

  定位原文：B段第7句 “As trees became scarce and they could no…”隨著樹木的減少，他們不再能夠建造獨木舟來捕魚，轉而以鳥類為食。

  解題思路: 題目說到當地島上居民不再能夠建造捕魚所需的東西，在原文B段第七句中出現了 could no longer construct, 這與題目中 no longer able to build意思一致;而文中提到的for fishing 也與題目中 they needed to go fishing 意思一致，因此可見wooden canoes為所需名詞, 同時有要求one word，得出答案。

  Question 23

  答案： birds

  關鍵詞：food source

  定位原文： 同上題

  解題思路：上一題中已經提到人們無法繼續建造wooden canoes, 在B段第七句中說到他們以鳥類為食;而本題提到了food source, 判斷本題答案為 birds。

  Question 24

  答案: wood

  關鍵詞: people

  定位原文: C段第4句“Diamond thinks they laid the moai on…” Diamond認為他們將摩艾像放在木質雪橇上，在木軌上拉動，但這需要大量的木頭和人力。

  解題思路：本題說到運送雕像所需要的東西，之后出現 not only..., but also這一并列結構，而在原文 C段第四句中，也以并列結構描述了所需要的是 both a lot of wood and a lot of people; 由于題目中已經出現了people, 因此本題答案為wood。

  Question 25 and Question 26

  答案： B & C

  關鍵詞：Disagree

  定位原文： C、D、E 三段

  解題思路：ADE三項全文并沒有提及;關于摩艾像的運輸，Hunt和Lipo 二人與Diamond持不同看法;其中Diamond的觀點出現在文章C段，他認為雕像是放在木質雪橇上然后通過木軌被拉動，而Hunt和Lipo的觀點出現在E段，他們認為雕像的移動同當地說法一致，雕像可以在幾個人和沒有繩索的控制下直立移動;對于拉帕努伊社會的影響方面，Diamond認為摩艾像加速了當地的破壞，這一觀點出現在C段;而Hunt和Lipo認為摩艾像對當地社會起到了積極的作用，這一觀點在D段和E段都進行了具體的描述。

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