新托福TPO28阅读原文(二)：Early Saharan Pastoralists
TPO28-2：Early Saharan Pastoralists
The Sahara is a highly diver, albeit dry, region that has undergone major climatic changes since 10,000 B.C. As recently as 6,000 B.C. the southern frontier of the dert was far to the north of where it is now, while miarid grassland and shallow freshwater lakes covered much of what are now arid plains. This was a landscape where antelope of all kinds abounded----along with Bos primigenius, a kind of oxen that has become extinct. The areas that are now dert were, like all arid regions, very susceptible to cycles of higher and lower levels of rainfall, resulting in major, sudden changes in distributions of plants and animals. The people who hunted the spar dert animals responded to drought by managing the wild resources they hunted and gathered, especially wild oxen, which had to have regular water supplies to survive.
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Even before the drought, the Sahara was never well watered. Both humans and animals were constantly on the move, in arch of food and reliable water supplies. Under the cir
cumstances, archaeologist Andrew Smith believes, the small herds of Bos primigenius in the dert became smaller, more cloly knit breeding units as the drought took hold. The beasts were more disciplined, so that it was easier for hunters to predict their habits, and capture animals at will. At the same time, both cattle and humans were more confined in their movements, staying much clor to permanent water supplies for long periods of time. As a result, cattle and humans came into clo association.
Smith believes that the hunters were well aware of the more disciplined ways in which their prey behaved. Instead of following the cattle on their annual migrations, the hunters began to prevent the herd from moving from one spot to another. At first, they controlled the movement of the herd while ensuring continuance of their meat diet. But soon they also gained genetic control of the animals, which led to rapid physical changes in the herd. South African farmers who maintain herds of wild eland (large African antelopes with short, twisted horns) report that the offspring soon diminish in size, unless wild bulls are introduced constantly from outside. The same effects of inbreeding may have occurred in controlled cattle populations, with some additional, and perhaps unrecognize
草莓的英文单词
d, advantages. The newly domesticated animals behaved better, were easier to control, and may have enjoyed a higher birth rate, which in turn yielded greater milk supplies. We know from rock paintings deep in the Sahara that the herders were soon lecting breeding animals to produce offspring with different horn shapes and hide colors.
outofreach It is still unclear whether domesticated cattle were tamed independently in northern Africa or introduced to the continent from southwest Asia. Whatever the source of the original tamed herds might have been, it ems entirely likely that much the same process of juxtaposition (living side by side) and control occurred in both southwest Asia and northern Africa, and even in Europe, among peoples who had an intimate knowledge of the behavior of wild cattle. The experiments with domestication probably occurred in many places, as people living in ever-drier environments cast around for more predictable food supplies.
The cattle herders had only a few posssions: unsophisticated pots and polished adzes. They also hunted with bow and arrow. The Saharan people left a remarkable recor
gogogleattnd of their lives painted on the walls of caves deep in the dert. Their artistic endeavors have been prerved in paintings of wild animals, cattle, goats, humans, and scenes of daily life that extend back perhaps to 5,000 B.C.. The widespread distribution of pastoral sites of this period suggests that the Saharans ranged their herds over widely parated summer and winter grazing grounds.
referenceshappy new year About 3,500 B.C., climatic conditions again deteriorated. The Sahara slowly became drier and lakes vanished. On the other hand, rainfall incread in the interior of western Africa, and the northern limit of the tt fly, an inct fatal to cattle, moved south. So the herders shifted south, following the major river systems into savanna regions. By this time, the Saharan people were probably using domestic crops, experimenting with such summer rainfall crops as sorghum and millet as they move out of areas where they could grow wheat, barley, and other Mediterranean crops.
TPO28-2译文：早期撒哈拉的田园画家
雅思听力评分 尽管干旱，撒哈拉的物种极其多样，并自公元前10,000年前开始已经历了数次重大气候
十月的英文变迁。直到公元前6,000年前，沙漠的南部边界比现在的位置要靠北很多，那时半干旱的草原和浅淡水湖泊覆盖了现在干旱的平原。这里曾经是各种羚羊和一种已灭绝的野牛出没的地方。现在的沙漠地区，像所有干旱地区一样，对降雨量的变化周期极为敏感，因而其动植物的分布变化巨大且迅速。依靠捕食稀少的沙漠动物的居民对待干旱的方式是管理他们捕捉和收集到的野生资源，尤其是需要可靠水源维持生命的野牛。
