阅读：

　　第一篇：苏美尔文明

　　因为河水的冲刷，不断更新土壤，但是只有通过精细化的灌溉才能发挥土地的最大效用。然后说是priests和warrior的监督和管理之下，农民和手工业者发挥作用。各种学科，包括数学啊天文啊也开始逐渐萌芽

　　进口的石料相比进口的铜和其他材质而言越来越显得昂贵不实用。因为只有农业这一特长，苏美文明只能与外界交易，在这种交易中也促进了文明的传播。

　　农业的发展促使了文字的发展，这与以庙宇为中心的政治体系有关，文字的发展是因政治体系的需求而产生的。

　　解析：本篇文章再一次出现苏美尔文明话题，之前加试也有过类似文章，相关知识点如下文所示，请大家参考。

　　Sumerian Culture

　　Before the Sumerians appeared on the land, it had been occupied by a non-Semitic people, referred to as Ubaidians. Their name comes from the village of Al Ubaid, in which their remains were first found by archaeologists.

　　The Ubaidians settled the region between 4500 and 4000 BC. They drained the marshes and introduced agriculture. They also developed trade based on small handicraft industries such as metalwork, leather goods, and pottery.

　　The World's First Cities

　　In ancient Mesopotamia, a land of blazing sun and very little rainfall, irrigation was vital for farming. Centuries before the beginning of known history, the Sumerians undertook the stupendous task of building embankments to control the floodwaters of the Euphrates River. Gradually they drained the marshes and dug irrigation canals and ditches. Large-scale cooperation was needed to build the irrigation works, keep them in repair, and apportion the water. This need gave rise to government and laws.

　　The rich soil produced abundant crops of barley, emmer (a kind of wheat), beans, olives, grapes, and flax. For the first time there was a surplus to feed city workers such as artists, craftsmen, and merchants. This great change in living habits brought about civiliza- tion--defined as a city-based society held together by economic enterprises. There were no nations then, only small city-states

　　The Sumerians built their villages on artificial mounds to protect them from floods. Very early they learned to make bricks in molds and dry them in the sun or bake them in kilns. Their sturdy houses were small and crowded close together on narrow lanes. Some were two or more stories high. The whole city was surrounded by a wall for protection. Outside the wall were the poor peoples' huts, built of reeds that were plastered with clay.

　　Each Sumerian city rose up around the shrine of a local god. As a reflection of a city's wealth, its temple became an elaborate structure. The temple buildings stood on a spacious raised platform reached by staircases and ramps. From the platform rose the temple tower, called a ziggurat (holy mountain), with a circular staircase or ramp around the outside. On the temple grounds were quarters for priests, officials, accountants, musicians, and singers; treasure chambers; storehouses for grain, tools, and weapons; and workshops for bakers, pottery makers, brewers, leatherworkers, spinners and weavers, and jewelers. There were also pens for keeping the sheep and goats that were destined for sacrifice to the temple god.

　　Horses and camels were still unknown, but sheep, goats, oxen, donkeys, and dogs had been domesticated. The plow had been invented, and the wheel, made from a solid piece of wood, was used for carts and for shaping pottery. Oxen pulled the carts and plows; donkeys served as pack animals. Bulky goods were moved by boat on the rivers and canals. The boats were usually hauled from the banks, but sails also were in use. Before 3000 BC the Sumerians had learned to make tools and weapons by smelting copper with tin to make bronze, a much harder metal than copper alone.

　　Mud, clay, and reeds were the only materials the Sumerians had in abundance. Trade was therefore necessary to supply the city workers with materials. Merchants went out in overland caravans or in ships to exchange the products of Sumerian industry for wood, stone, and metals. There are indications that Sumerian sailing vessels even reached the valley of the Indus River in India. The chief route, however, was around the Fertile Crescent, between the Arabian Desert and the northern mountains. This route led up the valley of the two rivers, westward to Syria, and down the Mediterranean coast.

　　The Sumerian Writing System

　　Whether the Sumerians were the first to develop writing is uncertain, but theirs is the oldest known writing system. The clay tablets on which they wrote were very durable when baked. Archaeologists have dug up many thousands of them--some dated earlier than 3000 BC.

　　The earliest writing of the Sumerians was picture writing similar in some ways to Egyptian hieroglyphs. They began to develop their special style when they found that on soft, wet clay it was easier to impress a line than to scratch it. To draw the pictures they used a stylus--probably a straight piece of reed with a three-cornered end.

