托福考试阅读加试之苏美尔文明(版本一)

READING1.苏美尔文明Mesopotamia的背景：美索不达米亚亚洲西南部 Tigris 和Euphrates 两河流域间的古王国,美索不达米亚古代西南亚介于底格里斯河和幼发拉底河之间的一个地区，位于现在的伊拉克境内。

可能在公元前5000年以前就开始有人在此定居。

这一地区孕育了众多的人类早期文明，其中包括苏美尔文明、阿卡德文明、巴比伦文明和亚述文明。

蒙古侵略者在公元1258年破坏了该地区发达的灌溉系统之后，这一地区的重要性就此减小。

其中巴比伦文明以其成就斐然而成为两河流域文明的典范，古巴比伦王国与古埃及、古印度和中国构成了人们所说的世界四大文明古国。

尼罗河文明：发源于非洲尼罗河（Nile）流域，又称古埃及文明，其历史也可追溯到公元前4000年。

公元前3100年左右，上埃及国王美尼斯统一上下埃及，开始了史称的埃及王朝时期，也就代表了古埃及文明的正式开始。

美索布达米娅文化Sumerian civilization第一段：美文化和埃及文化同时，但因为美的地域限制一直没有统一。

（有题）平原，经常受到入侵，四周沙漠，生活好，不统一。

开头，it isastonishing that...两个地方在同一时间产生了两种文化，并且互有交流。

一个是尼罗河的埃及文化，一个是两河流域的M地文化。

埃及文化仰仗尼罗河，河水孕育了富饶的土地，两岸有沙漠作为自然屏障。

M地不一样，河水土地narrow and shallow,周围没有起保护作用的天然屏障第二段：直到一种S人来统一，说了他们的来源和历史，他们建立了一种s文化第三段：S文化的实物遗迹少，这又两方面原因：一当地石料不丰富二当地人没有厚葬的习惯。

