IV. Reading Comprehension ( 60 points)
Directions:There are five reading passages in this part. Each passage is followed by fourquestions. For each question there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Chooseone best answer and blacken the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet.
Passage One
The discovery of a dwarfed (矮个的)"human being" who lived in Flores, Indonesia, up to 18,000 years ago is changing the way we think about the human family. This "Flores Human"wasthree foot tall and her brain was smaller than that of the average chimp(黑猩猩) ,yet she and herrelatives apparently lived fully human lives. They seem to have made tools, worked together to findfd and cook it, and perhaps even burried their dead with ceremony.
It was a major surprise to find tools associated with the new human family member. The tools arelike those formerly seen only with European fossils (化石)from our own species;Homo sapiens (智人) ;and the oldest of them were made 9,400 years ago. Homo sapiens is thought to have arrived inthe island about 4,000 years ago, much too late to be responsible for the tools. If this tiny humanmade the tools, then the inside structure (结构)of its brain must have been more like our own than a chimp's, despite being just a third the size of ours.
This "new human" was suspected to be a dwarfed branch of Homo erectus( 直立人). When crea-tures are separated in regions with rare resources but few enemies, being big is a disadvantage, andevolution tends to shrink them, a process known as island dwafng. Could natural selection make a hu-man smaller while keeping--even improving--mental ability? Quite possibly, believes ChristopherWills of the University of California.
Has the "Flores Human" even shown the ability of language? "I find it difficult to imagine thatpeople could make tools, use fire, and kill large animals without fairly advanced communication," Willssays. Did "Flores Human" possess the basic components of human culture--such as the burying of thedead with ceremony? Emiliano Bruner of the Italian Institute points out that Indonesia's hot,wet envi-ronment is bad for fossilization. It is reasonable to assume,he says,that the 18,000-year-old bones ofthe most complete Flores woman were well-preserved because she was buried with special care.
( ) 36. According to the passage, it is believed that "Flores Human"__
A. was dwarfed by its enemies
B. could use language
C. left a lot of fossils in the hot and wet environment
D. reached Flores 40,000 years ago
答案：B
( ) 37. According to the passage," Flores Human"__
A. lived a partly human life
B. was a branch of Homo sapiens
C. used tools before Homo sapiens arrived
D. had a brain as large as a common chimp's
答案：C
( ) 38. The underlined part "this tiny human" in Paragraph 2 refers to __
A. a chimp
B. Flores Human
C. Homo sapiens
D. Homo erectus
答案：B
( ) 39. This passage mainly talks about __
A. the tools made by "Flores Human"
B. the language used by "Flores Human"
C. the evolution of "Flores Human"
D. the major surprising findings about "Flores Human"
答案：D
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