共用题干 第一篇Human EvolutionBeing a man has always been dangerous.There are about...

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问题 共用题干 第一篇

Human Evolution

Being a man has always been dangerous.There are about 105 males born for every 100 females, but this ratio drops to near balance at the age of maturity,and among 70-year-old there are twice as many women as men. But the great universal of male mortality is being changed.Now,boy babies survive almost as well as girls do. This means that,for the first time,there will be an excess of boys in those crucial years when they are searching for a mate. More important,another chance for natural selection has been removed. Fifty years ago,the chance of a baby(particularly a boy baby)surviving depended on its weight. A kilogram too light or too heavy meant almost certain death.Today it makes almost no difference.Since much of the variation is due to genes,one more agent of evolution has gone.
There is another way to commit evolutionary suicide:stay alive,but have fewer children.Few people are as fertile as in the past. Except in some religious communities,very few women have 15 children.Nowadays the number of births,like the age of death,has become average.Most of us have roughly the same number of offspring. Again,differences between people and the opportunity for natural selection to take advantage of it have diminished.India shows what is happening. The country offers wealth for a few in the great cities and poverty for the remaining tribal peoples.The grand mediocrity of today一everyone being the same in survival and number of offspring means that natural selection has lost 80%of its power in upper-middle一class India compared to the tribes.
For us,this means that evolution is over;the biological Utopia has arrived.Strangely,it has involved little physical change.No other species fills so many places in nature.But in the past 100,000 years一even the past 100 years一our lives have been transformed but our bodies have not. We did not evolve,because machines and society did it for us.Darwin had a phrase to describe those ignorant of evolution:"they look at an organic being as savage looks at a ship,as at something wholly beyond his comprehension."No doubt we will remember a 20th century way of life beyond comprehension for its ugliness. But however amazed our descendants may be at how far from Utopia we were,they will look just like us.
选项 Which of the following would be the best title for the passage? A:Sex Ration Changes in Human Evolution. B:Ways of Continuing Man's Evolution. C:The Evolutionary Future of Nature. D:Human Evolution Going Nowhere.
答案 D
解析 文中第一段提到“做男人从来都充满危险,新生儿男女比例大约是105: 100,但到了成年,这一比例基本持平,而在70岁的老年人中,女性是男性的两倍。但是男性死亡率高这种普遍情况正在改变,现在男婴存活率同女婴的基本一样高”,这说明男人的存活率相对是比较低的。
使用事例来证明是常见的逻辑思维模式。既然有事例,我们就需要看到它的论点是什么。本文中提到,“还有一种方法确保进化意义上的自杀:存活,但少生孩子”。首先,“现在几乎没有人像过去那样多育。除了在一些宗教社区,基本没有妇女会生巧个孩子”表明了“当今出生的数量同死亡年龄一样变得平均化,我们大多数人的子女数量大致相当”。其次,人与人之间的差异和利用差异进行自然选择的机会再次减少了。再次,“印度证明了这种情况。这个国家给大城市里的少数人提供财富,而给其余的各部落居民造成了贫困。今天这种每个人的生存机会和子女数量都相同的极其显著的平均化意味着与部落相比,自然选择在印度社会中上层人群中,已经失去了80%的效力”是为了证明“人与人之间的差异和利用差异进行自然选择的机会再次减少了”,换言之,“自然选择在穷人和富人之间几乎不起作用”。答案应该是B选项。
文中提到停止进化是在第三段第一句“对我们来说,这意味着进化已经结束”。第三段中指出,“在过去的10万年―甚至过去的100年中,我们的生活发生了变化,我们的身体却没变。我们没有进化。因为机器和社会替我们办了这一切”。“机器”代表的就是 “技术”,因此我们可以判定A是正确答案。
文章中在第一段结尾提到“由于大部分差异是由基因引起的,又一个进化的因素消失了”。第二段中说“再一次,人与人之间的差异和利用差异进行自然选择的机会减少了”。第三段提到“但我们的身体却没变。我们没有进化,因为机器和社会替我们办了这一切”。这些都表明作者认为进化机制已不再起作用,认为自然进化机制已不能再左右人口的出生率。在总结全文的第三段时,作者直截了当地指出,进化已经结束。因此可以认为人类的进化是无路可走的。另外三个选项都不全面或者不对题。
文章的最后一句话是说“不管我们的子孙后代对我们离乌托邦的理想境界还差多远感到多么惊讶,他们的样子会同我们差不了多少”。这一句是和本段开始相呼应,都是谈论进化已经结束,生物学上的乌托邦已形成,并且这一过程几乎丝毫没有造成人的身体上的改变,因此是在谈论人的外貌。只有选项B正确。

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