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  3. 共用题干 第三篇Egypt Felled by FamineEven ancient Egypt's mighty pyramid builders ...

共用题干 第三篇Egypt Felled by FamineEven ancient Egypt's mighty pyramid builders ...

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问题 共用题干
第三篇

Egypt Felled by Famine

Even ancient Egypt's mighty pyramid builders were powerless in the face of the famine that helped
bring down their civilization around 2180 BC. Now evidence gleaned（搜集）from mud deposited by the River
Nile suggests that a shift in climate thousands of kilometers to the south was ultimately to blame一and the
same or worse could happen today.
The ancient Egyptians depended on the Nile's annual floods to irrigate their crops.But any change in
climate that pushed the African monsoons（季风）southwards out of Ethiopia would have diminished these
floods.
Dwindling（逐渐变少；使变少）rains in the Ethiopian highlands would have meant fewer plants to
establish the soil.When rain did fall it would have washed large amounts of soil into the Blue Nile and into
Egypt,along with sediment（沉积；沉积物）from the White Nile.
The Blue Nile mud has a different isotope（同位素；核素）signature from that of the White Nile. So by
analyzing isotope differences in mud deposited in the Nile Delta,Michael Krom of Leeds University worked
out what proportion of sediment came from each branch of the river.
Krom reasons that during periods of drought,the amount of the Blue Nile mud in the river would be
relatively high.He found that one of these periods,from 4,500 to 4,200 years ago,immediately predated the
fall of the Egypt's old Kingdom.
The weakened waters would have been catastrophic for the Egyptians."Changes that affect food supply
don't have to be very large to have a ripple effect in societies,"says Bill Ryan of the Lamont Doherty Earth
Observatory（天文台）in New York.
"Similar events today could be even more devastating,"says team member Daniel Stanley,a
geoarchaeologist（地质考古学家）from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington , D. C. " Anything humans
do to shift the climate belts would have an even worse effect along the Nile system because the populations
have increased dramatically."
选项 Which of the following factors was ultimately responsible for the fall of the civilization of ancient Egypt?
A:Change of climate.
B:Famine.
C:Food.
D:Population growth.
答案A
解析文章第一段提到“公元前2180年的饥荒毁灭了古埃及文明，即使古埃及伟大的金字塔 建造者面对那场饥荒也无能为力”，故选D。
文章第一段提到“目前从尼罗河沉积的泥浆中收集的证据将这次饥荒最终归咎于数千 千米以南地区发生的气候变化”，因此气候的变化是造成古埃及文明毁灭的根本性因素，而饥 荒只是表层的因素，故选A。
第四段指出：青尼罗河的泥浆与白尼罗河的泥浆的同位素标记不同。通过分析尼罗河 三角洲的泥浆的同位素差别，利兹大学的迈克尔?克罗姆算出了来自每个支流的沉淀物的比 例，由此可推断出青尼罗河和白尼罗河是尼罗河的支流，故选D。
第五段指出：克罗姆推断，在干旱季节，河水中青尼罗河泥浆的量相对较高。他发现了 其中一个时期，即4500到4200年前，是距离古埃及王国灭亡最近的时期。由此可以推断出， 古埃及王国的毁灭紧跟在一次旱灾之后。故选A。
此处devastating为形容词，意思是“破坏性的”。A项意思是“令人沮丧的”;B项意思是 “破坏的，毁坏的”;C项意思是“击败的”;D项意思是“令人担忧的，令人发愁的”。各项中只 有B项与devastating意义相近，故选B。第5部分：补全短文
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