托福阅读练习：苏美尔与古代近东的首座城市

>>托福阅读素材：托福阅读练习：苏美尔与古代近东的首座城市

>>托福备考精品课程辅导

Sumer and the First Cities of the Ancient Near East

苏美尔与古代近东的首座城市

苏美尔人是最 先进入美索不达米亚平原的古代民族，对该地发展有着深远的影响。也有人认为，苏美尔文明实际是城市、城邦文明，是在世界历史上最 早建立城市的民族。那么，我们就通过TPO26中的这一篇文章，看一下苏美尔与古代近东的城市有着怎样的渊源。

1. It was here that the civilization known as Sumeremerged in its earliest form in the fifth millennium. At first sight, the plain did not appear to be a likely home for acivilization. There were few natural resources, no timber, stone, or metals. Rainfall was limited, and what water there was rushed across the plain in the annual flood of melted snow. (集中列举不利的自然条件：排除题出处。)

2. It was this that made theorganization of irrigation, particularly the building of canals to channel and preserve the water, essential. Once this was done and the silt carried down by the rivers was planted, the rewards were rich: four to fivetimes what rain-fed earth would produce. It was these conditions that allowed an elite to emerge, probably as an organizing class, and to sustain itself through the control of surplus crops. (事实信息题出处，建立联系向前找。)

3. It is difficult to isolate the factors that led to the next development—the emergence of urban settlements. The earliest, that of Eridu, about 4500 B.C.E., and Uruk, a thousand years later, center on impressive temple complexes built of mud brick.(城市的建立起初与宗教有关。)

4. An increasingly sophisticated system of administration led in about 3300 B.C.E. to the appearance of writing.(因果关系：事实信息题出处。文字出现了。)

5. The earliest script was based on logograms, witha symbol being used to express a whole word. The logograms were incised on dampclay tablets with a stylus with a wedge shape at its end. (The Romans called the shape cuneus and this gives the script its name of cuneiform.)

6. Other innovations of the late fourth millennium include the wheel, probably developed first as a more efficient way of making pottery and then transferred to transport. (段首主题句+事实信息题定位句。)

7. A major development was the discovery, again about 3000 B.C.E., that if copper, which had been known in Mesopotamia since about 3500 B.C.E., wasmixed with tin, a much harder metal, bronzewould result. (句子简化题。)

以上的文章大家都看完了吗，是不是还感觉意犹未尽没有看尽兴呢，那就快来坦途网托福考试频道寻找更多的托福考试相关文章来读吧，祝大家考试顺利哦！