1、雅思（阅读）历年真题试卷汇编 11 及答案解析(总分：80.00，做题时间：90 分钟)You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.The Origins of LaughterWhile joking and wit are uniquely human inventions, laughter certainly is not. Other creatures, including chimpanzees, gorillas and even r
2、ats, laugh. The fact that they laugh suggests that laughter has been around for a lot longer than we have.There is no doubt that laughing typically involves groups of people. “Laughter evolved as a signal to others it almost disappears when we are alone,“ says Robert Provine, a neuroscientist at the
3、 University of Maryland. Provine found that most laughter comes as a polite reaction to everyday remarks such as “see you later“, rather than anything particularly funny. And the way we laugh depends on the company were keeping. Men tend to laugh longer and harder when they are with other men, perha
4、ps as a way of bonding. Women tend to laugh more and at a higher pitch when men are present, possibly indicating flirtation or even submission.To find the origins of laughter, Provine believes we need to look at play. He points out that the masters of laughing are children, and nowhere is their tale
5、nt more obvious than in the boisterous antics, and the original context is play. Well-known primate watchers, including Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall, have long argued that chimps laugh while at play. The sound they produce is known as a pant laugh. It seems obvious when you watch their behavior they
6、 even have the same ticklish spots as we do. But after removing the context, the parallel between human laughter and a chimps characteristic pant laugh is not so clear. When Provine played a tape of the pant laughs to 119 of his students, for example, only two guessed correctly what it was.These fin
7、dings underline how chimp and human laughter vary. When we laugh the sound is usually produced by chopping up a single exhalation into a series of shorter with one sound produced on each inward and outward breath. The question is: does this pant laughter have the same source as our own laughter? New
8、 research lends weight to the idea that it does. The findings come from Elke Zimmerman, head of the Institute for Zoology in Germany, who compared the sounds made by babies and chimpanzees in response to tickling during the first year of their life. Using sound spectrographs to reveal the pitch and
9、intensity of vocalizations, she discovered that chimp and human baby laughter follow broadly the same pattern. Zimmerman believes the closeness of baby laughter to chimp laughter supports the idea that laughter was around long before humans arrived on the scene. What started simply as a modification
10、 of breathing associated with enjoyable and playful interactions has acquired a symbolic meaning as an indicator of pleasure.Pinpointing when laughter developed is another matter. Humans and chimps share a common ancestor that lived perhaps 8 million years ago, but animals might have been laughing l
11、ong before that. More distantly related primates, including gorillas, laugh, and anecdotal evidence suggests that other social mammals can do too. Scientists are currently testing such stories with a comparative analysis of just how common laughter is among animals. So far, though, the most compelli
12、ng evidence for laughter beyond primates comes from research done by Jaak Panksepp from Bowling Green State University, Ohio, into the ultrasonic chirps produced by rats during play and in response to tickling.All this still doesnt answer the question of why we laugh at all. One idea is that laughte
13、r and tickling originated as a way of sealing the relationship between mother and child. Another is that the reflex response to tickling is protective, alerting us to the presence of crawling creatures that might harm us or compelling us to defend the parts of our bodies that are most vulnerable in
14、hand-to-hand combat. But the idea that has gained the most popularity in recent years is that laughter in response to tickling is a way for two individuals to signal and test their trust in one another. This hypothesis starts from the observation that although a little tickle can be enjoyable, if it
15、 goes on too long it can be torture. By engaging in a bout of tickling, we put ourselves at the mercy of another individual, and laughing is what makes it a reliable signal of trust, according to Tom Flamson, a laughter researcher at the University of California, Los Angels. “Even in rats, laughter,
