新托福TPO12阅读原文及译文

新托福TPO12阅读原文(一):Which Hand Did They Use?

TPO12-1：Which Hand Did They Use?

We all know that many more people today are right-handed than left-handed. Can one trace this same pattern far back in prehistory?Much of the evidence about right-hand versus left-hand dominance comes from stencils and prints found in rock shelters in Australia and elsewhere,and in many Ice Age caves in France,Spain,and Tasmania.When a left hand has been stenciled,this implies that the artist was right-handed,and vice versa.Even though the paint was often sprayed on by mouth, one can assume that the dominant hand assisted in the operation.One also has to make the assumption that hands were stenciled palm downward—a left hand stenciled palm upward might of course look as if it were a right hand.Of158stencils in the French cave of Gargas,136have been identified as left,and only22as right; right-handedness was therefore heavily predominant.

Cave art furnishes other types of evidence of this phenomenon.Most engravings, for example,are best lit from the left,as befits the work of right-handed artists,who generally prefer to have the light source on the left so that the shadow of their hand does not fall on the tip of the engraving tool or brush.In the few cases where an Ice Age figure is depicted holding something,it is mostly,though not always,in the right hand.

Clues to right-handedness can also be found by other methods.Right-handers tend to have longer,stronger,and more muscular bones on the right side,and Marcellin Boule as long ago as1911noted the La Chapelle-aux-Saints Neanderthal skeleton had a right upper arm bone that was noticeably stronger than the left.Similar observations have been made on other Neanderthal skeletons such as La Ferrassie I and Neanderthal itself.

Fractures and other cut marks are another source of evidence.Right-handed soldiers tend to be wounded on the left.The skeleton of a40-or50-year-old Nabatean warrior,buried2,000years ago in the Negev Desert,Israel,had multiple healed fractures to the skull,the left arm,and the ribs.

Tools themselves can be revealing.Long-handed Neolithic spoons of yew wood preserved in Alpine villages dating to3000B.C.have survived;the signs of rubbing on their left side indicate that their users were right-handed.The late Ice Age rope found in the French cave of Lascaux consists of fibers spiraling to the right,and was therefore tressed by a righthander.

Occasionally one can determine whether stone tools were used in the right hand or the left,and it is even possible to assess how far back this feature can be traced.In stone toolmaking experiments,Nick Toth,a right-hander,held the core(the stone that would become the tool)in his left hand and the hammer stone in his right.As the tool was made,the core was rotated clockwise,and the flakes,removed in sequence,had a little crescent of cortex(the core's outer surface)on the side.Toth's knapping produced56percent flakes with the cortex on the right,and44percent left-oriented flakes.A left-handed toolmaker would produce the opposite pattern.Toth has applied these criteria to the similarly made pebble tools from a number of early sites(before 1.5million years)at Koobi Fora,Kenya,probably made by Homo habilis.At seven sites he found that57percent of the flakes were right-oriented,and43percent left,a pattern almost identical to that produced today.

About90percent of modern humans are right-handed:we are the only mammal with a preferential use of one hand.The part of the brain responsible for fine control and movement is located in the left cerebral hemisphere,and the findings above suggest that the human brain was already asymmetrical in its structure and function not long after2million years ago.Among Neanderthalers of70,000–35,000years ago, Marcellin Boule noted that the La Chapelle-aux-Saints individual had a left

hemisphere slightly bigger than the right,and the same was found for brains of specimens from Neanderthal,Gibraltar,and La Quina.

TPO12-1译文：他们到底用哪只手?

我们都知道，现在的人们更多是使用右手而非左手。能不能在史前查找出这一相似的状况呢?有太多的来自澳大利亚地区的石屋中模板和字迹以及冰河期法国西班牙以及塔斯马尼亚地区的岩洞上搜集到的证据证明右手较之于左手的优势。当一个左手被用于塑模时暗示了制作他的工匠惯于使用右手,反之亦然。即使是制作一幅画作需要用嘴喷涂，也可以想象惯用手是如何在这一过程中起到协助作用的。另一个假设是被用于塑模的手手掌向下-一只左手塑模朝上也许让它看起来像一只右手。在法国Gargas岩洞中的158个模板中，有136个鉴定确认为左手，只有22个是右手;右手习惯毫无疑问是据绝对主导地位的。