所以对S的了解主要基于文字。

当初美索不达米亚的居民生活好像挺好的，所以一直没有人提出统一的想法，很久以后才有，可是由于大量的花费在战争上什么的，很快就覆灭了。

由于当时的环境条件，那里的人们都用泥土/木头盖房子，所以和埃及不一样，现在我们没找到什么当初留下的建筑物。

加试原文及答案【转自亦鸥网yeeaoo】达尔文+苏美尔+鸟类迁徙+拉格泰姆+大王花+MM丢ID卡+神经元+浪漫主义达尔文进化论Observing Natural SelectionWitnessing natural selection would not have seemed possible to Darwin because he assumed natural selection was too slow and gradual for our short-term minds to perceive.Yet later biologists have been able to witness flashes of evolutionary change.In the late1980s,for example,biologist David Reznick began to use the guppies that swim in the streams of Trinidad forests in natural experiment.At lower elevations these guppies face the assault of predatory fishes,but the ones in higher waters live in peace because few of the predators can move upstream past the waterfalls and craggy rocks.Like all animals,guppies have a timetable for their lives-how long they take to reach sexual maturity how fast they grow during that time,how long they live as adults.Theoretical biologists have predicted that the life history of animals can evolve if mutations that alter it bring the animals more reproductive success.Reznick put their predictions to the test.In ponds with a lot of predators,guppies that grow fast should be more successful than slow-growing ones.With the threat of death hanging over a guppy,it will grow as quickly as possible so that it can start mating as soon as possible and have as many offspring as possible.Of course,the strategy comes with a heavy price.By growing so quickly,a guppy may shorten its own natural life span,and by quickly giving birth to babies,female guppy cannot take time to support her offspring with energy,which put them at risk of dying young.But Reznick reasoned,that the threat,of an early death offset by other risk..To see whether this trade-off was real,Reznick relocated guppies that were being terrorized in the downstream by putting them in pools with relatively few predators.Eleven years in these conditions produced guppies that were,on average,in less of a rush.They took10percent longer to mature than their ancestors and were over10percent heavier by the time they were fully grown.They were also laying smaller broods of eggs.but each of the new guppies that hatched from those was bigger.nSometimes nature runs evolutionary experiments of its own without any help from humans whatsoever.nIn1973 Peter and Rosemary Grant,husband-and-wife biologists,arrived on the Galapagos Islands to study the effects of natural selection on the birds.Most years on the Galapagos,the weather follows a standard pattern.nFor the first five months of the years it is hot and rainy,followed by a cool,dry period.nBut in1977the wet season never came.A periodic disturbance of the Pacific ocean called La Nina altered weather patterns over the Galapagos,causing a disastrous drought.On Daphne Island,where the Grants worked,the drought was lethal.Out of the1,200medium ground finches Geospiza fortis that lived on the Island,more that1,000died.But the Grants discovered that the decimation was not random.G fortis lives mainly on seeds,which it cracks with its strong beak.Small G.fontis can break only small seeds,but larger birds have beaks that are strong enough to break big ones.The drought had lingered for a few months,the small finches ran out of small seeds and began dying off.But the big finches managed to survive, because they could eat seeds that the smaller ones couldn't get to.(In particular,they depended on a plant called caltrop,which grows spiked shells to protect it seeds).The survivors on the1977drought mated in1978,and the Grants could see evolution's mark on their offspring.A new generation of G.fortis was born,and the Grants'student Peter Boag discovered that,on average,their beaks were4percent larger than those of the previous generation.The big-beaked finches,which had fared better during the drought had put their trait to their offspring,altered the profile of the population.In the years since the drought the finches changed.In1983,for example,there was a season of heavy rain, abundant seeds favored finches with smaller beaks and Grants found that by1985their average size had dropper5 percent.The finches can change quickly,but it seems that are swinging back and forth like a pendulum.中文大意：关于natural selection，Darwin认为是长期且渐进的。

