单选题
Despots and tyrants may have changed the course of
human evolution by using their power to force hundreds of women to bear their
children, says new research. It shows that the switch from hunter-gathering to
farming about 8,000 - 9,000 years ago was closely followed by the emergence of
emperors and elites who took control of all wealth, including access to young
women. Such men set up systems to impregnate hundreds, or even thousands, of
women while making sure other men were too poor or oppressed to have families.
It means such men may now have hundreds of millions of descendants, a high
proportion of whom may carry the genetic traits that drove their ancestors to
seek power and oppress their fellow humans. "In evolutionary
terms this period of human existence created an enormous selective pressure,
with the guys at the top who had the least desirable traits passing on their
genes to huge numbers of offspring," said Laura Betzig, an evolutionary
anthropologist. She has studied the emergence of the world's first six great
civilisations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Mexico and Peru. In each she
found that emperors created systems to "harvest" hundreds of the prettiest young
women and then systematically impregnate them. Betzig has studied the records
left by the six civilisations to work out how many children were born to
emperors. "In China they had it down to a science. Yangdi, the
6th-century Sui dynasty emperor, was credited by an official historian with
100,000 women in his palace at Yangzhou alone," she said. "They even had sex
handbooks describing how to work out when a woman was fertile. Then they would
be taken to the emperor to be impregnated. It was all organised by the state so
the emperor could impregnate as many women as possible. And they had rules, like
all the women had to be under 30 and all had to be attractive and symmetrical.
This was the system in China for more than 2,000 years." Others
relied on violence. One genetic study showed that Genghis Khan, the 13th-century
Mongol warlord, who was renowned for sleeping with the most beautiful women in
every territory he conquered, now has about 16m male descendants. This compares
with the 800 people descended from the average man of that era.
Betzig also studied primitive societies. She found that the small bands of
hunter-gatherers were the most egalitarian, with men and women able to have the
number of children they wanted. "This freedom is probably because they were so
mobile. If their group got taken over by a big guy who tried to control
resources, the others could simply leave and find somewhere else," she said.
This system broke down when the world's first civilisations emerged about 8,000
years ago based on farming. All began on fertile river plains surrounded
by mountains or deserts that made it difficult to leave. Such situations were
perfect for the emergence of elites and emperors. In a paper
published recently, Betzig has catalogued the same trend in each of the great
early civilisations. Such systems arose in Britain as well, especially in the
feudal era. "Lords then had sexual access to hundreds of dependent serfs ...
with up to a fifth of the population 'in service'," Betzig said.
She is to publish a book, The Badge of Lost Innocence, exploring
why that era has ended. "The European discovery of the Americas changed
everything," she said. "Along with the emergence of democracy it offered
millions of people the chance to emigrate or get rid of despotic regimes. The
literature of that time shows people wanted to have families of their own and
for the first time in thousands of years they had that chance. "
单选题
By saying "Despots and tyrants may have changed the course of human
evolution by using their power to force hundreds of women to bear their
children" (para. 1), the author is ______.
A. quite indifferent
B. somewhat grateful
C. highly appreciative
D. somewhat critical
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】[解析] 对文章基本内容的理解及对作者态度的推断。根据第二段中Betzig的引言，可以间接判断出作者的态度。Betzig所提到的selective pressure，实际是说当权者将他们不好的性格特质遗传给为数众多的后代，而普通人的优秀特质却鲜有机会得到继承。另外，从第一段中seek power，oppress their fellow humans等用词也可看出作者对这种不良遗传特征的继承和传播持否定态度，因此应选择D。
单选题
When Laura Betzig said "In evolutionary terms this period of human
existence created an enormous selective pressure" (para. 2), she was trying to
express that ______.
A. only the undesirable traits of the emperors were passed on to their
offspring
B. the variety in the selection of human genes was diminished by the systems
set up by emperors
C. only the man at the top of the power hierarchy had access to women
D. the systems created by emperors left ordinary men with a limited range of
women to select from