岩洞艺术的其他形式也为这一现象提供了依据。例如大多数的雕版都是左起的光照最好，因为是配合惯用右手的工匠的工作，他们经常喜欢让光线从左边照过来以便他们手的影子不会投射在雕板工具或是刷子的末端。很多冰河时期的雕塑都被雕刻为拿着一些物品的摸样，尽管不是绝对的，但是起码大多数都是放在右手上。

其他方法也能找出使用右手习惯的线索。右撇子的右侧身体会趋于更长，更壮且更多肌肉的骨骼,Marcellin Boule早在1911提到的一块名为La Chapelle-aux-Saints的尼安德特人的右上臂骨架骨骼要明显强壮于左侧。对其他尼安德特人的骨架的调查也得到了类似的结果。例如la Ferrassie1和尼安德特人本身。

断裂痕与割伤痕也是论据的另一来源。右撇子勇士一般都是左侧容易受伤。在内盖夫的戈壁中被埋了2000多年的一个40～50岁之间的Nabatean勇士的骨架，在他的头部、左臂和肋骨上有多处已愈合的伤痕。

工具的本身也会反映这一现象。新石器时代的紫杉木的长柄勺从史前3000年一直完好的保存到现在;它左侧的磨痕证明了它们的主人惯用右手。在法国的拉斯科斯岩洞艺术找到的冰川时代末期的绳子是由向右旋转的纤维捆成的，当然也就证实了出自右撇子之手。

偶尔也能确定石器是左手使用还是右手使用，甚至可以查出这些特征是在多久前的过去被留下的。在石器制造试验中，Nick toth,一个右撇子用左手拿着一个石胚(就是一块是要成为工具的石头)同时用右手抡锤。由于工具的作用，胚子顺时针的旋转的同时，小碎片一点点的去掉，在一侧留下月牙状的表层(石头胚子的表面)。Toth’s的敲打产生的碎痕56%留在了右侧的表面，44%留在了左侧朝向的碎痕。一个左撇子工匠则会生产出相反的花纹，Toth将这种标准对照到数个在Kombi Fora(距今一百五十万年前)发现的类似卵石工具上，他在7个地点找到的57%的碎痕是右侧朝向，而百43%是左侧朝向，就和今天我们所生产的花纹一样。

大约90%的现代人是右撇子;我们都是只是优先使用一只手的哺乳动物。大脑负责良好的控制行动的区域位于脑部的左半球，这也证明的人类大脑的机构和功能上的不对称性在两百万年前就已经定型了。在距今70000到35000年的尼安德特人中，Marcellin Boule发现La Chapelle-aux-Saints(某人种吧)个体的大脑左

半球稍微比右边大一点，与之类似的也被发现在尼安德特人、直布罗陀人和拉昆尼亚人种的脑型中。

新托福TPO12阅读原文(二):Transition to Sound in Film

TPO12-2：Transition to Sound in Film

The shift from silent to sound film at the end of the1920s marks,so far,the most important transformation in motion picture history.Despite all the highly visible technological developments in theatrical and home delivery of the moving image that have occurred over the decades since then,no single innovation has come close to being regarded as a similar kind of watershed.In nearly every language,however the words are phrased,the most basic division in cinema history lies between films that are mute and films that speak.

Yet this most fundamental standard of historical periodization conceals a host of paradoxes.Nearly every movie theater,however modest,had a piano or organ to provide musical accompaniment to silent pictures.In many instances,spectators in the era before recorded sound experienced elaborate aural presentations alongside movies' visual images,from the Japanese benshi(narrators)crafting multivoiced dialogue narratives to original musical compositions performed by symphony-size orchestras in Europe and the United States.In Berlin,for the premiere performance outside the Soviet Union of The Battleship Potemkin,film director Sergei Eisenstein worked with Austrian composer Edmund Meisel(1874-1930)on a musical score matching sound to image;the Berlin screenings with live music helped to bring the film its wide international fame.

Beyond that,the triumph of recorded sound has overshadowed the rich diversity of technological and aesthetic experiments with the visual image that were going forward simultaneously in the1920s.New color processes,larger or differently

shaped screen sizes,multiple-screen projections,even television,were among the developments invented or tried out during the period,sometimes with startling success.The high costs of converting to sound and the early limitations of sound technology were among the factors that suppressed innovations or retarded advancement in these other areas.The introduction of new screen formats was put off for a quarter century,and color,though utilized over the next two decades for special productions,also did not become a norm until the1950s.