Sumerian CivilizationIt is an astonishing fact that human civilization should have emerged into the light of history in two separate places at just about the same time. Between 3500 and 3000 B.C. when Egypt was being united under pharaonic rule other great civilization arose in Mesopotamia the “land between the rivers.” And for close to three thousand years, the two rival centers retained their distinct characters, even though they had contact with each other from their earliest beginnings, and their destinies were interwoven in many ways. The pressure that forced the inhabitants of both regions to abandon the pattern of Neolithic village life may well have been the same. But the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, unlike that of the Nile, is not a narrow fertile strip protected by desert on either side. It resembles a wide, shallow trough with few natural defenses, crisscrossed by two great rivers and their tributaries, and is easily encroached upon from any direction.Thus the facts of geography tended to discourage the idea of uniting the entire Mesopotamian area under a single head. Rulers who had this ambition did not appear, so far as we know, until about one thousand years after the beginning of Mesopotamian civilization, and they succeeded in carrying it out only for brief periods and at the cost of almost continuous warfare. As a consequence, the political history of ancient Mesopotamia has no underlying theme of the sort that divine kingship provides for Egypt. Local rivalries foreign incursions, the sudden upsurge and equally sudden collapse of military power those are its substance. Against such a disturbed background, the continuity of cultural and artistic traditions seems all the more remarkable. This common heritage is very largely the creation of the founders of Mesopotamian Civilization, whom we call Sumerians after the region of Sumer, which they inhabited, near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates.The origin of the Sumerians remains obscure. Their language is unrelated to any other known tongue. Sometimes before 4,000 B.C. they came to southern Mesopotamia, from Persia, and there, within the next thousand years, they founded a number of city-states and developed their distinctive form of writing in cuneiform (wedge-shaped) characters on clay tablets. Unfortunately, the tangible remains of Sumerian civilization are extremely scanty compared to those of ancient Egypt. Building stone being unavailable in Mesopotamia, the Sumerians used mud brick and wood, so that almost nothing is left of their architecture except the foundation. Nor did they share the Egyptians' concern with the hereafter, although some richly endowed tombs in the shape of vaulted chambers below ground from the early dynastic period have been found in the city of Ur. Our knowledge of Sumerian Civilization thus depends very largely on chance fragments brought to light by excavation, including vast numbers of inscribed clay tablets. Yet we have learned enough to form a general picture of this vigorous, inventive, and disciplined people. Each Sumerian city-state had its own local god, who was regarded as its king and owner. It also had a human ruler, the steward of the divine sovereign, who led the people in serving the deity. The local god, in return, was expected to plead the causeof his subjects among his fellow deities who controlled the forces of nature such as wind and weather, water, fertility, and the heavenly bodies. Nor was the idea of divine ownership treated as a mere pious fiction.The god was quite literally believed to own not only the territory of the city-state but also the labor power of the population and its products. All these were subject to his commands, transmitted to the people by his human steward. The result was an economic syste m that has been dubbed “theocratic socialism”, a planned society whose administrative center was the temple. The temple controlled the pooling of labor and resources for communal enterprises, such as the building of dikes or irrigation ditches, and it collected and distributed a considerable part of the harvest. All this required the keeping of detailed written records. Hence, we need not be surprised to find that the texts of early Sumerian inscriptions deal very largely with economic and administrative rather than religious matters, although writing was a priestly privilege.。

