新托福TPO26阅读原文及译文(三)

新托福TPO26阅读原文(三)：苏美尔与古代近东的第一个城邦TPO26-3：Sumer and the First Cities of the Ancient Near East The earliest of the city states of the ancient Near East appeared at the southern end of the Mesopotamian plain, the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq. It was here that the civilization known as Sumer emerged in its earliest form in the fifth millennium. At first sight, the plain did not appear to be a likely home for a civilization. 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. As the plain fell only 20 meters in 500 kilometers, the beds of the rivers shifted constantly. It was this that made the organization 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 five times 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.

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. In some way, the elite had associated themselves with the power of the gods. Uruk, for instance, had two patron gods—Anu, the god of the sky and sovereign of all other gods, and Inanna, a goddess of love and war—and there were others, patrons of different cities. Human beings were at their mercy. The biblical story of the Flood may originate in Sumer. In the earliest version, the gods destroy the human race because its clamor had been so disturbing to them.

It used to be believed that before 3000 B.C.E. the political and economic life of the cities was centered on their temples, but it now seems probable that the cities had secular rulers from earliest times. Within the city lived administrators, craftspeople, and merchants. (Trading was important, as so many raw materials, the semiprecious stones for the decoration of the temples, timbers for roofs, and all metals, had to be

imported.) An increasingly sophisticated system of administration led in about 3300 B.C.E. to the appearance of writing. The earliest script was based on logograms, with a symbol being used to express a whole word. The logograms were incised on damp clay 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.) Two thousand logograms have been recorded from these early centuries of writing. A more economical approach was to use a sign to express not a whole word but a single syllable. (To take an example: the Sumerian word for " head”was “sag.”Whenever a word including a syllable in which the sound “sag”was to be written, the sign for “sag" could be used to express that syllable with the remaining syllables of the word expressed by other signs.) By 2300 B.C.E. the number of signs required had been reduced to 600, and the range of words that could be expressed had widened. Texts dealing with economic matters predominated, as they always had done; but at this point works of theology, literature, history, and law also appeared.

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. A tablet engraved about 3000 B.C.E. provides the earliest known example from Sumer, a roofed boxlike sledge mounted on four solid wheels. 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., was mixed with tin, a much harder metal, bronze, would result. Although copper and stone tools continued to be used, bronze was far more successful in creating sharp edges that could be used as anything from saws and scythes to weapons. The period from 3000 to 1000 B.C.E., when the use of bronze became widespread, is normally referred to as the Bronze Age.

TPO26-3译文：苏美尔与古代近东的第一个城邦

古代西亚地区最早的城邦出现在美索不达米亚平原的最南边，这个位于底格里斯河和幼发拉底河之间如今被称为伊拉克的地区。5 000年前，正是在这里出

现了苏美尔文明的早期形态。乍看之下，这个平原并不像是一个(古老)文明的发源地。这里自然资源稀缺，木材、石料以及金属都极其匮乏。降雨量有限，当地水资源的主要来源是每年冰雪融化导致的冲过平原的洪水。因为该平原在方圆500公里内的海拔落差只有20米，所以河床(的位臵)不断地发生变化。这就使得灌溉系统的规划至关重要，特别是(如何)建造水渠以疏导和保存水资源。这些灌溉工程完成以及河流冲积下的淤泥就会沉积在此处，带来的回报相当可观：其产出量会比靠雨水滋润的土地高出4~5倍。正是这些环境条件使得在该地诞生了一个可能充当管理阶层的“精英”，这一阶层通过对余粮的控制来养活自己。

很难把导致苏美尔文明进一步发展，即城市聚居点的出现的诸多因素孤立起来看待。其中最早的，如公元前4500年的埃利都以及之后1000年出现的乌鲁克，都以用泥砖建造的令人惊叹的庙宇群为中心。通过某些方式，这些“精英”将自己与神灵之力联系在一起。以乌鲁克为例，这个城邦有两个守护神——天神以及众神之主安努和爱与战争女神伊南娜——不同的城市还有其他的守护神。人类受神灵庇佑且掌控。圣经中关于洪水的故事可能起源于苏美尔。在最早的版本中，神灵们意图毁灭人类，因为人类太过喧嚣吵闹令诸神厌烦不已。