　　An unexpected result came about: the stylus could best produce triangular forms (wedges) and straight lines. Curved lines therefore had to be broken up into a series of straight strokes. Pictures lost their form and became stylized symbols. This kind of writing on clay is called cuneiform, from the Latin cuneus, meaning "wedge." (See also Cuneiform Writing; Hieroglyphics; Writing.)

　　A tremendous step forward was accomplished when the symbols came to be associated with the sound of the thing shown rather than with the idea of the thing itself. Each sign then represented a syllable. Although cuneiform writing was still used long after the alphabet appeared, it never fully developed an alphabet.

　　Sumerian Schools

　　Cuneiform was difficult to learn. To master it children usually went to a temple school. Using a clay tablet as a textbook, the teacher wrote on the left-hand side, and the pupil copied the model on the right. Any mistakes could be smoothed out. The pupil began by making single wedges in various positions and then went on to groups of wedges. Thousands of groups had to be mastered. Finally the pupil was assigned a book to copy, but the work was slow and laborious. Many first chapters of all the important Sumerian works have been handed down from students' tablets, but only fragments of the rest of the books survive.

　　The pupils also studied arithmetic. The Sumerians based their number system on 10, but they multiplied 10 by 6 to get the next unit. They multiplied 60 by 10, then multiplied 600 by 6, and so on. (The number 60 has the advantage of being divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30.) The Sumerians also divided the circle into 360 degrees. From these early people came the word dozen (a fifth of 60) and the division of the clock to measure hours, minutes, and seconds.

　　The Sumerians had standard measures, with units of length, area, and capacity. Their standard weight was the mina, made up of 60 shekels--about the same weight as a pound. There was no coined money. Standard weights of silver served as measures of value and as a means of exchange.

　　From the earliest times the Sumerians had a strong sense of private property. After they learned to write and figure, they kept documents about every acquired object, including such small items as shoes. Every business transaction had to be recorded. Near the gates of the cities, scribes would sit ready to sell their services. Their hands would move fast over a lump of clay, turning the stylus. Then the contracting parties added their signatures by means of seals. The usual seal was an engraved cylinder of stone or metal that could be rolled over wet clay.

　　In the course of time cuneiform was used for every purpose, just as writing is today--for letters, narratives, prayers and incantations, dictionaries, even mathematical and astronomical treatises. The Babylonians and Assyrians adapted cuneiform for their own Semitic languages and spread its use to neighboring Syria, Anatolia, Armenia, and Iran.

　　Stories of Gods and Heroes

　　As the people in a city-state became familiar with the gods of other cities, they worked out relationships between them, just as the Greeks and Romans did in their myths centuries later. Sometimes two or more gods came to be viewed as one. Eventually a ranking order developed among the gods. Anu, a sky god who originally had been the city god of Uruk, came to be regarded as the greatest of them all--the god of the heavens. His closest rival was the storm god of the air, Enlil of Nippur. The great gods were worshiped in the temples. Each family had little clay figures of its own household gods and small houses or wall niches for them.

　　The Sumerians believed that their ancestors had created the ground they lived on by separating it from the water. According to their creation myth, the world was once watery chaos. The mother of Chaos was Tiamat, an immense dragon. When the gods appeared to bring order out of Chaos, Tiamat created an army of dragons. Enlil called the winds to his aid. Tiamat came forward, her mouth wide open. Enlil pushed the winds inside her and she swelled up so that she could not move. Then Enlil split her body open. He laid half of the body flat to form the Earth, with the other half arched over it to form the sky. The gods then beheaded Tiamat's husband and created mankind from his blood, mixed with clay.

　　The longest story is the Gilgamesh epic, one of the outstanding works of ancient literature. The superhero Gilgamesh originally appeared in Sumerian mythology as a legendary king of Uruk. A long Babylonian poem includes an account of his journey to the bottom of the sea to obtain the plant of life. As he stopped to bathe at a spring on the way home, a hungry snake snatched the plant. When Gilgamesh saw the creature cast off its old skin to become young again, it seemed to him a sign that old age was the fate of humans.

　　Another searcher for eternal life was Adapa, a fisherman who gained wisdom from Ea, the god of water. The other gods were jealous of his knowledge and called him to heaven. Ea warned him not to drink or eat while there. Anu offered him the water of life and the bread of life because he thought that, since Adapa already knew too much, he might as well be a god. Adapa, however, refused and went back to Earth to die, thus losing for himself and for mankind the gift of immortal life. These legends somewhat resemble the Bible story of Adam and Eve. It is highly probable, in fact, that the ancient legends and myths of Mesopotamia supplied material that was reworked by the biblical authors

　　It was during the Sumerian era that a great flood overwhelmed Mesopotamia. So great was this flood that stories about it worked their way into several ancient literatures. The Sumerian counterpart of Noah was Ziusudra, and from him was developed the Babylonian figure Utnapishtim, whose story of the flood was related in the 'Epic of Gilgamesh'. Immortal after his escape from the flood, Utnapishtim was also the wise man who told Gilgamesh where to find the youth-restoring plant.