16、 tickle, play and trust are linked. Rats chirp a lot when they play,“ says Flamson. “These chirps can be aroused by tickling. And they get bonded to us as a result, which certainly seems like a show of trust.“Well never know which animal laughed the first laugh, or why. But we can be sure it wasnt i
17、n response to a prehistoric joke. The funny thing is that while the origins of laughter are probably quite serious, we owe human laughter and our language-based humor to the same unique skill. While other animals pant, we alone can control our breath well enough to produce the sound of laughter. Wit
18、hout that control there would also be no speech and no jokes to endure.Questions 1-6Look at the following research findings(Questions 1-6)and the list of people below.Match each finding with the correct person, A, B, C or D.Write the correct letter, A, B, C or D, in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.NB
19、 You may use any letter more than once.List of PeopleA ProvineB ZimmermanC PankseppD Flamson（分数：12.00）(1).Babies and some animals produce laughter which sounds similar.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(2).Primates are not the only animals who produce laughter.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(3).Laughter can be used to show that we
20、feel safe and secure with others.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(4).Most human laughter is not a response to a humorous situation.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(5).Animal laughter evolved before human laughter.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(6).Laughter is a social activity.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_Complete the summary using the list of words, A-K, be
21、low.Write the correct letter, A-K, in boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet.Some scientists believe that laughter first developed out of 1. Research has revealed that human and chimp laughter may have the same 2. Scientists have long been aware that 3laugh, but it now appears that laughter might be more w
22、idespread than once thought. Although the reasons why humans started to laugh are still unknown, it seems that laughter may result from the 4we feel with another person.A combat B chirps C pitchD origins E play F ratsG primates H confidence I fearJ babies K tickling（分数：8.00）填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项
23、1:_Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet, writeTRUE if the statement agrees with the informationFALSE if the statement contradicts the informationNOT GIVEN if there is no information on this（分数：6.00）(1).Both men and wom
24、en laugh more when they are with members of the same sex.（分数：2.00）A.真B.假C.Not Given(2).Primates lack sufficient breath control to be able to produce laughs the way humans do.（分数：2.00）A.真B.假C.Not Given(3).Chimpanzees produce laughter in a wider range of situations than rats do.（分数：2.00）A.真B.假C.Not Gi
25、venYou should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.THE LOST CITYThanks to modern remote-sensing techniques, a ruined city in Turkey is slowly revealing itself as one of the greatest and most mysterious cities of the ancient world. Sally Palmer uncovers
26、 more.A The low granite mountain, known as Kerkenes Dag, juts from the northern edge of the Cappadocian plain in Turkey. Sprawled over the mountainside are the ruins of an enormous city, contained by crumbling defensive walls seven kilometers long. Many respected archaeologists believe these are the
27、 remains of the fabled city of Pteria, the sixth-century BC stronghold of the Medes that the Greek historian Herodotus described in his famous work The Histories. The short-lived city came under Median control and only fifty years later was sacked, burned and its strong stone walls destroyed.B Briti
28、sh archaeologist Dr Geoffrey Summers has spent ten years studying the site. Excavating the ruins is a challenge because of the vast area they cover. The 7 km perimeter walls run around a site covering 271 hectares. Dr Summers quickly realised it would take far too long to excavate the site using tra
29、ditional techniques alone. So he decided to use modern technology as well to map the entire site, both above and beneath the surface, to locate the most interesting areas and priorities to start digging.C In 1993, Dr Summers hired a special hand-held balloon with a remote-controlled camera attached.
