2012年GCT考試英語閱讀理解專項(xiàng)練習(xí)137

The New World to which Columbus came at the end of the fifteenth century was not, as we are tempted to believe, a wholly savage and untamed place. The people lacked some of the basis of European civilization, it is true, for instance, horses were unknown to them, and they had never discovered the use of wheel. But there were many accomplishments to offset such handicaps. In the political domain these original American, as early as the tenth century, were building mighty empires; and in realm of intellectual achievements, they developed a cosmographic(宇宙學(xué)的) science dealing with the constitution of the whole order of nature that was fat superior to that of Europe. It would be a mistake, however, to believe that the New World, as a whole, was an oasis of civilization in the European sense of the term. America had many faces, and to its conquerors it offered a variety of as pats. Christopher Columbus, when be went ashore on the island of San Salvador---one of the Bahamas---was greeted by the lucayas, an agricultural and artistic people who typified the "noble savage" of popular legend. The Spaniards, on the other hand, were shortly to meet a completely different sort of native, the human-eating Caribbean. Such diversity is reflected in the history of the pre-Columbian New World, a history so complex that it had taken historians almost five centuries of study in order to find out its main lines.

1. According to the first paragraph,the people living in the American before the arrival of Columbus,were rather _____.

[A] savage and primitive

[B] inferior in intelligence

[C] advanced in technology

[D] sophisticated politically

2. We can infer from the passage that before Columbus arived in the new World _____.

[A] there were no wagons pulled by horses

[B] animals were not used to carry loads

[C] polotical systems were very elementary

[D] theories on the nature of the universe were unknown

3. According to the passage,the American of the tenth century _____.

[A] has made no progress in art and agriculture

[B] had developed the science of biology

[C] were typically like the legendary "noble savage"

[D] were highly civilized

4. When the author says the "America had many faces",he probably means that the people _____.

[A] had a variety of facial characteristics

[B] came from many different racial background

[C] were sometimes barbaric but wished to be civilized

[D] were at various levels of cultural development

5. We can infer from the passage that pre-Columbian history _____.

[A] is centered on the past five centuries

[B] has been a challenge to scholars

[C] reflects a single line of development

[D] has been studied in depth only recently

答案：D A C D B