曾经，人们认为公元前3000年之前，这些城邦的政治经济生活是以庙宇群为中心的，但是现在看来，这些城邦很可能早期就有世俗的统治者。城邦中生活着管理者们、手工艺人以及商人。(因为有如此多的原材料、装饰庙宇用的半宝石石料、建造屋顶用的木材以及所有的金属都必须进口，贸易就显得很重要了。)一个日益复杂的管理系统促使了书写在公元前3300年左右的诞生。最早的手写体以缩记符为基础，用符号来表达一个词。这些字符是用楔形状的铁笔，被雕刻在潮湿的陶土版上(因此字符末端也呈楔形)。(古罗马人把这种形状称之为楔形

(cuneus)并把这种手写体称之为楔形文字(cuneiform)。)这些早期的书写文字记录了2000个这样的字符。后来出现一种更加方便的书写方法：使用一个符号去代表一个音节而非整个单词。(例如，在苏美尔语中表示“头”的词是“sag”。每当一个词中含有“sag”这个音节，书写时都会写上“sag”，“sag”被用于表达这一发音，而该词其他部分的发音则会用其他的符号来表达。)到公元前2300年，书写所需用到的符号数量下降到了600个。单词表达的范围却扩大了。有关经济方面的文本占主导地位，它们历来如此;但同时，关于神学、文学、历史和法律的作品也孕育而生了。

4000年前的晚期的发明还包括轮子，这一发明最初可能是用于提高陶器的生产效率的，而后被应用到交通运输上。雕刻于约公元前3000年、来自苏美尔的一块陶土板上提供了已知最早的例证：一个带顶棚的箱状雪橇被安装在四个实心的轮子上。一个重大进展同样也发生在约公元前3000年，铜在约公元前3500年就为美索不达米亚人所熟知，如果将铜和锡混合在一起，就可以制造出一种更坚硬的金属——青铜。虽然铜制和石器还在继续被使用，但是青铜器更受欢迎，因为它可以被铸成锋利的边缘应用到锯、镰刀和武器等各方面。公元前3000年到公元前1000年青铜器被广泛使用的这一时期通常被称为青铜时代。

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托福阅读难句专业翻译一

托福阅读难句专业翻译一 1. Wearing masks and costumes, they often impersonated other people, animals, or supernatural beings, and mined the desired effect – success in hunt or battle, the coming rain, the revival of the Sun – as an actor might. 戴着面具身着盛装的人们，经常扮演各种其他人物、动物或超自然生灵，并且作为一个扮演者所能做的，就是期盼一个在狩猎或战役中获胜、降雨的来临，阳光的重现的结果。 2.But these factors do not account for the interesting question of how there came to be such a concentration of pregnant ichthyosaurs in a particular place very close to their time of giving birth. 但是这些事实不能解释这个令人感兴趣的问题，就是为什么在一个特殊的靠近他们出生的地方如此的集中了这么多怀孕的鱼龙。 3.A series of mechanical improvements continuing well into the nineteenth century, including the introduction of pedals to sustain tone or to soften it, the perfection of a metal frame, and steel wire of the finest quality, finally produced an instruments capable of myriad tonal effects from the most delicate harmonies to an almost orchestral fullness of sound, from a liquid, singing tone to a ship, percussive brilliance. 十九世纪一系列持续的机械进步，包括踏板的传入、金属结构的完善和钢丝最完美的质量，最后产生了一种能容纳无数音调-从最精致的和弦到一个成熟管弦的声音或从一个清澈的歌声到辉煌的敲击乐的效 果-的乐器。 4.Accustomed though we are to speaking of the films made before 1972 as “silent”, the film has never been, in the full sense of the word, silent. 虽然我们习惯于谈到1972年以前的电影是无声的，但用一句完全感性的话来说电影从来就不是没有声音的。 5.For a number of years the selection of music for each film program rested entirely in the hands of the conductor or leader of the orchestra, and very often the principal qualifications for holding such a position was not skill or taste so much as the ownership of a large personal library of musical pieces. 多年以来电影音乐的选择程序完全掌握在导演和音乐督导手中，通常拥有这些权力的主要资格并非是自身的技艺和品味而更多的是因为拥有大量的个人音乐素材库。 6.Rather, they were made of a top layer of woolen or glazed worsted wool fabric, consisting of smooth, compact yarn from long wool fibers, dyed dark blue, green, or brown with a bottom layer of a coarser woolen material, either natural or a shade of yellow.