Though it may be difficult to imagine from a later perspective,a strain of critical opinion in the1920s predicted that sound film would be a technical novelty that would soon fade from sight,just as had many previous attempts,dating well back before the First World War,to link images with recorded sound.These critics were making a common assumption—that the technological inadequacies of earlier efforts (poor synchronization,weak sound amplification,fragile sound recordings)would invariably occur again.To be sure,their evaluation of the technical flaws in1920s sound experiments was not so far off the mark,yet they neglected to take into account important new forces in the motion picture field that,in a sense,would not take no for an answer.

These forces were the rapidly expanding electronics and telecommunications companies that were developing and linking telephone and wireless technologies in the1920s.In the United States,they included such firms as American Telephone and Telegraph,General Electric,and Westinghouse.They were interested in all forms of sound technology and all potential avenues for commercial exploitation.Their competition and collaboration were creating the broadcasting industry in the United States,beginning with the introduction of commercial radio programming in the early 1920s.With financial assets considerably greater than those in the motion picture industry,and perhaps a wider vision of the relationships among entertainment and communications media,they revitalized research into recording sound for motion pictures.

In1929the United States motion picture industry released more than300sound films—a rough figure,since a number were silent films with music tracks,or films prepared in dual versions,to take account of the many cinemas not yet wired for sound.At the production level,in the United States the conversion was virtually complete by1930.In Europe it took a little longer,mainly because there were more small producers for whom the costs of sound were prohibitive,and in other parts of the world problems with rights or access to equipment delayed the shift to sound production for a few more years(though cinemas in major cities may have been wired in order to play foreign sound films).The triumph of sound cinema was swift, complete,and enormously popular.

TPO12-2译文：电影声音的演变

1920年代末见证了电影史上最重大的一次过渡——电影从无声到有声的跨越。尽管在戏剧和家庭移动影像的传输方面的高级视觉技术在此之前已经发展了数十年，却依然没有哪项革新可以像这项技术一样成为分水岭。几乎所有语言都是这样描述的(尽管措辞略有出入)：电影史上最基本的分水岭就是从默片到有声电影的过渡。

然而这一历史分期的基本标准下依然矛盾重重。几乎每家剧院都配备钢琴或管风琴为无声电影配乐，尽管不起眼。在一些实例中，录音时代之前的观众都有亲身体验，电影放映时旁边是精妙绝伦的音效呈现，从绝妙的日本benshi(口技)多音效对话演绎到欧美管弦交响乐队演奏的原创曲目。为了首次在柏林露天公演前苏联战舰波将金号，该片导演Sergei Eisenstein与奥地利作曲家Edmund Meisel(1874-1930)合作为电影配乐;柏林的电影荧幕配上现场音乐使得这一影片在国际上赢得广泛赞誉。

除此之外，录音的辉煌还使得1920年代同时发展的视觉影像技术和审美体验的成就相形见绌。在这期间新技术新发明层出不穷，有一些技术非常成功：新的色彩处理，更大以及不同形状的屏幕尺寸，多屏放映的设计，甚至是电视机的出现。声音转化的高成本和早期声音技术的局限阻碍了这些发明在其所在其他领域的发展。25年之后新型屏幕设计才得以引进，并且尽管色彩在接下来的20年中都用于专业生产，但一直到20世纪50年代才成为一项标准。

虽然现在看来不可思议，但是在19世纪20年代，一连串的批判性观点预测有声电影这项新“玩意儿”技术将会迅速淡出人们的视线，和第一次世界大战之前将画面与录音连接在一起的多次尝试并无二致。这些批评有一个共同的假设--早期成果的技术缺陷(同步性差、差的扩音、易损坏的录音)仍会不可避免的发生。不可否认他们对1920年代声音试验的技术缺陷的评价(与真实情况)相去不远，但是他们忽视了电影领域的新生力量，这些新力量决不接受“不”这个回答。

20世纪20年代，这些新生力量迅猛发展，出现了大量连接电话与无线技术的电子及通讯公司。在美国，还出现了像美国电话电报公司、通用电气和西屋电气这样的公司。他们对声音技术的各种形式和一切商业开发潜力非常感兴趣。这些竞争与合作开创了美国的广播产业，20世纪20年代早期开始引入商业广播节目。由于金融资产明显多于电影产业，而且他们在娱乐业与通信媒体之间的关系上前景更为广阔，因而他们使研究电影配音得到复兴。