新托福经典加试阅读——《苏美尔文明》超级完整版Sumerian CivilizationParagraph OneQ1 选C原文It is an astonishing fact that human civilization should haveemerged into the light of history in two separate places at justabout the same time.题干 1. The word astonishing in the passage is closest in meaningto(A) important(B) unknown(C) amazing(D) interesting解析这道题目属于“熟词熟义”题。

Q2 选C原文Between 3500 and 3000 B.C. when Egypt was being united underpharaohic rule, another great civilization arose in Mesopotamia,the “land between the rivers”.题干 2. Which of the sentences below best expresses the essentialinformation in the highlighted sentence in the passage?Incorrect choices change the meaning in important ways orleave outessential information.(A) A great civilization arose in Mesopotamia, the “land betweenthe rivers” under pharaonicrule.(B) Egypt and another great civilization both developed inMesopotamia between 3500 and3000 B.C.(C) A great civilization arose in Mesopotamia between 3500 and 3000B.C. at the same timethat ancient Egypt was being united.(D) As Egypt was being united under pharaonic rule, a greatcivilization arose there.解析按照无词阅读法“一一对应”的原则，原文中有一个关键信息“between 3500 and 3000B.C.”，只有B和C有，从而立刻排除A和D。

TPO63阅读-1The Sumerians and Regional Interdependence原文 (1)译文 (3)题目 (4)答案 (8)背景知识 (9)原文The Sumerians and Regional Interdependence①With the emergence of the Sumerian civilization in about 3100 B.C., a new era in human experience began-one in which the economic, political, and social mechanisms created by humans began to affect the lives of cities, towns, and villages located hundreds and perhaps thousands of miles apart. In a real sense, a rapidly evolving world system linked hundreds of Southwest Asian societies all the way from modern-day eastern Iran to the eastern Mediterranean and the Nile Valley. This nascent world system developed as a result of insatiable demands for nonlocal raw materials in different ecological regions where societies were developing along very similar evolutionary tracks toward greater complexity. In each area,social developments and technological innovations were triggered not only by basic economic needs but also by the competitive instincts of newly urbanized elites, who used lavish display and exotic luxuries to reaffirm their social prestige and authority. Sumerian civilization is a mirror of this developing regional interdependence.②Sumerian civilization came into being as a result of a combination of environmental and social factors. The Sumerians lived in a treeless, lowland environment with fertile soils but no metal, little timber, and no semiprecious stones. They obtained these commodities by trading with areas where such items were in abundance. Sumerian rulers controlled not only large grain surpluses that could be moved in river craft but also a flourishing industry in textiles and other luxuries. The trade moved up and down the great rivers,especially the placid Euphrates. Ancient overland trade routes linked the Tigris and Euphrates rivers with the distant cities and ports in the Levant (eastern Mediterranean area). Even as early as Sumerian times, caravans of pack animals joined Anatolia to the Euphrates, the Levant to Mesopotamia, and Mesopotamia to isolated towns on thedistant Iranian highlands to the east.③Bronze technology produced tougher-edged, more durable artifacts that could be used for more arduous day-to-day tasks. One resulting innovation was the metal- and wood- tipped plow, an implement dragged by oxen that was capable of digging a far deeper furrow than the simple hoes and digging sticks of earlier times. The plow was developed as irrigation agriculture assumed greater importance in Sumer, and the combined innovations increased agricultural yields dramatically. These yields not only supported larger urban and rural populations but also provided a means for the rulers of city-states both in Sumer and farther afield to exercise more control over food surpluses and over the wealth obtained by long-distance exchange.④An intricate and ever-changing system of political alliances and individual obligations of friendship linked community with community and city-state with city-state. In time, financial and logistical checks and balances were maintained by an administrative system based in the temples to bring order to what had begun as informal bartering. Specialized merchants began to handle such commodities as copper and lapis lazuli, a semiprecious stone. There was wholesaling and contracting, loans were floated, and individual profit was a prime motivation. Increasingly, every city-state, and even entire civilizations, came to depend on the world system,not so much for political stability but for survival.⑤As the volume of long-distance trade increased dramatically, so competition over resources intensified. Each state raised an army to defend its water rights, trade routes, and city walls. The onerous tasks of defense and military organization passed to despotic kings supposedly appointed by the gods. Such Sumerian city-states as Erech, Kish, and Ur had periods of political strength and prosperity when they dominated their neighbors. Then, just as swiftly, the tide of their fortunes would change and they would sink into obscurity.⑥Inevitably, the ambitions of some proud Sumerian leaders led them to entertain bolder visions than merely the control of a few city-states in the lowlands. They were well aware that the control of lucrative sources of raw materials and trade routes was the secret of vast political power. In about 2400 B.C. , a monarch named Lugalzagesi boasted of overseeing the entire area from the Persian Gulf tothe Mediterranean. This boast was probably false. It is likely that Sumerian cities dominated the overland routes that linked Mesopotamia, Anatolia,and the Levant, but their influence was never permanent, their control probably illusory.译文苏美尔人与区域相互依存①随着公元前3100年左右苏美尔文明的出现，人类历史中的一个新时代开始了——人类创造的经济、政治和社会机制开始影响相隔数百甚至数千英里的城市、城镇和村庄的生活。

2014年5月24日托福阅读考试机经南京环球雅思考试日期：2014年5月24日Reading Passage 1Title: 苏美尔人Question types:文章内容回顾：主题：历史文化类话题本文讲述了苏美尔文明。

