托福真题：2012年8月19日新托福考试阅读真题

考试日期

2012.08.19

Passage 1

Title:

the first eye

大致内容

眼睛的进化史，有个时期（P开头）的动物化石非常少，导致没有证据证明眼睛的进化，直到哪一处出土的化石极具重要性，发现眼睛其实进化很长时间了。

Passage 2

Title:

古代的石头工具和陶器

大致内容

考古学家通过自己做工具来解释古代工具上的mark, 虽然能解读一些，但仍然很ambiguous（词汇题，选more than one meaning）。后来出现了陶器，而且是在很多地方出现，各个地方的陶器有不同的意义，有的象征财富和地位，有的用于宗教等等。

扩展阅读

Chinese Pottery

China has one of the world's oldest continuous civilizations—despite invasions and occasional foreign rule. A country as vast as China with so long-lasting a civilization has a complex social and visual history, within which pottery and porcelain play a major role.

The function and status of ceramics in China varied from dynasty to dynasty, so they may be utilitarian, burial, trade-collectors', or even ritual objects, according to their quality and the era in which they were made. The ceramics fall into three broad types—earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain—for vessels, architectural items such as roof tiles, and modeled objects and figures. In addition, there was an important group of sculptures made for religious use, the majority of which were produced in earthenware.

The earliest ceramics were fired to earthenware temperatures, but as early as the fifteenth century B.C., high-temperature stonewares were being made with glazed surfaces. During the Six Dynasties period (AD 265-589), kilns in north China were producing high-fired ceramics of good quality. Whitewares produced in Hebei and Henan provinces from the seventh to the tenth centuries evolved into the highly prized porcelains of the Song dynasty (AD. 960-1279), long regarded as one of the high points in the history of China's ceramic industry. The tradition of religious sculpture extends over most historical periods but is less clearly delineated than that of stonewares or porcelains, for it embraces the old custom of earthenware burial ceramics with later religious images and architectural ornament. Ceramic products also include lead-glazed tomb models of the Han dynasty, three-color lead-glazed vessels and figures of the Tang dynasty, and Ming three-color temple ornaments, in which the motifs were outlined in a raised trail of slip—as well as the many burial ceramics produced in imitation of vessels made in materials of higher intrinsic value.

Trade between the West and the settled and prosperous Chinese dynasties introduced new forms and different technologies. One of the most far-reaching examples is the impact of the fine ninth-century AD. Chinese porcelain wares imported into the Arab world. So admired were these pieces that they encouraged the development of earthenware made in imitation of porcelain and instigated research into the method of their manufacture. From the Middle East the Chinese acquired a blue pigment—a purified form of cobalt oxide unobtainable at that time in China—that contained only a low level of manganese. Cobalt ores found in China have a high manganese content, which produces a more muted blue-gray color. In the seventeenth century, the trading activities of the Dutch East India Company resulted in vast quantities of decorated Chinese porcelain being brought to Europe, which stimulated and influenced the work of a wide variety of wares, notably Delft. The Chinese themselves adapted many specific vessel forms from the West, such as bottles with long spouts, and designed a range of decorative patterns especially for the European market.

Just as painted designs on Greek pots may seem today to be purely decorative, whereas in fact they were carefully and precisely worked out so that at the time, their meaning was clear, so it is with Chinese pots. To twentieth-century eyes, Chinese pottery may appear merely decorative, yet to the Chinese the form of each object and its adornment had meaning and significance. The dragon represented the emperor, and the phoenix, the empress; the pomegranate indicated fertility, and a pair of fish, happiness; mandarin ducks stood for wedded bliss; the pine tree, peach, and crane are emblems of long life; and fish leaping from waves indicated success in the civil service examinations. Only when European decorative themes were introduced did these meanings become obscured or even lost.

From early times pots were used in both religious and secular contexts. The imperial court commissioned work and in the Yuan dynasty (A.D. 1279-1368) an imperial ceramic factory was established at Jingdezhen. Pots played an important part in some religious ceremonies. Long and often lyrical descriptions of the different types of ware exist that assist in classifying pots, although these sometimes confuse an already large and complicated picture.（TPO10-2）

Passage 3

Title:

行星的卫星

大致内容

土星的两个卫星，一颗（G打头的）17天转一圈，离土星最远，气温黑夜在-140度，科学家认为mantle冻成冰一样硬，但通过伽利略号望远镜发现好像并不完全是。还有一个卫星，因为离土星最近，所以有地质活动，形成了峡谷山脉，最后一段问两者的区别，最大区别（有题）。（最后一题是分别选出两颗卫星的特点，前面两点，后面三点）

扩展阅读

Europa is the smallest of planet Jupiter’s four largest moons and the second moon out from Jupiter. Until 1979, it was just another astronomy textbook statistic. Then came the close-up images obtained by the exploratory spacecraft Voyager 2, and within days, Europa was transformed-in our perception, at least-into one of the solar system’s most intriguing worlds. The biggest initial surprise was the almost total lack of detail, especially from far away. Even at close range, the only visible features are thin, kinked brown lines resembling cracks in an eggshell. And this analogy is not far off the mark.

The surface of Europa is almost pure water ice, but a nearly complete absence of craters indicates that Europa’s surface ice resembles Earth’s Antarctic ice cap. The eggshell analogy may be quite accurate since the ice could be as little as a few kilometers thick –a true shell around what is likely a subsurface liquid ocean that, in turn, encases a rocky core. The interior of Europa has been kept warm over the eons by tidal forces generated by the varying gravitational tugs of the other big moons as they wheel around Jupiter. The tides on Europa pull and relax in an endless cycle. The resulting internal heat keeps what would otherwise be ice melted almost to the surface. The cracklike marks on Europa’s icy face appear to be fractures where water or slush oozes from below.

Soon after Voyager 2’s encounter with Jupiter in 1979, when the best images of Europa were obtained, researchers advanced the startling idea that Europa’s subsurface ocean might harbor life. Life processes could have begun when Jupiter was releasing a vast store of internal heat. Jupiter’s early heat was produced by the compression of the material forming the giant planet. Just as the Sun is far less radiant today than the primal Sun, so the internal heat generated by Jupiter is minor compared to its former intensity. During this warm phase, some 4.6 billion years ago, Europa’s ocean may have been liquid right to the surface, making it a crucible for life.（老托福2003.10-1）

点评：
本次新托福阅读重复2011.07.08北美考题。
词汇题：aggregations, designation, lateral, signature, little short miraculous等。