填空题
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15-27, which
are based on Reading Passage 2 below. [*]
Buried Cities of the Rainforest
In a
letter to his wife sent on May 29, 1925, Percy Fawcett, an English adventurer,
reported that he was about to depart on an expedition into previously unexplored
areas of the Amazon jungle in central Brazil. His goal was to find a hidden city
that he referred to as "Z." It was Fawcett's last contact with the outside
world—he disappeared without a trace—and whether he succumbed to disease, human
violence or animal attack is still unknown.
Now, more than 80
years later, anthropologist Michael Heckenberger of the University of Florida
and his team, in collaboration with local indigenous people called the Kuikuro,
Brazilian scholars and a group of archaeologists, have discovered the remains of
pre-Columbian settlements in the Upper Xingu region of the Amazon rainforest in
Brazil's Mato Grosso state, the same area where Fawcett disappeared. Fawcett may
not have been right about the existence of a city, but the recent discovery of
the settlements—28 in all, estimated to have had a combined population of more
than 50,000—is helping to overturn the long-held theory that the Amazon
rainforest in unsuited to human habitation.
Other discoveries
are also softening the Amazon's hostile reputation. In recent years, researchers
have found indications that about 1,200 years ago, natives were able to tame
large areas of the world's largest rainforest and transform its poor soil into
lush orchards and fields that could feed tens of thousands of people. This is
one of the prerequisites for the potential development of any highly developed
urban society.
The Amazon's rainforests cover approximately 2.3
million square miles—an area about twice the size of India—and are home to the
world's richest plant and animal communities. But paradoxically, the soils here
are highly acidic and contain few nutrients. About 10 percent of the
rainforest's nutrients can be found in the soil; the rest are bound up in plants
and animals. Only plants that are perfectly adapted to draw their nutrients from
the closed cycle of life and death here can survive in the reddish or yellowish
earth that dominates this area. They take up nutrients and minerals from dead
plants and animals before the rain can wash them away.
But some
parts of the forest contain plots of Amazonian dark earth, also known at terra
preta, which contains elevated levels of nutrients and organic matter perfect
for agriculture in areas otherwise unsuitable for growing crops. The soil—a
result of refuse piles usually including charcoal, fish bones, pottery
fragments, animal bones, aches and excrement-most likely correlates with
important societal and cultural changes in the Amazon that allowed for the
development of larger towns and villages.
This fertile soil is
as deep as six and a half feet in fields sometimes as large as 50 acres.
Researchers estimate that as much as 1 percent of the Amazon rainforest is
covered with it. The fertile pockets are concentrated near river-banks, and some
of these areas are still in use for growing crops, which develop at least twice
as fast here as they do in other soils. One of the many miracles of terra preta
is that it does not become depleted but retains its fertility for
years.
Most of the plots are between 500 and 2,500 years 01d,
and some researchers suspect that inhabitants of the area created and spread the
rich soil intentionally. By exploiting terra preto's extreme fertility, natives
were able to put their previous existence as nomads behind them. Instead they
settled in villages, surrounding themselves with green fields and groves of
bountiful fruit trees.
Ancient Cities, Destroyed and
Forgotten Eduardo Neves, an archaeologist at the
University of Sac Paulo in Brazil, has been studying these vanished cultures for
17 years, and from his discoveries in the Amazon forests, he is convinced that
Amazon forests, he is convinced that the jungle was relatively densely populated
between 500 and 1,000 years ago. He suggests that at least five or six million
people may have lived in the rainforest during that period.
Settlements comprised more than 1,000 people, Neves believes, yet the
inhabitants left no mark on the archaeological record in the form of towns and
buildings. In a region where stone was not available, they could build temples
from wood, and as a result, the buildings would have long since rotted in the
humid tropical climate. But in more than 100 locations in the region where the
Rio Negro flows into the Amazon, Neves has found smaller relics of long-lost
cultures. Among the finds are ceramic objects, including decorated and glazed
figures, dishes, pots and large vessels able to hold more than 50 gallons of
liquid. According to Neves, people who live as nomads in the rainforest would
have neither made nor attempted to travel with such large containers. So the
vessels were probably used for water storage in the towns where the people
permanently settled.
The big question, then, in why such a large
civilization disappeared. Researchers speculate that when the Spanish conquered
Central and then South America in the 1500s, the natives had no innate
resistance to diseases such as measles and smallpox imported by the
conquistadors. According to Neves' calculations, populations around where the
Rio Negro meets the Amazon had mostly died off by the 1800s.
Signs of Civilization The Spanish, led by
Francisco de Orellana, first explored the Rio Xingu in 1541 and 1542. Orellana
reported seeing large settlements on the Amazon's riverbanks. When the first
scientific expeditions entered the Amazon rainforest in 1800s, they found no
evidence of the villages that Orellana had reported.
Recent
research now indicates that perhaps Orellana was not being untruthful. Which
most historians had thought was the case. With the help of his colleagues and
the Kuikuro tribe, Michael Heckenberger has combed the jungle around the upper
reaches of the Rio Xingu since 1993. Aided by satellite imagery, by 2008 he had
found evidence of 28 settlements.
They lie in an area of about
7,700 square miles and were once linked by roads and in some places by modified
canals.
The towns were all out in the same pattern; a circular
plaza with roads oriented in cardinal directions. The organization and planning
of the towns show a degree of sophistication that was equal to, or even
surpassed, the small cities of medieval Europe.
It's uncertain
how many people lived in the rainforest settlements along the Xingu, but
Heckenberger estimates that larger towns and clusters of settlements had between
1,000 and 5,000 inhabitants, for a total population of more than 50,000. In many
places, Heckenberger has found large areas of dark soil like those studied by
Neves 800 miles away. Today only 300 or so Kuikuro live in the region where
Heckenberger works, and they may be descended from the unknown peoples who built
those towns.
Fawcett set off on his last voyage in pursuit of a
lost city, and Neves and Heckenberger's work may confirm the ancient explorer's
suspicions. It seems likely higher level of development than had been indicated
by the few towns discovered during the 20th century. As research proceeds, our
assumptions about the fearsome Amazon will probably continue to be
disproved.
Questions
15-20
Do the following statements agree with the
information given in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 15-20 on your
answer sheet, write
TRUE
if the statement agrees with the
information
FALSE
if the statement contradicts the information
NOT
GIVEN if there is no information on
this