9月5托福原题超详细回忆

牛魔王机经UID: 3653210

Sumerian Contribution

  Before about 4500 b.c., lower Mesopotamia, the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers just north of the Persian Gulf, was much less densely populated than other inhabited regions of the Near and Middle East. Its marshy soil, subject to annual inundations (floods) from the rivers, was not suited to the primitive hoe culture of early agriculture, in which land was cultivated without domestic animals or beasts. Moreover, the land was virtually treeless and lacked building stone and mineral resources. During the next thousand years, however, this unpromising area became the seat of Sumer, the first great civilization known to history, with large concentrations of people, bustling cities, monumental architecture, and a wealth of religious, artistic, and literary traditions that influenced other ancient civilizations for thousands of years The exact sequence of events that led to this culmination is unknown, but it is clear that the economic basis of this first civilization lay in its highly productive agriculture.
  The natural fertility of the rich black soil was renewed annually by the silt left from the spring floods of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Harnessing its full productive power, however, required an elaborate system of drainage and irrigation, which in turn required a large and well-disciplined workforce as well as skilled management and supervision. The latter were supplied by a class of priests and warnors wtio ruled a large population of peasants and artisans Through taxation and other means the rulers extracted wealth from the population and then used it to construct temples and other public buildings and to create works of art That gave them (or some of them) the leisure to perfect the other refinements of civilization.
The rise of civilization brought with it a far more complex division of labor and system of economic organization Full-time artisans specialized in the manufacture of textiles and pottery, metalworking, and other crafts. The professions of architecture, engineering, and medicine, among others, were born. Weights and measures were systematized, mathematics was invented, and primitive forms of science emerged. Since Sumer was virtually devoid of natural resources other than its rich soil, it traded with other people, thereby contributing to the diffusion of Sumerian civilization. The scarcity of stone, for tools as well as for buildings, probably hastened the adoption of copper and bronze. Copper, at least, was already known before the rise of Sumerian civilization, but lack of demand for it among the Stone Age peasant villages inhibited its widespread use In Sumerian cities, on the other hand, stone imported by sea through the Persian Gulf from Oman and downriver from the mountains of Anatolia and the Caucasus had to compete with imported copper, and the latter proved more economical and effective for a variety of uses Thereafter metallurgy, the technology of separating metals from their ores and purifying them, was regarded as one of the hallmarks of civilization.

lily1125UID: 3421418

这个 帖子肿么没人回复，这么详细

lily1125UID: 3421418

原来就是一篇阅读......