　　The Last of the Sumerians

　　Within a few centuries the Sumerians had built up a society based in 12 city-states: Kish, Uruk (in the Bible, Erech), Ur, Sippar, Akshak, Larak, Nippur, Adab, Umma, Lagash, Bad-tibira, and Larsa. According to one of the earliest historical documents, the Sumerian King List, eight kings of Sumer reigned before the famous flood. Afterwards various city-states by turns became the temporary seat of power until about 2800 BC, when they were united under the rule of one king--Etana of Kish. After Etana, the city-states vied for domination; this weakened the Sumerians, and they were ripe for conquest--first by Elamites, then by Akkadians.

　　The Sumerians had never been very warlike, and they had only a citizen army, called to arms in time of danger. In about 2340 BC King Sargon of Akkad conquered them and went on to build an empire that stretched westward to the Mediterranean Sea. The empire, though short-lived, fostered art and literature.

　　Led by Ur, the Sumerians again spread their rule far westward. During Ur's supremacy (about 2150 to 2050 BC) Sumerian culture reached its highest development. Shortly thereafter the cities lost their independence forever, and gradually the Sumerians completely disappeared as a people. Their language, however, lived on as the language of culture. Their writing, their business organization, their scientific knowledge, and their mythology and law were spread westward by the Babylonians and Assyrians.

　　Cosmogony and cosmology

　　Thorkild Jacobsen: Professor of Assyriology,

　　Harvard University, 1962-74. Author of The Sumerian Kinglist; "Mesopotamia"

　　in The Intellectual History of Ancient Man Reprinted by Permission

　　Though the "Eridu Genesis" may have come close to treating existence as a whole, a true cosmogonic and cosmological myth that deals centrally with the origins, structuring, and functional principles of the cosmos does not actually appear until Old Babylonian times, when Mesopotamian culture was entering a millennium and a half of doubts about the moral character of world government and even of divine power itself. Yet, the statement is a positive one, almost to the point of defiance. Enuma elish tells of a beginning when all was a watery chaos and only the sea, Tiamat, and the sweet waters underground, Apsu, mingled their waters together. Mummu, the personified original watery form, served as Apsu's page. In their midst the gods were born. The first pair, Lahmu and Lahamu, represented the powers in silt; the next, Anshar and Kishar, those in the horizon. They engendered the god of heaven, Anu, and he in turn the god of the flowing sweet waters, Ea.

　　This tradition is known in a more complete form from an ancient list of gods called An: Anum. There, after a different beginning, Lahmu and Lahamu give rise to Duri and Dari, "the time-cycle"; and these in turn give rise to Enshar and Ninshar, "Lord and Lady Circle." Enshar and Ninshar engender the concrete circle of the horizon, Anshar and Kishar, probably conceived as silt deposited along the edge of the universe. Next was the horizon of the greater heaven and earth, and then--omitting an intrusive line--heaven and earth, probably conceived as two juxtaposed flat disks formed from silt deposited inward from the horizons.

　　Enuma elish truncates these materials and violates their inner logic considerably. Though they are clearly cosmogonic and assume that the cosmic elements and the powers informing them come into being together, Enuma elish seeks to utilize them for a pure theogony (account of the origin of the gods). The creation of the actual cosmos is dealt with much later. Also, the introduction of Mummu, the personified "original form," which in the circumstances can only be that of water, may have led to the omission of Ki, "Earth," who--as nonwatery--did not fit in.

　　The gods, who in Enuma elish come into being within Apsu and Tiamat, are viewed as dynamic creatures, who contrast strikingly with the older generation. Apsu and Tiamat stand for inertia and rest. This contrast leads to a series of conflicts in which first Apsu is killed by Ea; then Tiamat, who was roused later to attack the gods, is killed by Ea's son Marduk. It is Marduk, the hero of the story, who creates the extant universe out of the body of Tiamat. He cuts her, like a dried fish, in two, making one-half of her into heaven--appointing there Sun, Moon, and stars to execute their prescribed motions--and the other half into the Earth. He pierces her eyes to let the Tigris and Euphrates flow forth, and then, heaping mountains on her body in the east, he makes the various tributaries of the Tigris flow out from her breasts. The remainder of the story deals with Marduk's organization of the cosmos, his creation of man, and his assigning to the gods their various cosmic offices and tasks. The cosmos is viewed as structured as, and functioning as, a benevolent absolute monarchy.