苏美尔人的居住地土壤贫瘠，但是每年的洪水泛滥留下了肥沃的淤泥用来耕作，繁荣来自农业生产力的提高。

由此产生了统治阶级，后来统治阶级组织农民工作，但是S地区除了农业再无其他优势，所以要开展贸易。

他们的生活都是围绕temple展开，而统治阶层为了记录管理情况逐渐发明楔形文字。

难度分析：苏美尔文明是托福常考的古代文明之一，阅读量较大的同学应该对这一背景和题材并不陌生。

考生要善于抓住历史演进的主线，把握文明发展的进程，特别注意细节题的一一对应。

相关背景内容：Sumer was the southernmost region of ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq and Kuwait) which is generally considered the cradle of civilization. The name comes from Akkadian, the language of the north of Mesopotamia, and means “land of the civilized kings”. The Sumerians called themselves “the black headed people” and their land, in cuneiform script, was simply “the land” or “the land of the black headed peop le”. In the biblical Book of Genesis Sumer is known as Shinar. According to the Sumerian King List, when the gods first gave human beings the gifts necessary for cultivating society, they did so by establishing the city of Eridu in the region of Sumer. While the Sumerian city of Uruk is held to be the oldest city in the world, the ancientMesopotamians believed that it was Eridu and that it was here that order was established and civilization began.The Ubaid PeriodThe region of Sumer was long thought to have been first inhabited around 4500 BCE. This date has been contested in recent years, however, and it now thought that human activity in the area began much earlier. The first settlers were not Sumerians but a people of unknown origin whom archaeologists have termed the Ubaid people (from the excavated mound of al-Ubaid where the artifacts were uncovered which first attested to their existence) or the Proto-Euphrateans (which designates them as earlier inhabitants of the region of the Euphrates River). Whoever these people were, they had already moved from a hunter-gatherer society to an agrarian one prior to 5000 BCE. Excavations from al-Ubaid and other sites throughout southern Iraq have uncovered stone tools from the Ubaid people such as hoes, knives, and adzes and clay artifacts which included sickles, bricks, painted pottery, and figurines. These people were the first agents of civilization in the region. At what point the people who came to be known as Sumerians entered the area is not known.The Sumerian King ListAccording to the Sumerian scholar Samuel Noah Kramer, “The first ruler of Sumer, whose deeds are recorded, if only in the briefest kind of statement, is a king by the name of Etana of Kish, who may have come to the throne quite early in the third millennium B.C. In the King List he is described as `he who stabilized all the lands’.” The Sumerian King Listis a cuneiform document, written by a scribe of the city of Lagash, sometime around 2100 BCE which lists all of the kings of the region, and their accomplishments, in an attempt to show continuity of order in society dating back to the beginning of civilization. As the Mesopotamians generally, and the Sumerians specifically, believed that civilization was the result of the gods’ triumph o f order over chaos, the King List is thought to have been created to legitimize the reign of a king named Utu-Hegal of Uruk (who ruled c. 2100 BCE) by showing him as the most recent in a long line of rulers of the region. Etana is famous from the myth of the man who ascends to heaven on the back of an eagle and, like other kings mentioned in the list (Dumuzi and Gilgamesh among them) was known for superhuman feats and heroism. Utu-Hegal, it is thought, was trying to link himself to such earlier hero-kings through the creation of the King List.The Rise of CitiesWhenever the Sumerian civilization was first established in the region, by 3600 BCE they had invented the wheel, writing, the sail boat, agricultural processes such as irrigation, and the concept of the city (though China and India also lay claim to `the first cities’ in the world). It is generally accepted that the first cities in the world rose in Sumer and, among the most important, were Eridu, Uruk, Ur, Larsa, Isin, Adab, Kullah, Lagash, Nippur, and Kish. The city of Uruk is held to be the first true city in the world. It has been noted, again by Kramer, that these names are not Sumerian but come from the Ubaid people and so were founded, at least as villages, much earlier than c. 5000 BCE. Other cities in Sumer were Sippar, Shuruppak, Bad-tibira, Girsu, Umma, Urukag, Nina, and Kissura. All were of varying size and scope with Urukthe largest and most powerful at its prime.Reading Passage 2Title:恐龙灭绝Question types:文章内容回顾：主题：生物类本文讲述了恐龙灭绝的一个主要原因：小行星或彗星的撞击。

生命是永恒不断的创造，因为在它内部蕴含着过剩的精力，它不断流溢，越出时间和空间的界限，它不停地追求，以形形色色的自我表现的形式表现出来。

－－泰戈尔READING加试-苏美尔文明Mesopotamia的背景：美索不达米亚(亚洲西南部Tigris 和Euphrates 两河流域间的古王国, 今伊拉克所在地)美索不达米亚古代西南亚介于底格里斯河和幼发拉底河之间的一个地区，位于现在的伊拉克境内。

