1.The Farming of Colorado Plateau

第一段说在A人在colorado plateau 这里建立了繁荣的农业，A人之前有一种B人，他们种植maize等等，食物种类非常丰富，还提到有种什么植物好像也是一种maize从Mesoamerica传过来。但是最终还是A人发展的更好。

第二段说到colorado plateau 农业的提高和科技的进步有关，人们发明了磨面粉的东西，一开始是绕圈，后来改进了磨面粉的工具，还把磨面粉的方式改成了back-and-forth。后面说到另一种植物mdo，比maize开花早， kernel更大（Corn kernels are the fruits of maize. Maize is a grain, and the kernels are used in cooking as a vegetable or a source of starch.），然后A人把mdo和maize杂交，产生的作物更抗旱，而且磨成的面粉质地更细腻。

之后还说到当地Climate的问题，因为干旱maize等农作物很难种植。

最后提到A人的 urbanization, 因为食物多要储藏和存放，所以发展建筑，形成城镇。

关于Colorado Plateau

The Colorado Plateau is located in the interior, dry end of two moisture trajectories coming from opposite directions, which have made this region a target for unusual climate fluctuations. A multi-decadal drought event some 850 years ago may have eliminated maize cultivation by the first human settlers of the Colorado Plateau, the Fremont and Anasazi people, and contributed to the abandonment of their settlements. Even today, ranching and farming are vulnerable to drought and struggle to persist. The recent use of the Colorado Plateau primarily as rangeland has made this region less tolerant to drought due to unprecedented levels of surface disturbances that destroy biological crusts, reduce soil carbon and nitrogen stocks, and increase rates of soil erosion. The most recent drought of 2002 demonstrated the vulnerability of the Colorado Plateau in its currently depleted state and the associated costs to the local economies. New climate predictions for the southwestern United States include the possibility of a long-term shift to warmer, more arid conditions, punctuated by megadroughts not seen since medieval times. It remains to be seen whether the present-day extractive industries, aided by external subsidies, can persist in a climate regime that apparently exceeded the adaptive capacities of the Colorado Plateau’s prehistoric agriculturalists.

看，就是这个地方。

内容来源：Schwinning, S., J. Belnap, D. R. Bowling, and J. R. Ehleringer. 2008. Sensitivity of the Colorado Plateau to change: climate, ecosystems, and society. Ecology and Society 13(2): 28. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art28/

Geography

Geologists divide the North American continent into a series of natural or geographical provinces, bearing names that are rooted in the exploration and settlement of this land. Perhaps no one sensed the distinctions of these provinces better than America’s 19th century pioneers who walked and wagon-trained across the Great Plains towards the Rocky Mountains, and then descended into what they often called the “hellish” Basin and Range, before cresting the Sierra Nevada and the promised land of California’s Central Valley. These regions are but a few of the more than two dozen geographic provinces found in the continental United States. Other well known provinces include the Atlantic Coastal Plain, the Appalachian Mountains, and the Cascade Mountains. The Colorado Plateau province, number 21 on the map, is the focus of the mission of the Museum of Northern Arizona. What defines the Colorado Plateau, or any other province for that matter, is its geology.

Geology

The Colorado Plateau is a land of colorful, sedimentary strata that have been uplifted and dissected into deep canyons by a few large rivers and their tributaries, with extensive between-canyon landscapes in a mostly arid climate. This truly defines the Plateau—colorful, horizontal strata, that are in many places deeply dissected by numerous canyons and made visible by the lack of significant rainfall and vegetation.

Geology and geologic history go hand in hand then to define the Colorado Plateau and this ancient history in no small part determines its present day character. Its history involves the deposition of numerous rock layers or strata laid out in successive waves of environmental change through immense spans of time. These layers record what happened, when it happened and how it all used to look. Geologists use these rock strata to interpret environments that existed here long ago, landscapes as varied as tropical blue seas, meandering rivers, and shifting sand dunes. This is the constructional part of the Colorado Plateau’s history. It involves the time when a multitude of colorful rock layers were laid down, one on top of the other, yielding to us a sequential view of former landscapes. The bulk of the Plateau’s known history is contained in this part of the story, spanning approximately 450 million years, when more than 15,000 feet of sediment was deposited and preserved, much of it still intact upon the landscape. No less important, however, is the destructional part of the story when the strata were subjected to uplift and erosion. This uplift transpired in a way that preserved a great deal of the original horizontal orientation of the strata

How Old is the Colorado Plateau?