粗略计算，1929年美国的电影产业上映的有声电影超过300部，同时还有一定数量的带有音乐伴奏的默片和两个版本都有的电影，以照顾一些未配备音响的电影院。美国于1930年最终完成生产环节上的转换。欧洲耗时更久一些，这

主要因为很多小生产商无法负担的音效成本，另一部分原因是专利权和许可设备配备问题使得声音制作的转换推迟了几年(尽管很多大城市的电影院可能为了播放国外的有声电影配备了设备)。至此，有声电影取得胜利，并迅速、全面、广泛地流行起来。

新托福TPO12阅读原文(三):Water in the Desert

TPO12-3：Water in the Desert

Rainfall is not completely absent in desert areas,but it is highly variable.An annual rainfall of four inches is often used to define the limits of a desert.The impact of rainfall upon the surface water and groundwater resources of the desert is greatly influenced by landforms.Flats and depressions where water can collect are common features,but they make up only a small part of the landscape.

Arid lands,surprisingly,contain some of the world’s largest river systems,such as the Murray-Darling in Australia,the Rio Grande in North America,the Indus in Asia,and the Nile in Africa.These rivers and river systems are known as"exogenous" because their sources lie outside the arid zone.They are vital for sustaining life in some of the driest parts of the world.For centuries,the annual floods of the Nile, Tigris,and Euphrates,for example,have brought fertile silts and water to the inhabitants of their lower valleys.Today,river discharges are increasingly controlled by human intervention,creating a need for international river-basin agreements.The filling of the Ataturk and other dams in Turkey has drastically reduced flows in the Euphrates,with potentially serious consequences for Syria and Iraq.

The flow of exogenous rivers varies with the season.The desert sections of long rivers respond several months after rain has fallen outside the desert,so that peak flows may be in the dry season.This is useful for irrigation,but the high temperatures,

low humidities,and different day lengths of the dry season,compared to the normal growing season,can present difficulties with some crops.

Regularly flowing rivers and streams that originate within arid lands are known as"endogenous."These are generally fed by groundwater springs,and many issue from limestone massifs,such as the Atlas Mountains in Morocco.Basaltic rocks also support springs,notably at the Jabal Al-Arab on the Jordan-Syria border.Endogenous rivers often do not reach the sea but drain into inland basins,where the water evaporates or is lost in the ground.Most desert streambeds are normally dry,but they occasionally receive large flows of water and sediment.

Deserts contain large amounts of groundwater when compared to the amounts they hold in surface stores such as lakes and rivers.But only a small fraction of groundwater enters the hydrological cycle—feeding the flows of streams,maintaining lake levels,and being recharged(or refilled)through surface flows and rainwater.In recent years,groundwater has become an increasingly important source of freshwater for desert dwellers.The United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank have funded attempts to survey the groundwater resources of arid lands and to develop appropriate extraction techniques.Such programs are much needed because in many arid lands there is only a vague idea of the extent of groundwater resources. It is known,however,that the distribution of groundwater is uneven,and that much of it lies at great depths.

Groundwater is stored in the pore spaces and joints of rocks and unconsolidated (unsolidified)sediments or in the openings widened through fractures and weathering. The water-saturated rock or sediment is known as an"aquifer".Because they are porous,sedimentary rocks,such as sandstones and conglomerates,are important potential sources of https://www.sodocs.net/doc/e19543758.html,rge quantities of water may also be stored in limestones when joints and cracks have been enlarged to form cavities.Most limestone and sandstone aquifers are deep and extensive but may contain groundwaters that are not being recharged.Most shallow aquifers in sand and gravel

deposits produce lower yields,but they can be rapidly recharged.Some deep aquifers are known as"fossil waters.The term"fossil"describes water that has been present for several thousand years.These aquifers became saturated more than10,000years ago and are no longer being recharged.

Water does not remain immobile in an aquifer but can seep out at springs or leak into other aquifers.The rate of movement may be very slow:in the Indus plain,the movement of saline(salty)groundwaters has still not reached equilibrium after70 years of being tapped.The mineral content of groundwater normally increases with the depth,but even quite shallow aquifers can be highly saline.