可能在公元前5000年以前就开始有人在此定居。

这一地区孕育了众多的人类早期文明，其中包括苏美尔文明、阿卡德文明、巴比伦文明和亚述文明。

蒙古侵略者在公元1258年破坏了该地区发达的灌溉系统之后，这一地区的重要性就此减小。

纳米比亚地区，一种civilization 还和埃及比较了一下。

关于两河civilization和Egypt civilization的。

他们同时存在，有交流，但没有一方压倒另一方。

Egypt的体制根两河的政治体制不一样，一个united under 一个什么体制下，另外一个则由于地理条件的制约不存在united format。

另外两河的文明很少有tangible substance 留下来，因为他们的architecture? structure 与Egypt不一样，对他们文字的研究也是通过发掘fragment的方法研究的。

还讲了两河的local lord,这人不是fiction的，他对他那个city state具有很大的influence，文中讲到的是economic aspect.同时，他传话通过一个叫做人君的人传话。

讲Mesopotamia的culture，和Egypt的文化对比。

因为两者是两河流域的同时发展起来的文化（考：Mesopotamia文化是独立于independence Egypt的文化）然后讲述Mesopotamia culture的特点：建筑物没有Egypt的牢固，文化没有文字记载等。

托福加试阅读苏美尔文明解析很多人想知道托福阅读加试考些什么？难度如何？下面小编给大家带来一道经典的阅读加试题苏美尔文明的题目及解析。

托福加试阅读苏美尔文明解析【试题】：苏美尔文明【题源】：真题/加试/高频【试题类型】：2005年10月12号第一次出现的加试，此后反复出现多次【试题剖析】：首先，这篇文章是属于介绍型的文章，也就是在整个阅读过程中并没有要求过高的分析性阅读。

虽然文章的话题领域相对学术，但是作为托福考试的考察目标——检测学术背景下的阅读理解能力，并不会要求考生对文章所涉及话题的专业知识有所涉猎。

而从这篇讲解人类文明史的文章来看，即使不能够理解文章内出现的“学术概念”也能通过阅读的技巧和手段来解题。

现在就从这篇被ETS青睐有加的阅读加试文章来看，我们会发现试题的以下几个特点，现举例如下：词汇题熟词熟义本篇阅读的词汇题为四题，试题的形式是给出高亮词汇，进行词义理解。

这样的题型属于常考题，在网考的界面中具体词汇出现的段落会在题目上方再次出现，很多学生担心的是否要全文理解或是全文跳读扫读才能解该类题，从实际的网考页面可以得知利用这段文字的上下文来解题是可行、有效的。

当然从题目本身的角度出发，此类题目可能是属于(1)熟词熟义，(2)熟词生义，(3)生词猜义等这样几个常见类型。

例如#1就属于“熟词熟义”的类型，原题为：The word astonishing in the passage is closest in meaning to_______(A) important(B) unknown(C) amazing(D) interesting从备选项就可以直接判出答案，当然作为整场考试的“热身”题目，本题属于比较容易的。

然后看#4题。

原题为：The word obscure in the passage is closest in meaning to____(A) unclear(B) unique(C) controversial(D) important如果我们的考生原本就在备考过程中多次接触过obscure这个单词的话，那么本题仍然属于熟词，因为这个词汇是属于托福词汇范围内的，但是为了防止出现是熟词生义的可能，我们现在还原试题原文如下：The origin of the Sumerians remains obscure. Their language is unrelated to any other known tongue. Sometimes before 4,000 B.C. they came to southern Mesopotamia, from Persia, and there, within the next thousand years, they founded a number of city-states and developed their distinctive form of writing in cuneiform (wedge-shaped) characters on clay tablets. ￠Unfortunately, the tangible remains of Sumerian civilization are extremely scanty compared to those of ancient Egypt. ￠Building stone being unavailable in Mesopotamia, the Sumerians used mud brick and wood, so that almost nothing is left of their architecture except the foundation. ￠Nor did they share the Egyptians’ concern with the herea fter, although some richly endowed tombs in the shape of vaulted chambers below ground from the early dynastic period have been found in the city of Ur. ￠Our knowledge of Sumerian Civilization thus depends very largely on chance fragments brought to light by excavation, including vast numbers of inscribed clay tablets. Yet we havelearned enough to form a general picture of this vigorous, inventive, and disciplined people.根据该词出现的那句话就可以得知这里讲述的是“苏美尔人的起源仍然不清。