There is no simple answer because while the rocks exposed here may be hundreds of millions or even thousands of millions of years old, the Plateau as a distinct landscape feature is much younger. The age of the Colorado Plateau as a discrete geographic province is estimated to be can be bracketed between 70 and 17 million years.

Cultures

The Colorado Plateau has been continuously inhabited by native people of the Americas for approximately 12,000 years. The early people of the Plateau gathered wild plants and hunted game animals. Many took up farming maize, beans, and squash several thousand years ago.

Today, the native peoples of the Colorado Plateau include the Hopi, Navajo, Zuni, Hualapai, Havasupai, Ute, Apache, and Southern Paiute. Each tribe has a distinct history, culture, and language.

2. Mycenaean collapse

Mycenaean帝国在公元前1400左右处于鼎盛时期，在公元前1200一1100覆灭，灭国的原因是什么呢？

首先，有人认为是火山爆发导致，一种说法是当时火山爆发造成污染和有毒空气，另一种说是火山爆发一次毁灭所有，

接下来，作者反驳说有城镇在后来仍然很繁荣，所以不是火山爆发造成的。文中提到一个传奇人物， Dorian，说他跟Mycenaean的人不和，然后加入另一个部落，进而开始攻打希腊， 刚开始被击败但没放弃进攻，总的来说战争持续100年，使得Mycenaean帝国耗光资源而灭国。

最后，提到可能是Mycenaean帝国内部的斗争以及外部的压力导致灭国，国王受到外部的压力并且妥协，最后导致国家的管理变糟糕，敌国有机可乘就会摧毁Mycenaean。

来自维基百科的内容补充

Mycenaean Greece (or Mycenaean civilization) was the last phase of the Bronze Age in Ancient Greece (c. 1600–1100 BC). It represents the first advanced civilization in mainland Greece, with its palatial states, urban organization, works of art and writing system.

The reasons that led to the end of the Mycenaean culture have been hotly debated among scholars. At present, there is no satisfactory explanation for the collapse of the Mycenaean palace systems. The two most common theories are population movement and internal conflict. The first attributes the destruction of Mycenaean sites to invaders. 

The hypothesis of a Dorian invasion, known as such in Ancient Greek tradition, that led to the end of Mycenaean Greece, is supported by sporadic archaeological evidence such as new types of burials, in particular cist graves, and the use of a new dialect of Greek, the Doric one. It appears that the Dorians moved southward gradually over a number of years and devastated the territory, until they managed to establish themselves in the Mycenaean centers. A new type of ceramic also appeared, called "Barbarian Ware" because it was attributed to invaders from the north. On the other hand, the collapse of Mycenaean Greece coincides with the activity of the Sea Peoples in the Eastern Mediterranean. They caused widespread destruction in Anatolia and the Levant and were finally defeated by Pharaoh Ramesses III in c. 1175 BC. One of the ethnic groups that comprised these people were the Eqwesh, a name that appears to be linked with the Ahhiyawa of the Hittite inscriptions.

Alternative scenarios propose that the fall of the Mycenaean Greece was a result of internal disturbances which led to internecine warfare among the Mycenaean states or civil unrest in a number of states, as a result of the strict hierarchical social system and the ideology of the wanax. In general, due to the obscure archaeological picture in 12th-11th century BC Greece, there is a continuing controversy among scholars over whether the impoverished societies that succeeded the Mycenaean palatial states were newcomers or populations that already resided in Mycenaean Greece. Recent archaeological findings tend to favor the latter scenario. Additional theories, concerning natural factors, such as climate change, droughts or earthquakes have been also proposed.[68] The period following the end of Mycenaean Greece, c. 1100-800 BC, is generally termed the "Greek Dark Ages".

关于青铜时代和迈锡尼文明的一点小补充（点击图片可放大图片查看）

3. Insects Sensory

第一段说昆虫眼睛构造，昆虫的眼睛是复眼（compound eyes）有很多视觉单元（visual units），虽然不像人眼那样看到那么多的细节，但是看到范围广啊，还说到徒手抓苍蝇很难。

会飞的昆虫和不会飞的昆虫的视觉单元（visual units）不同，举例：雌蛾不会飞只有几百个，会飞的雄蛾有几千个。

昆虫大多被鲜艳的花吸引，蝴蝶和鸟和人可以看见红色，但大多数昆虫对色彩的辨识是在紫外线的范围（ultraviolet range）

单眼（simple eyes），大部分在compound eyes之间，只有一些视神经和一个长度，可以在光线暗的情况下发挥作用。后面说到一个A，成虫和幼虫都有，有几个部分，作用是听觉触觉之类的，举例说蚊子是用这个来听。