　　Man: his origin, nature, and destiny

　　Two different notions about man's origin seem to have been current in ancient Mesopotamian religions. Brief mentions in Sumerian texts indicate that the first men grew from the earth in the manner of grass and herbs. One of these texts, the "Myth of the Creation of the Hoe," adds a few details: Enlil removed heaven from earth in order to make room for seeds to come up, and after he had created the hoe he used it to break the hard crust of earth in Uzumua ("the flesh-grower"), a place in the Temple of Inanna in Nippur. Here, out of the hole made by Enlil's hoe, man grew forth.

　　The other notion presented the view that man was created from select "ingredients" by Enki, or by Enki and his mother Nammu, or by Enki and the birth goddess called variously Ninhursag, Nintur, and Ninmah. In the myth of "Enki and Ninmah" recounted above, Enki had man sired by the "engendering clay of the Apsu"--i.e., of the waters underground--and borne by Nammu. The Akkadian tradition, as represented by the "Myth of Atrahasis," had Enki advise that a god--presumably a rebel--be killed and that the birth goddess Nintur mix his flesh and blood with clay. This was done, after which 14 womb goddesses gestated the mixture and gave birth to 7 human pairs. A similar--probably derived--form of this motif is found in Enuma elish, in which Enki (Ea) alone fashioned man out of the blood of the slain rebel leader Kingu. The creation of man from the blood shed by two slain gods is yet another version of the motif that appears in a bilingual myth from Ashur.

　　Man's nature, then, is part clay (earthly) and part god (divine). The divine aspect, however, is not that of a living god but rather that of a slain, powerless divinity. The Atrahasis story relates that the etemmu (ghost) of the slain god was left in man's flesh and thus became part of man. It is this originally divine part of man, his etemmu, that was believed to survive at his death and to give him a shadowy afterlife in the netherworld. No other trace of a notion of divine essence in man is discernible; in fact, man by himself was viewed as being utterly powerless to act effectively or to succeed in anything. For anything he might wish to do or achieve, man needed the help of a personal god or goddess, some deity in the pantheon who for one reason or other had taken an interest in him and helped and protected him, for "Without his personal god a man eats not."

　　About man's destiny all sources agree. However man may have come into being, he was meant to toil in order to provide food, clothing, housing, and service for the gods, so that they, relieved of all manual labor, could live the life of a governing upper class, a landed nobility. In the scheme of existence man was thus never an end, always just a means.

　　第二篇是讲花粉传播

　　风传播花粉是一个很通常的情况，在temperate areas很常见，原因是dominant trees 很少，而且trees species 很多都是一样的，所以传播的机会大。举了一个例子是说，一个人爬到屋顶然后朝对面扔书，他希望能接到书的那个人接到书的几率很小，于是说明前面那种情况成功率低。 在tropical area, animals like insects通常传播花粉，成功率高。

　　后面讲要想风传播花粉成功率高的因素:1.树要足够高 2.风力要足够大 3.pollen的数量要足够大

　　参考文章：

　　Pollen is the sticky grain produced by the anthers or stamen of a flower. It is considered to be the male component that is transferred to the female stigma of a plant, allowing for reproduction to occur. In order for this transfer to happen, pollen must be moved from the anthers to the stigma in one of two ways: by an animal or by the wind. When these pollinators move pollen, the act of pollination takes place, resulting in a fertilized plant.

　　Zoophily is the spread of pollen by an animal. Animals responsible for pollinating plants are bees, butterflies and other flying insects, as well as birds and some mammals, including bats and mice. In order to attract animals that spread pollen, these flowers are often large and brightly colored, have a strong, attractive odor and produce sweet liquid called nectar. When any of these creatures come into contact with the pollen of a flower, it sticks to their bodies. Thus, as they move from flower to flower, the pollen is taken with them and pollination occurs. Animal pollination is the most common way for pollen to spread, with 90 percent of pollination occurring through this method. More than 200,000 different types of animals take part in the process of pollination.

　　Another method of spreading pollen is by the wind. This is called anemophily. Plants that spread their pollen by the wind usually produce smaller flowers than plants that rely on animals for pollination. Also, unlike animal-borne pollen, pollen carried by the wind is not sticky. The flowers that produce this type of pollen have stamens that are longer and thus exposed to the wind. They also have stigma that is feathery in order to catch pollen floating in the air.