托福经典加试阅读之苏美尔文明英文全文(总5页)--本页仅作为文档封面，使用时请直接删除即可----内页可以根据需求调整合适字体及大小--2005年10月12日开始第一次加试Sumerian CivilizationIt is an astonishing fact that human civilization should have emerged into the light of history in two separate places at justabout the same time. Between 3,500 and 3,000 . when Egypt was being united under pharaonic rule, another great civilization arose in Mesopotamia, the “land between the rivers”. And for close to three thousand years, the two rival centers retained their distinct characters, even though they had contact with each other from their earliest beginnings, and their destinies were interwoven in many ways. The pressure that forced the inhabitants of both regions to abandon the pattern of Neolithic village life may well have been the same.But the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, unlike that of the Nile, is not a narrow fertile strip protected by desert on either side. It resembles a wide, shallow trough with few natural defenses, crisscrossed by two great rivers and their tributaries, and is easily encroached upon from any direction.P2: Thus the facts of geography tend to discourage the idea ofuniting the entire Mesopotamian area under a single head. Rulers who had this ambition did not appear, so far as we know, until about a thousand years after the beginnings of Mesopotamian civilization, and they succeeded in carrying it out only for brief periods and at the cost of almost continuous warfare. As a consequence, the political history of ancient Mesopotamia has no underlying theme of the sortthat divine kingship provides for Egypt. Local rivalries, foreign incursions, the sudden upsurge and equally sudden collapse ofmilitary power – these are its substance.P3: The origin of the Sumerians remains obscure. Their languageis unrelated to any other known tongue. Sometimes before 4,000 . they came to southern Mesopotamia, from Persia, and there, within the next thousand years, they founded a number of city-states and developed their distinctive form of writing in cuneiform (wedge-shaped) characters on clay tablets. Unfortunately, the tangible remains of Sumerian civilization are extremely scanty compared to those of ancient Egypt. Building stone being unavailable in Mesopotamia, the Sumerians used mud brick and wood, so that almost nothing is left of their architecture except the foundation. Nor did they share the Egyptians’ concern with the hereafter, although some richly endowed tombs in the shape of vaulted chambers below ground from the early dynastic period have been found in the city of Ur. Our knowledge of Sumerian Civilization thus depends very largely on chance fragmentsbrought to light by excavation, including vast numbers of inscribed clay tablets. Yet we have learned enough to form a general picture of this vigorous, inventive, and disciplined people.P4: Each Sumerian city-state had its own local god, who was regarded as its king and owner. It also had a human ruler, the steward of the divine sovereign, who led the people in serving the deity. The local god, in turn, was expected to plead the cause of his subjects among his follow deities who controlled the forces of nature such as wind and weather, water, fertility, and the heavenly bodies. Nor was the idea of divine ownership treated as a mere pious fiction. The god was quite literally believed to own not only the territory of the city-state but also the labor power of the population and its products. All these were subject to his commands, transmitted to people by his human steward. The result was an economic system. The temple controlled the pooling of labor and resources for communal enterprises, such as the building of dikes or irrigation ditches, and it collected and distributed a considerable part of the harvest. All this required the keeping of detailed written records. Hence, we need not be surprised to find that the texts of early Sumerianinscriptions deal very largely with economic and administrativerather than religious matters, although writing was a priestly privilege.P1: 令人惊异的是从历史的角度看人类文明同时在两个不同的地方产生。