推荐大家比对着看2012.8.19的真题

The First Eye

Putting a date on the first appearance of eyes depends on what one means by eye. If the term refers to a multicellular organ, even if it has just a few cells, then by definition, eyes could not form before there were multicellular animals. But many protists (animal-like, plantlike, or fungus-like unicellular organisms that require a water-based environment) can detect light by using aggregations of pigment molecules, and they use this information to modify their metabolic activity or motility (the ability to move spontaneously and independently). One of the familiar living examples, probably known to anyone who has taken a biology class, is the aquatic protozoan Euglena, which has an eyespot near its motile fIagellum (hairlike structure). Some living protists are very like their ancestral forms embedded in ancient sedimentary rocks, and this similarity suggests that the ability to detect light and modify behavior in response to light has been around for a very long time. Animals arose from one of such unicellular creatures, perhaps from one already specialized for a primitive kind of vision.

An eye is a collection of cells that are specialized for light detection through the presence of photosensitive pigment as well as a means of restricting the direction of incoming light that will strike the photosensitive cells. This definition says nothing about image formation, lenses, eye movements, or any of the other features we associate with our own eyes, but it does recognize the simplest form of functional and anatomical specialisation namely, detection of light. Everything else can be built up from this simple beginning, and some animals appear to have had eyes almost from the beginning of the animal kingdom.

Animals were scarce 600 million years ago in the geological era called the Precambrian. There are very few fossil remains from that time (though more keep turning up), and most evidence of the presence of animals is indirect, such as small tunnels in rock that could be ancient worm burrowings. But just 50 million years or so later, fossilized bits and pieces of animals abound, suggesting that a great burst of evolutionary creativity occurred in the 50-million-year interval. This surge of new life, marked by an abundance of animals, is called the Cambrian explosion.

The first direct evidence for the early origin of eyes comes from fossils that are about 530 million years old, a time shortly after the Cambrian explosion; they were found on a mountainside in British Columbia in a deposit known as the Burgess Shale. The Burgess Shale fossils are extraordinarily important because among them are remains of soft-bodied creatures, many of them lacking shells and other hard parts that fossilize easily. Consequently, their preservation is little short of miraculous (as are the delicate methods used to reconstruct three-dimensional structure from these flattened fossils), and they are one of the few known repositories of early soft-bodied animals. 

Not all of the Burgess animals had eyes. However, some did. (Gross features location, size, and hemispheric shape are responsible for the designation of some structures as eyes). The reconstructed eyes of these Burgess animals look superficially like eyes of some living crustaceans, particularly those of shrimp and crabs whose eyes are mounted on stalks that improve the range of vision by raising the eyes above the surface of the head. The eyes of some Burgess organisms sat on stalks; those of others were on or a part of the body surface. One animal, Opabinia, had five eyes: two lateral pairs and a single medial eye; at least one of the lateral pairs had stalks that could have been movable. And some trilobite-like animals in the Burgess Shale had faceted eyes much like those of later fossil trilobites.

Although the presence of eyes on some of the Burgess animals indicates that eyes have been around for a very long time, it is unlikely that these were the first eyes; they seem much too large and (potentially) well developed to be brand new inventions. The best we can do is put the origin of eyes somewhere between the beginning of the Cambrian explosion, about 600 million years ago, and the death of the Burgess animals, some 530 million years ago.

1. repulse=driven back

2. exploit = make use of

重复2015.12.5 2015.3.28

例句：Over the next two centuries the implications of Cleisthenes’ reforms were fully exploited.<TPO40 Ancient Athens>

3. implement = tool

例句：Why and how these people spread out into central and southern Africa remains a mystery, but archaeologists believe that their iron weapons allowed them to conquer their hunting-gathering opponents, who still used stone implements.<TPO7 Agriculture, Iron, and the Bantu Peoples>

4. strenuous = put more energy

5. aggregation = collection

例句：As the Little Ice Age progressed, farmers probably moved their fields to lower elevations, infringing on the lands of other farmers and pushing people together, thus contributing to the aggregations.<TPO24 Moving into Pueblos>