TOEFL阅读高难度句子举例解析及翻译

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新托福TPO11阅读原文及译文(一)

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托福阅读真题100篇原文+题目(一)

托福阅读真题100篇原文+题目(一) 托福阅读在备考的过程中，大家可以多找一些真题来进行练习 PASSAGE 1 By the mid-nineteenth century, the term icebox had entered the American language, but icewas still only beginning to affect the diet of ordinary citizens in the United States. The ice tradegrew with the growth of cities. Ice was used in hotels, taverns, and hospitals, and by someforward-looking city dealers in fresh meat, fresh fish, and butter. After the Civil War (1861-1865),as ice was used to refrigerate freight cars, it also came into household use. Even before 1880, halfthe ice sold in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and one-third of that sold in Boston andChicago, went to families for their own use. This had become possible because a new householdconvenience, the icebox, a precursor of the modern refrigerator, had been invented. Making an efficient icebox was not as easy as we might now suppose. In the early nineteenthcentury, the knowledge of the physics of heat, which was essential to a science of refrigeration,was rudimentary. The commonsense notion that the best icebox was one that prevented the icefrom melting was of course mistaken, for it was the melting of the ice that performed the cooling.Nevertheless, early efforts to economize ice included wrapping the ice in blankets, which kept theice from doing its job. Not until near the end of the nineteenth century did inventors achieve thedelicate balance of insulation and circulation needed for an efficient icebox. But as early as 1803, an ingenious Maryland farmer, Thomas Moore, had been on the righttrack. He owned a farm about twenty miles outside the city of Washington, for which the villageof Georgetown was the market center. When he used an icebox of his own design to transport hisbutter to market, he found that customers would pass up the rapidly melting stuff

托福阅读精选45句长难句翻译

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托福写作翻译句子练习

托福写作翻译句子练习集团文件发布号：（9816-UATWW-MWUB-WUNN-INNUL-DQQTY-

1. 旅游业不但给政府带来税收而且给很多人提供了就业机会。 2. 赌博不但对健康有害，而且会影响家庭和睦。 3. 打工不但能让学生赚零花钱，而且还能让他们学到人际交往的能力。 4. 现在很多学校的校服不但贵，而且还难看，质量不好。 5. 政府不但要多建一些公路，还要鼓励人们多使用公交车。 6. 老人们既不需要很多的钱，也不需要很大的房子，他们最需要的是子女的关心和照顾。 7. 我喜欢旅游，但是，我既没有钱，也没有时间。 8. 在老人院，老人既能够接受到医疗，又能够找到很多有共同话题，共同兴趣的的伙伴。 9. 缴税既是有有利于国家，也是有利于个人。因为政府的税收主要用于公共服务，这个是每个人都会受益的。 10. 打电脑游戏既浪费时间，又有害视力。

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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

新托福TPO19阅读原文及译文(一)

新托福TPO19阅读原文(一)：The Roman Army's Impact on Britain TPO19-1：The Roman Army's Impact on Britain In the wake of the Roman Empire's conquest of Britain in the first century A.D., a large number of troops stayed in the new province, and these troops had a considerable impact on Britain with their camps, fortifications, and participation in the local economy. Assessing the impact of the army on the civilian population starts from the realization that the soldiers were always unevenly distributed across the country. Areas rapidly incorporated into the empire were not long affected by the military. Where the army remained stationed, its presence was much more influential. The imposition of a military base involved the requisition of native lands for both the fort and the territory needed to feed and exercise the soldiers' animals. The imposition of military rule also robbed local leaders of opportunities to participate in local government, so social development was stunted and the seeds of disaffection sown. This then meant that the military had to remain to suppress rebellion and organize government. Economic exchange was clearly very important as the Roman army brought with it very substantial spending power. Locally a fort had two kinds of impact. Its large population needed food and other supplies. Some of these were certainly brought from long distances, but demands were inevitably placed on the local area. Although goods could be requisitioned, they were usually paid for, and this probably stimulated changes in the local economy. When not campaigning, soldiers needed to be occupied; otherwise they represented a potentially dangerous source of friction and disloyalty. Hence a writing tablet dated 25 April tells of 343 men at one fort engaged on tasks like shoemaking, building a bathhouse, operating kilns, digging clay, and working lead. Such activities had a major effect on the local area, in particular with the construction of infrastructure such as roads, which improved access to remote areas. Each soldier received his pay, but in regions without a developed economy there was initially little on which it could be spent. The pool of excess cash rapidly stimulated a thriving economy outside fort gates. Some of the demand for the services

托福TPO52 三篇阅读翻译!!倒序!!