30、 He walked over the entire site holding the balloon and taking photos. Then one afternoon, he rented a hot-air balloon and floated over the site, taking yet more pictures. By the end of the 1994 season, Dr Summers and his team had a jigsaw of aerial photographs of the whole site. The next stage was
31、to use remote sensing, which would let them work out what lay below the intriguing outlines and ruined walls. “Archaeology is a discipline that lends itself very well to remote sensing because it revolves around space,“ says Scott Branting, an associated director of the project. He started working w
32、ith Dr Summers in 1995.D The project used two main remote-sensing techniques. The first is magnetometry, which works on the principle that magnetic fields at the surface of the Earth are influenced by what is buried beneath. It measures localised variations in the direction and intensity of this mag
33、netic field. “The Earths magnetic field can vary from place to place, depending on what happened there in the past,“ says Branting. “If something containing iron oxide was heavily burnt, by natural or human actions, the iron particles in it can be permanently reoriented, like a compass needle, to al
34、ign with the Earths magnetic field present at that point in time and space.“ The magnetometer detects differences in the orientations and intensities of these iron particles from the present-day magnetic field and uses them to produce an image of what lies below ground.E Kerkenes Dag lends itself pa
35、rticularly well to magnetometry because it was all burnt once in a savage fire. In places the heat was sufficient to turn sandstone to glass and to melt granite. The fire was so hot that there were strong magnetic signatures set to the Earths magnetic field from the time around 547 BC resulting in e
36、xtremely clear pictures. Furthermore, the city was never rebuilt. “If you have multiple layers, it can confuse pictures, because you have different walls from different periods giving signatures that all go in different directions,“ says Branting. “We only have one going down about 1.5 meters, so we
37、 can get a good picture of this fairly short-lived city.“F The other main sub-surface mapping technique, which is still being used at the site, is resistivity. This technique measures the way electrical pulses are conducted through sub-surface soil. Its done by shooting pulses into the ground throug
38、h a thin metal probe. Different materials have different electrical conductivity. For example, stone and mudbrick are poor conductors, but looser, damp soil conducts very well. By walking around the site and taking about four readings per metre, it is possible to get a detailed idea of what is where
39、 beneath the surface. The teams then build up pictures of walls, hearths and other remains. “It helps a lot if it has rained, because the electrical pulse can get through more easily,“ says Branting. “Then if something is more resistant, it really shows up.“ This is one of the reasons that the proje
40、ct has a spring season, when most of the resistivity work is done. Unfortunately, testing resistivity is a lot slower than magnetometry. “If we did resistivity over the whole site it would take about 100 years,“ says Branting. Consequently, the team is concentrating on areas where they want to clari
41、fy pictures from the magnetometry.G Remote sensing does not reveal everything about Kerkenes Dag, but it shows the most interesting sub-surface areas of the site. The archaeologists can then excavate these using traditional techniques. One surprise came when they dug out one of the fates in the defe
42、nsive walls. “Our observations in early seasons led us to assume that we were looking at a stone base from a mudbrick city wall, such as would be found at most other cities in the Ancient Near East,“ says Dr Summers. “When we started to excavate we were staggered to discover that the walls were made
43、 entirely from stone and that the gate would have stood at least ten metres high. After ten years of study, Pteria is gradually giving up its secrets.“ Questions 14-17Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.Which paragraph contains the following information?Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxe
44、s 14-17 on your answer sheet.（分数：8.00）(1).The reason for the deployment of a variety of investigative methods（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(2).An example of an unexpected find（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(3).How the surface of the site was surveyed from above（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(4).The reason why experts are interested in the sit
45、e（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_Complete the summary below.Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.Write your answers in boxes 18-25 on your answer sheet.Exploring the ancient city of PteriaArchaeologists began working ten years ago. They started by taking photographs of the site from the
46、ground and then from a distance in a 1. They focused on what lay below the surface using a magnetometer, which identifies variations in the magnetic field. These variations occur when the 2in buried structures have changed direction as a result of great heat. They line up with the surrounding magnet
47、ic field just as a 3would do.The other remote-sensing technique employed was resistivity. This uses a 4 to fire electrical pulses into the earth. The principle is that building materials like 5and stone do not conduct electricity well, while 6does this much more effectively. This technique is mainly
48、 employed during the 7, when conditions are more favourable. Resistivity is mainly being used to 8 some images generated by the magnetometer.（分数：16.00）填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_3.Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.Write the correct letter in box 26 on your answer sheet.How do modern remote-sensing techniques help at the Pteria site?A They detect minute buried objects for the archaeologists to dig up.B They pinpoint key areas which would be worth investigating closely.