6. cluster＝group

重复2015.5.16

例句：Architecture of this era reflected this with even the largest of the fortified towns and hill forts containing no more than clusters of medium-sized structures.<TPO47 Roman Cultural Influence on Britain>

7. justifiable=rightful

8. perish=die

例句：The Egyptians were not far behind in developing writing, but we cannot follow the history of their writing in detail because they used a perishable writing material.<TPO46 The Origins of Writing>

After the battle of *Gettysburg in 1863, in a speech known as the *Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln said that the North was fighting the war to keep the Union together so that '...government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth'.<The Civil War （1861-1865）>

1. 学生找历史教授讨论关于她的 paper ，有意思的是学生希望历史教授和她说艺术的话题，说和她想的不太一样，然后提到一个叫 DC 的人，好像是 glass artist，后面的记不太清。教授让女生这 transcultural，可以从音乐政治观点的角度来写啥的。

2.  realism 的分支，英国工业革命以后，美国艺术受欧洲影响大，然后很多人跑到欧洲去，有人担心美国的艺术被 overwhelm。 American regions 是 realism 的分支，更注重对 rural area 和 town 的描绘，在经济萧条时期更被推崇，因为传达了努力工作就能有好生活的观念。后面好像说到批评，提到一个 W 人，他画了一个叫 AG 的画，爸爸和女儿，画风比较僵硬啥的，那个时候 farmer 都是正面的象征。还提到另一种 social realistic ，描述 urban 比较多， SR 有 international view , AR 更强调 local pride.

3.  Earth 和 Venus 相同大小相同重量，但是研究金星更难，因为大气里是有 sulfuric acid ，云层密度大，望远镜穿不透。学生提问既然穿不透怎么得到一些数据和结论。教授提到 Magellan mission , 然后说得到了 map ，对比的时候发现少东西，这里不记得了。还说到金星的 rotation 变慢了，好像用 academic year 举了例子。后面还说到金星上风很大，摩擦大，地球这种情况比较少所以摩擦比较小。后面记不清了。

4.  女生一开始介绍自己学物理的成绩不错乐于助人之类的，然后说自己不满意现在的工作，虽然高薪太浪费时间，想找个on campus 的工作，想来当 tutor 。然后酬劳是 10刀每小时，学校给check。找 tutor 是 professor 会的介绍。然后男的说有one by one 和另一种方式，具体记不太清，好像是学生可以随意找 tutor 问问题。后面记不清。

5. global warming 导致很多物种灭绝，科学家通过研究一个地区的灭绝预测未来趋势。讲了一个 Iizard 群体，有很多个 population，结果最近发现灭绝了 12 % ，这种动物可以耐高温，按理说应该不会灭绝。后来发现他们在 reproduction 的时候需要很多energy，周围温度过高，他们就不想去觅食，然后就没有办法繁衍，这段记不太清。教授说他们其实其实需要一个不冷不热的环境。后面还提到为什么 IIZard 不去一些 cooler 的地方，教授说因为人们的发展导致 habitat fragment，所以他们很难 migration。还提到了蚊子啥的，好像说的是对 climate 的适应性。

6. 人们经常在洞穴壁画上看见马，有黑的有棕的，后来在法国发现一个洞，里面画了一种 spotted horse，想研究这个马上 realistic 还是 symbolic。教授说人们认为那个时候这种马还没有 domesticate，虽然现在这样的马很常见，也有更多颜色。然后提到科学家研究了马的骨头发现了是黑马和棕马的genetic code，结果后来用不同方法研究同种骨路发现了 spotted horse 的 genetic sequence，这个发现很重要。后面有段记不清，有提到一种 mammal 和冰河世纪。然后说 spotted horse 相比于黑马棕马，能更好的 camouflage，后面记不清。

1.你朋友来你的国家上大学，对于相应的开销，你有什么建议？

2. Do you agree or disagree? It’s impolite to make calls or send text messages on a dinner table.

3. 学校发通告说要拆除old auditorium 建造一个新的auditorium 原因：旧的内部架构旧 而且太小了 新的会clean and fasion 且大  男女讨论，男生不同意： 1. 男生对旧的auditorium很喜欢 有情结，并且认为这个场馆应该成为学校历史的一部分，成为一个被保护的标志性建筑 2. 虽然场馆小，但平时并没有满员，不需要变得更大