TPO12-3译文：沙漠中的水源

沙漠中并不是完全没有降雨，只不过变数很大。通常年降水量100毫米以下是界定沙漠地区的条件。降水对沙漠地区地表和地下水资源的影响很大程度上取决于地貌。平原和洼地的共同特征是水源聚集，但是它们在地貌中所占比重很小。

令人惊奇的是，一些世界最大的河系都位于干旱地区，例如澳大利亚的墨累-达令河、北美洲的格兰德河、亚洲的印度河以及非洲的尼罗河。这些河流及河系因为源头位于干旱地区以外而被称为“外流河”。对世界上一些最干旱地区来说，它们哺育生命，意义重大。例如，几个世纪以来，尼罗河、底格里斯河和幼发拉底河每年都会泛滥洪水会为下游低洼地带的居民带来大量肥沃的泥沙和水源。现在，河水流量越来越多的受到人类的干预，因而有必要签署国际性的河流流域协议。阿塔图尔克大坝以及土耳其境内的其它大坝的蓄水极大地减少了幼发拉底河的径流量，可能会给叙利亚和伊拉克带来严重后果。

“外流河”的径流量通常受季节影响。雨季过后，从外部流入沙漠区域的长河可以持续好几个月，以便洪峰可以出现在旱季。这虽然利于灌溉，但是高温度、低湿度，加上旱季独特的昼长，相比正常生长季节依然很难种植一些农作物。

通常发源于干旱地区的河流和溪水被称为“内陆河”。它们主要是由地下水泉补给,很多出口来自石灰岩断层，例如摩洛哥的阿特拉斯山脉。玄武岩同样可以提供地下水泉，最具代表性的是约旦和叙利亚边界的Jabal Al-Arab河.内陆河通常都不能流入大海而是注入内陆盆,蒸发掉或者消失在地表。大多数沙漠河床通常都是干涸的，但偶有较大径流和沉积物。

相比于湖泊和河流等地表水，沙漠中地下水的贮藏量要大得多。不过只有一小部分地下水参与了水循环——补给河流径流量，维持湖泊水位，并通过地表径流和降雨进行再次补给(再注入)。近些年来，地下水作为沙漠住民的淡水来源，重要性日益突显。美国国家环境总署和世界银行开始拨款着手调查干旱地区的地下水资源并开发合适的开采技术。这些项目非常有必要，因为在很多干旱地区对于地下水资源的程度概念非常模糊。然而可以确定的是，地下水资源分布非常不均匀，且大部分埋藏较深。

地下水一般贮存于岩石孔隙、节理、松散沉积物或者断裂和风化作用形成的孔洞。饱含水的岩石或沉积物被称为“蓄水层”。因为沉积岩多孔，比如砂岩和砾岩，都是地下水的重要潜在源头。只要节理和裂缝扩大形成容器，石灰岩中也能够储存大量水资源。大部分石灰岩和砂岩蓄水层深广，但是储存的水资源不可再生。大多数沙石中较浅的蓄水层贮水量少，但可以迅速再生。一些深层地下水被

称作“化石水”。用“化石”来形容水，这就意味着这些水已经存在了千年之久。这些蓄水层注满水起码已经1万年以上了，而其无法再生。

贮存在蓄水层的水并非不流动，而是会通过泉眼渗出或是进入其他蓄水层，可以流动水的比例可能很低：在印度河平原，流动的含盐地下水在开采了70年之后依旧不能达到平衡。正常情况下,地下水的矿物含量随着深度的增加而增加，，但是即使很浅的蓄水层中可能含盐量也很高。

老托福阅读真题 (11)

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20. 我们应该不遗余力地保护我们的环境。 21. 现在，人们普遍认为 22. 我同意后者，有如下理由： 23. 这一观点正受到越来越多人的质疑。 24. 使用自行车有助于人们的身体健康，并极大地缓解了交通阻塞。 25. 尽管自行车有许多明显的优点，但是它也存在它的问题。 26. 在速度和舒适度方面，自行车是无法和汽车、火车这样的交通工具相比的。 27. 通过以上讨论，我们可以得出结论：自行车的优点远大于缺点，并且在现代社会它仍将发挥重要作用。 28. 这个问题已经引起了广泛关注。 29. 很多人生活在这样的幻想之中。。。

托福TPO46阅读Passage1原文文本+题目+答案解析

为了帮助大家高效备考托福，为大家带来托福TPO46阅读Passage1原文文本+题目+答案解析，希望对大家备考有所帮助。 The Origins 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.■A The Babylonians and Assyrians did the same,and so did peoples in Syria and Asia Minor.■B 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