3.Early Food Production in Sub-Saharan Africa 在更新世末期（大约公元前10000年），食品生产的技术可能已经在非洲西部和中部 的热带雨林的边缘地区使用，在那里非洲山药等根茎型植物的普遍使用，使人们认识到自己种植食物的好处。这种原始形式的“蔬菜栽培”（块根植物和树本作物的种植）可 能已经成为了一种经济传统，基于这种传统，夏季降水谷类作物的种植也采用嫁接的办法，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。随着撒哈拉 沙漠在公元前5000年之后干涸，游牧民族（牧民）向南沿着主要河道迁移到了西非和苏丹的热带草原地带。 直到公元前3000年，正如埃及文明发源于尼罗河流域一样，这些游牧民族定居在了离南部很远的东非高原地区的中心。东非高原是理想的养牛场所，如今也是像马赛人（肯尼亚和坦桑尼亚的游牧狩猎民族）这样的有名的牧牛民族的家园。直到大约公元前3300 年，第一批牧牛人出现时，高地上居住着狩猎采集者，他们居住在平原附近的山区。和其他地方的情况一样，在非洲，牛是饲养起来很费劲的动物。如果要饲养各种规模 的牛群的话，这些牛至少每24小时就需要喝一次水，而且需要大片的牧场。饲养的秘 诀在于仔细挑选放牧场地，尤其是在季节性降雨会导致全年牧草质量有明显差异的环境中。即使是规模适中的牛群也需要大片的土地和相当大的可移动性。为了获得这样的土地，经常需要牛群移动相当远的距离，甚至是从夏季牧场移动到冬季牧场。同时，放牧人不得不让牲畜在有舌蝇出没的地带吃草。唯一能够保护人类和牲畜，不患上昏 睡病（一种由舌蝇传播的疾病）的办法，就是避免在这些地区定居或者放牧——对非 洲东部和中部地区的牧民来说，这个办法严重地限制了他们的迁移。结果是，小牛群迅速地向南部地区迁移，在那里人们可以放牧。在谷类农业占领最南部的撒哈拉沙漠之前，非洲东部和南部稀树草原地区的一些依靠狩猎和采集生活的人可能已经饲养了牛群和其他家养动物，他们将牲畜作为礼物交换，或者通过劫掠放牧的邻居，来获得这些牲畜。 和主流观点相反：没有所谓的“纯粹”的牧民，即只依靠牧群生存的社会。撒哈拉沙漠地 区为了躲避干旱而向南迁移的牧民，几乎肯定的是他们也在种植高粱、小米和其他热带降雨作物。到公元前1500年，谷类作物已经广泛分布于整个撒哈拉沙漠南部的稀树 草原带。小型农业社区遍布在草原和西非东部森林的边界处，这些小型农业社区都依赖于所谓的轮耕法。这种形式的农业包括清理林地，焚烧清理过的地块上的那些被砍倒的灌木丛，将灰烬混合在土壤中，然后在这些制备好的土地上耕种。几年后，土地耗尽了养分，于是农民们继续前进，开辟新的林地，让原来的荒地休耕。轮耕法，也 被称为“刀耕火种”，高度适用于没有犁的稀树草原地区的农民，因为这种方法能够消耗 最少的能量。

新托福TPO26阅读原文及译文(一)

新托福TPO26阅读原文(一)：能源与工业革命 TPO26-1：nergy and the Industrial Revolution For years historians have sought to identify crucial elements in the eighteenth-century rise in industry, technology, and economic power known as the Industrial Revolution, and many give prominence to the problem of energy. Until the eighteenth century, people relied on energy derived from plants as well as animal and human muscle to provide power. Increased efficiency in the use of water and wind helped with such tasks as pumping, milling, or sailing. However, by the eighteenth century, Great Britain in particular was experiencing an energy shortage. Wood, the primary source of heat for homes and industries and also used in the iron industry as processed charcoal, was diminishing in supply. Great Britain had large amounts of coal; however, there were not yet efficient means by which to produce mechanical energy or to power machinery. This was to occur with progress in the development of the steam engine. In the late 1700s James Watt designed an efficient and commercially viable steam engine that was soon applied to a variety of industrial uses as it became cheaper to use. The engine helped solve the problem of draining coal mines of groundwater and increased the production of coal needed to power steam engines elsewhere. A rotary engine attached to the steam engine enabled shafts to be turned and machines to be driven, resulting in mills using steam power to spin and weave cotton. Since the steam engine was fired by coal, the large mills did not need to be located by rivers, as had mills that used water- driven machines. The shift to increased mechanization in cotton production is apparent in the import of raw cotton and the sale of cotton goods. Between 1760 and 1850, the amount of raw cotton imported increased 230 times. Production of British cotton goods increased sixtyfold, and cotton cloth became Great Britain’s most important product, accounting for one-half of all exports. The success of the steam engine resulted in increased demands for coal, and the consequent increase in coal production was made possible as the steam-powered pumps drained water from the ever-deeper coal seams found below the water table.