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托福official52阅读第3篇 Early Food Production in Sub-Saharan Africa题目解析

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Early Food Production in Sub-Saharan Africa
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插图.png  At the end of the Pleistocene (around 10,000 B.C.), the technologies of food production may have already been employed on the fringes of the rain forests of western and central Africa, where the common use of such root plants as the African yam led people to recognize the advantages of growing their own food. The yam can easily be resprouted if the top is replanted. This primitive form of "vegeculture" (cultivation of root and tree crops) may have been the economic tradition onto which the cultivation of summer rainfall cereal crops was grafted as it came into use south of the grassland areas on the Sahara's southern borders.

As the Sahara dried up after 5000 B.C., pastoral peoples (cattle herders) moved southward along major watercourses into the savanna belt of West Africa and the Sudan. By 3000 B.C., just as ancient Egyptian civilization was coming into being along the Nile, they had settled in the heart of the East African highlands far to the south. The East African highlands are ideal cattle country and the home today of such famous cattle-herding peoples as the Masai. The highlands were inhabited by hunter-gatherers living around mountains near the plains until about 3300 B.C., when the first cattle herders appeared. These cattle people may have moved between fixed settlements during the wet and dry seasons, living off hunting in the dry months and their own livestock and agriculture during the rains.

As was the case elsewhere, cattle were demanding animals in Africa. They required water at least every 24 hours and large tracts of grazing grass if herds of any size were to be maintained. The secret was the careful selection of grazing land, especially in environments where seasonal rainfall led to marked differences in graze quality throughout the year. Even modest cattle herds required plenty of land and considerable mobility. To acquire such land often required moving herds considerable distances, even from summer to winter pastures. At the same time, the cattle owners had to graze their stock in tsetse-fly-free areas The only protection against human and animal sleeping sickness, a disease carried by the tsetse fly, was to avoid settling or farming such areas -  a constraint severely limiting the movements of cattle-owning farmers in eastern and central Africa. As a result, small cattle herds spread south rapidly in areas where they could be grazed. Long before cereal agriculture took hold far south of the Sahara, some hunter-gatherer groups in the savanna woodlands of eastern and southern Africa may have acquired cattle, and perhaps other domesticated animals, by gift exchange or through raids on herding neighbors.

Contrary to popular belief: there is no such phenomenon as "pure" pastoralists, a society that subsists on its herds alone. The Saharan herders who moved southward to escape drought were almost certainly also cultivating sorghum, millet; and other tropical rainfall crops. By 1500 B.C., cereal agriculture was widespread throughout the savanna belt south of the Sahara. Small farming communities dotted the grasslands and forest margins of eastern West Africa, all of them depending on what is called shifting agriculture. This form of agriculture involved clearing woodland, burning the felled brush over the cleared plot, mixing the ash into the soil, and then cultivating the prepared fields. After a few years, the soil was exhausted, so the farmer moved on, exploiting new woodland and leaving the abandoned fields to lie fallow. Shifting agriculture, often called slash-and-burn, was highly adaptive for savanna farmers without plows, for it allowed cereal farming with the minimal expenditure of energy.

The process of clearance and burning may have seemed haphazard to the uninformed eye, but it was not. Except in favored areas, such as regularly inundated floodplains: tropical Africa's soils were of only moderate to low fertility. The art of farming was careful soil selection, that is, knowing which soils were light and easily cultivable, could be readily turned with small hoes, and would maintain their fertility over several years' planting, for cereal crops rapidly remove nitrogen and other nutrients from the soil. Once it had taken hold: slash-and-burn agriculture expanded its frontiers rapidly as village after village took up new lands, moving forward so rapidly that one expert has estimated it took a mere two centuries to cover 2,000 kilometers from eastern to southern Africa.

1.According to paragraph 1, which of the following is true of early food production by the end of the Pleistocene?

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【题目翻译】根据第1段,下列哪一项对于更新世末的早期粮食生产是正确的? A:在非洲西部和中部的某些地区,一些人已经在种植山药等根茎植物。 B:种植谷类作物已经被生活在热带雨林边缘的人们广泛有效地利用。 C:来自撒哈拉南部边界的人们首次在中非和西非引进了先进的“草业”形式。 D:由于草原地区夏季降雨量减少,根和树作物的种植取代了谷类作物的种植。 【判定题型】:题目问的是文章中的具体细节信息,故根据题目问法可以判断本题为事实信息题。 【关键词定位】:根据关键词“early food production by the end of the Pleistocene”,定位到Passage 1第1句,原句为“At the end of the Pleistocene (around 10,000 B.C.), the technologies of food production may have already been employed on the fringes of the rain forests of western and central Africa, where the common use of such root plants as the African yam led people to recognize the advantages of growing their own food.” 意思是“在更新世的末期(约公元10000 ),粮食生产技术可能已经在西部和中部非洲的雨林中使用,在那里,在非洲的普通用途的基础上,非洲的老年人能够对其自己的食物产生影响。”。 【逻辑分析】是问更新世末和早期粮食生产之间的关系。 【选项分析】 A选项:在西非和中非的某些地方,有些人已经开始种植根茎类植物,例如山药。根据关键词“root plant”和“yams”定位到第一段第一句的后半句“……where the common use of such root plants as the African yam led people to recognize the advantages of growing their own food.”这句话说明当时人类确实已经开始种植山药等根茎类作物了。故A选项正确。 B选项:居住在热带雨林边缘的人已经高效并广泛地种植了谷类作物。错误,因为文中只提到种植块根植物和树本植物,谷类作物当时还没开始种植,所以B选项与原文矛盾。排除。 C选项:“蔬菜栽培”的种植方法是由撒哈拉沙漠南部边界的人第一次引入非洲中部和西部地区的。错误,因为文中最后一句只说“……as it came into use south of the grassland areas on the Sahara's southern borders.” 这种种植技术已经在撒哈拉沙漠南部边界地区的草原南部被使用。但是没有说这些地区的人将这一技术引入非洲中部和西部地区,故C选项未提及,排除。 D选项:块根植物和树本植物的种植取代了谷类植物的种植,因为草原地区的降水量越来越少。这一信息在原文中完全未提及,故排除。

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