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  3. ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF THE ANASAZI (1) A major question in the archeology of the southwestern region of the United States i

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF THE ANASAZI (1) A major question in the archeology of the southwestern region of the United States i

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问题                                             ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF THE ANASAZI
    (1) A major question in the archeology of the southwestern region of the United States is why so many impressive settlements, and even entire regions, were abandoned in prehistoric times. Archeologist Tim Kohler has suggested that the nature of human-environmental interaction was an important reason in the case of the Anasazi people. The actual case study that Kohler relies on is from the Dolores River basin of southwest Colorado, where the Anasazi seem to have moved in about 600 A.D. Over the following couple of centuries, the population increased, and they aggregated (or gathered) into villages, but by about 900 A.D. the area began to be abandoned. Other archeologists have identified the immediate cause of this abandonment to be a series of short growing seasons that would have put pressure on corn production at that high altitude. Kohler, however, asserts that a growing population led to human-environmental interactions that caused people to live in villages, intensify agrarian food production, deforest the region, deplete the local soils, and ultimately abandon the area.
    (2) Kohler uses several kinds of evidence to show that human effects, not solely climatic factors, were important factors in the abandonment of settlements. One key indicator of change in the environment surrounding these prehistoric settlements is the wood that was used there. Archeological study of wood charcoal found in hearths dating to the various episodes of occupation indicated that the species used changed in a patterned way. Over time there was a decline in the use of juniper and pinon (native, slow-growing species of trees) and an increase in woody shrubs and fast-growing cottonwood. The species of wood used in the construction of buildings also changed. Fewer pinon were being used, and those that were used seemed to be from increasingly old trees, while juniper continued to be from young trees. The implication is that the forest that did remain was changing to relatively more junipers, a tree that is more fire resistant, better able to reproduce in open settings, and less desirable for construction than pinon. Kohler argues that pinon was disappearing from the locale of settlements and that this put an additional nutritional strain on the population, which used nuts from the tree as well as its wood. [A] The relative proportion of different species of animals hunted by people in the region also changed progressively. [B] A final source of evidence was the seeds found in the archeological deposits, which had blown or been brought to the settlement. [C] As time went on, there was a substantial increase in seeds from pioneer plants, attesting both to agricultural intensification and to an increasingly disturbed local environment. [D]
     (3) This evidence has convinced Kohler of the importance of human impact in degrading the local environment. His interpretation of the situation is that by about 840 A.D., people had aggregated into villages in favorable settings because of their competitive organizational advantages over smaller units in the face of growing population and depletion of local wild resources. Hence, the very nature of the initial slash-and-burn agriculture encouraged a further dependence on agriculture and the aggregation of people into denser settlements. However, there are costs to aggregation, such as the increasing distance to usable fields, the heavier pressure on local soils, and the accompanying increase in agricultural risk. The Anasazi responded to this by further intensification, such as water-control mechanisms, to feed the increasing population. Such a trajectory is fraught with risks, but it is also pushed forward by advantages it bestows on its participants who organize and cooperate. Advantages might include sharing food across groups in a village, investment in facilities to improve the processing and storage of food, and cooperative labor pools and social groupings larger than villages, which would enable organized long-distance hunts and participation in trading networks. Larger and larger villages became possible, but this also made the system vulnerable to collapse. A reliance on the management of resources through cooperative action reduced their flexibility of action, so that when poor seasons occurred, people were seriously hurt. Thus an expectable aberration in the climatic regime may have been enough to cause the collapse of the village system in the Dolores area.
According to paragraph 3, which of the following is Kohler’s explanation of the fact that people came together to form villages?
选项 A、Combining the population into large villages reduced the negative environmental effects of small social groups.
B、As the populations increased, the size of the small social units expanded so much that by 840 A.D. they had grown together forming villages.
C、Villages provided the efficient social organization needed to deal with population growth and reduced resources.
D、Villages formed on the land cleared by the slash-and-burn agriculture practiced by small social groups.
答案C
解析 本题属于事实信息题，定位在第3段，询问哪项是科勒对于人们聚集在一起形成村庄这一事实的解释。根据原文第3段第2句“他对这种情况的解释是，大约在公元840年，在面对人口增长和当地野生资源枯竭的情况下，人们会聚集在环境更好的村庄中，因为与分散为较小的社会单位相比，这样做会使人们更具有竞争性的组织优势”可知，C项是对该句的整合，故选。A项“将人口聚集在村庄，减少了较小的社会单位对环境的负面影响”没有依据。B项“随着人口的增加，小型社会单位的规模扩大了很多，以至于到了公元840年。它们共同形成了村庄”，根据第2句的内容来看，村庄形成的原因不是因为小型社会单位的规模扩大，而是为了更好地应对人口增长和当地野生资源枯竭的问题。故B项内容表述不当，可排除。D项“村庄形成于由小型社会团体实行的刀耕火种农业所清理出的土地上”，根据第4句“聚居是需要付出代价的，如人们离可使用田地的距离越来越远”可知，村庄并不是形成在人们清理出来的土地上的，而是在离土地较远的地方，故D项的信息与原文内容不符。
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