2000年Passage 2
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-olds there are twice as many women as men. But the great universal of male mortality is being changed. Now, by 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 has 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 everyone being the same in survival and number of offspring means that natural selection has lost 80% of its power in upper-middle-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 -even the past 100 years-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 average 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.
58. 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
[解題思路]
縱觀全文，主要討論的是人類(lèi)已經(jīng)停止了進(jìn)化的問(wèn)題，由此可以對(duì)各個(gè)選項(xiàng)進(jìn)行排除。A選項(xiàng)關(guān)于性別問(wèn)題在第一段中有所提及但卻不是文章的重點(diǎn)。B選項(xiàng)的話題正好與文章相反，也是錯(cuò)誤選項(xiàng)。C選項(xiàng)的話題范圍太大，文章針對(duì)的只是人類(lèi)，而不是大自然的進(jìn)化。而D則正好契合原文的主題。
[題目譯文]
下面哪一項(xiàng)是本文的最佳標(biāo)題？
[A] 人類(lèi)進(jìn)化中的性別比例變化
[B] 人類(lèi)進(jìn)化繼續(xù)的辦法
[C] 自然的進(jìn)化前景
[D] 人類(lèi)進(jìn)化毫無(wú)發(fā)展
【推薦】考研英語(yǔ)閱讀理解命題思路透析和真題揭秘
2009年全國(guó)研究生入學(xué)考試時(shí)間確定(附簡(jiǎn)章)
2009年研究生入學(xué)考試各高校招生簡(jiǎn)章專(zhuān)題
