老托福阅读真题PASSAGE 75

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老托福阅读真题PASSAGE 75

托福阅读的思维方式就是托福阅读的出题方式，只有掌握了这种思维方式，才有可
能在做题之前，预测到新托福阅读题的出题形式和特点，为找答案节省时间。老托福阅
读试题的核心价值，在于其最贴近真题的阅读思维方式。此外老托福阅读真题比新托福
IBT阅读文章要短，比较容易适应。这也是大家在备考托福的时候非常重要的一点。因
为前期的入手如果能从容易的开始，就会形成一个循序渐进的过程方式，让大家的练习
有一个提高的过程。

既然老托福阅读试题有这样的效果，那我们如何利用那有限的真题来达到锻炼自己
的目的呢？事实上这就一个办法，就是坚持。本期为大家推荐老托福阅读的真题PASSAGE
75，附有原文及答案，希望对托福考生备考有所帮助。

Many prehistoric people subsisted as hunters and gatherers. Undoubtedly,
game animals, including some very large species, provided major components of
human diets. An important controversy centering on the question of human effects
on prehistoric wildlife concerns the sudden disappearance of so many species
of large animals at or near the end of the Pleistocene epoch. Most paleontologists
suspect that abrupt changes in climate led to the mass extinctions. Others,
however, have concluded that prehistoric people drove many of those species to
extinction through overhunting. In their Pleistocene overkill hypothesis, they
cite what seems to be a remarkable coincidence between the arrival of prehistoric
peoples in North and South America and the time during which mammoths, giant
ground sloths, the giant bison, and numerous other large mammals became extinct.

Perhaps the human species was driving others to extinction long before the
dawn of history. Hunter-gatherers may have contributed to Pleistocene
extinctions in more indirect ways. Besides overhunting, at least three other
kinds of effects have been suggested: direct competition, imbalances between
competing species of game animals, and early agricultural practices. Direct
competition may have brought about the demise of large carnivores such as the
saber-toothed cats. These animals simply may have been unable to compete with
the increasingly sophisticated hunting skills of Pleistocene people.

Human hunters could have caused imbalances among game animals, leading to
the extinctions of species less able to compete. When other predators such as
the gray wolf prey upon large mammals, they generally take high proportions of
each year's crop of young. Some human hu nters, in contrast, tend to take the
various age-groups of large animals in proportion to their actual occurrence.
If such hunters first competed with the larger predators and then replaced them,
they may have allowed more young to survive each year, gradually increasing the