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Question 10-19

      Both in what is now the eastern and the southwestern United States, the peoples of

the Archaic era (8,000-1,000 B.C) were, in a way, already adapted to beginnings of

  cultivation through their intensive gathering and processing of wild plant foods. In both

areas, there was a well-established ground stone tool technology, a method of pounding

(5)and grinding nuts and other plant foods, that could be adapted to newly cultivated foods.

  By the end of the Archaic era, people in eastern North America had domesticated certain

  native plants, including sunflowers; weeds called goosefoot, sumpweed, or marsh elder;

  and squash or gourds of some kind. These provided seeds that were important sources of carbohydrates and fat in the diet.

(10)  The earliest cultivation seems to have taken place along the river valleys of the

Midwest and the Southeast, with experimentation beginning as early as 7,000 years ago

  and domestication beginning 4,000 to 2,000 years ago. Although the term “Neolithic” is

  not used in North American prehistory, these were the first steps toward the same major subsistence changes that took place during the Neolithic (8,000-2,000 B.C.) period

(15)elsewhere in the world.

      Archaeologists debate the reasons for beginning cultivation in the eastern part of the

  continent. Although population and sedentary living were increasing at the time, there is

  little evidence that people lacked adequate wild food resources; the newly domesticated

foods supplemented a continuing mixed subsistence of hunting, fishing, and gathering

(20)wild plants, Increasing predictability of food supplies may have been a motive. It has been suggested that some early cultivation was for medicinal and ceremonial plants rather than

  for food. One archaeologist has pointed out that the early domesticated plants were all

  weedy species that do well in open, disturbed habitats, the kind that would form around

  human settlements where people cut down trees, trample the ground, deposit trash, and

(25)dig holes. It has been suggested that sunflower, sumpweed, and other plants almost

domesticated themselves, that is , they thrived in human –disturbed habitats, so humans intensively collected them and began to control their distribution. Women in the Archaic communities were probably the main experimenters with cultivation, because

  ethnoarchaeological evidence tells us that women were the main collectors of plant food

and had detailed knowledge of plants.

10. The passage mainly discusses which of the following aspects of the life of Archaic peoples?

   (A) The principal sources of food that made up their diet

(B) Their development of ground stone tool technology

(C) Their development of agriculture

(D) Their distribution of work between men and women

11. The word “these” in line 13 refers to

   (A)  seeds

   (B)  river valleys

   (C)  the Midwest and the Southeast

   (D) experimentation and domestication

12 According to the passage, when did the domestication of plants begin in North America?

   (A) 7,000 years ago

   (B) 4,000 to 2,000 years ago

   (C) Long after the Neolithic period

   (D) Before the Archaic period