4. 阅读是关于动物在恶劣气候和食物短缺时会进入一种不活跃状态 听力举了例子，一种生活在湖中的鱼，当夏天到来的时候水会蒸发，鱼在湖底会 cooked 所以 鱼会digging into mud mud中会保持湿润 并且进入不活跃状态的时候，没有食物营养补充 也可以持续几个月甚至几年

5. 女生希望学吉他 打算参加学校的吉他课程 不幸的是报名人数不够，所以学校的吉他课程取消了。女生可以参加老师的1v1课程，但非常贵，女生也可以买书自己学，但觉得自己无法学得到位学得高效且过于基础，请给建议。

6. 有两种广告方式吸引客户购买产品 一种是direct route 另一种是 indirect route 举了卖车的例子，有一种车是油电混合的车，和其他车相比效率更高，有特点吸引人 所以使用direct route来做广告 另一种ordinary的车 没有特点 所以会使用人的开心 笑脸 使得卖车的广告和happiness fun联系在一起 就会让看到广告的人觉得买车会很开心

综合写作：

关于prescribed burning

阅读认为prescribed burning是不好的，有三个原因：  

1. 会伤害动物，一些年幼的动物来不及逃走

2. 燃烧后散发的气体含有二氧化碳 ，会造成污染和温室效应

3. 用了prescribed burning 其他地方也会发生森林火灾，花更多钱和精力去治理根本不值得。

听力反驳了阅读所提出的观点：

1. 人们了解到prescribed burning会对动物产生伤害，因此会选择特定的时间来实施prescribed burning，一方面确保在这段时间内动物不会繁殖，所以不会伤害到刚出生的年幼的动物，另一方面在执行prescribed burning的时候，火势蔓延很慢，成年动物可以很轻松的逃走。

2. 在森林中的树木可以很快吸收燃烧散发二氧化碳等有害气体，并且燃烧面积不大，相对于整个森林来说，有害气体的排放量很少，也会被快速的吸收。

3. 森林里发生的火灾实际是人类的疏忽造成的，与 prescribed burning无关，另一个角度来说， prescribed burning 是为了烧掉一些易燃的物品，例如枯枝。所以就算在有自然火灾的地方，火灾也很容易控制或者熄灭，因为没有助燃的物质推动大火。

独立写作：

People who develop different skills are more successful than people who focus on one skill only

以下对于本次独立写作的专业分析来自美联乐闻托福写作男神小白老师——

白宜玄 Ben Nevis

踏实、认真、性格积极乐观、喜欢研究动物的托福写作、SAT写作教师；

英国约克大学 生态与环境管理研究硕士；

外星人写作逻辑法创始人；

3年海外工作经验，学术文章发表于《Insect Conservation and Diversity》

解析：

这道题目其实并不难，不过大家可以看一下我是怎么破解这道题的，也许会有一些启发。

我习惯性的会把这道题目的框架罗列出来，这样便于我理解问题的本质。这道题目的其实就是要我们证明many skills/one skill success. 我们平时做事的时候都要弄清楚目标才行动，知道要考托福之后这个目标之后才采取相应的策略去提升词汇，语法，阅读，口语等技能。

显然如果你要考四六级，或者手扶拖拉机驾驶，方法是不同的。所以这其中的本质是success。与其思考many skills或者one skill有着什么优势，不如思考success需要什么。以托福为例，想要考高分无非需要的就是坚持努力，但是只有努力就会获得成功吗，似乎不是，我们需要正确的方法。那么正确的方法＋努力设否就是成功了呢？我觉得应该是有能力的，但是可能还缺机会，万一我生活在遥远的旧社会，没有托福考试呢？

有了机会，有了能力我应该就成功了。不过也许如果想要获得更大的成功还需要一个团队。这样分析一下，最后成功无非需要的就是persistence, correct method, opportunity, team这四个要素。当然你也可以说IQ，但这等于在开“世界嘲讽”，可以想但不要写。最后找到many skill或one skill与这四点的关系，就找到了分论点。但注意不需要每条都对应，这只是拓展思路的方法，只要有能对应起来的点就可以了。

比如如果我选择many skill, 那么我会有下面三个分论点

1: more opportunity(opportunity)

2: more skill, more perspectives (correct method)

3: common point social network(team)

如果选择one skill, 我会有下面3个分论点

1: better to focus (persistence)

2: breakthrough (correct method)

3: less competition (opportunity)

而且大家可以试想一下如果这个题目变成people today are more like to be successful than those in the past.是否思路是相同的呢？或者最近考过的一道题in order to be successful, we should be open to new ideas and willing to change our mind？