Irma

托福閱讀 練習小短文 - 班圖人、鐵與農業(歷史學科) 

托福愛考的內容之一"歷史學科"，任何學科己乎都能與歷史結合相關，像是生物的演化歷程或地理風貌等等，所以要多方吸收知識，增加單字的數量，長度大複雜度高的句型學習等，都是想要在托福考到高分的要點所應具備的平日習慣。

There is evidence of agriculture in Africa prior to 3000 B.C. It may have developed independently, but many scholars believe that the spread of agriculture and iron throughout Africa linked it to the major centers of the Near East and Mediterranean world. The drying up of what is now the Sahara desert had pushed many peoples to the south into sub-Sahara Africa. These peoples settled at first in scattered hunting-and-gathering bands, although in some places near lakes and rivers, people who fished, with a more secure food supply, lived in larger population concentrations. Agriculture seems to have reached these people from the Near East, since the first domesticated crops were millets and sorghums whose origins are not African but west Asian. Once the idea of planting diffused, Africans began to develop their own crops, such as certain varieties of rice, and they demonstrated a continued receptiveness to new imports. The proposed areas of the domestication of African crops lie in a band that extends from Ethiopia across southern Sudan to West Africa. Subsequently, other crops, such as bananas, were introduced from Southeast Asia.

Livestock also came from outside Africa. Cattle were introduced from Asia, as probably were domestic sheep and goats. Horses were apparently introduced by the Hyksos invaders of Egypt (1780-1560 B.C.) and then spread across the Sudan to West Africa. Rock paintings in the Sahara indicate that horses and chariots were used to traverse the desert and that by 300-200 B.C., there were trade routes across the Sahara. Horses were adopted by peoples of the West African savannah, and later their powerful cavalry forces allowed them to carve out large empires. Finally, the camel was introduced around the first century A.D. This was an important innovation, because the camel’s abilities to thrive in harsh desert conditions and to carry large loads cheaply made it an effective and efficient means of transportation. The camel transformed the desert from a barrier into a still difficult, but more accessible, route of trade and communication.

Iron came from West Asia, although its routes of diffusion were somewhat different than those of agriculture. Most of Africa presents a curious case in which societies moved directly from a technology of stone to iron without passing through the intermediate stage of copper or bronze metallurgy, although some early copper-working sites have been found in West Africa. Knowledge of iron making penetrated into the forest and savannahs of West Africa at roughly the same time that iron making was reaching Europe. Evidence of iron making has been found in Nigeria, Ghana, and Mali.

This technological shift cause profound changes in the complexity of African societies. Iron represented power. In West Africa the blacksmith who made tools and weapons had an important place in society, often with special religious powers and functions. Iron hoes, which made the land more productive, and iron weapons, which made the warrior more powerful, had symbolic meaning in a number of West Africa societies. Those who knew the secrets of making iron gained ritual and sometimes political power.

Unlike in the Americas, where metallurgy was a very late and limited development, Africans had iron from a relatively early date, developing ingenious furnaces to produce the high heat needed for production and to control the amount of air that reached the carbon and iron ore necessary for making iron. Much of Africa moved right into the Iron Age, taking the basic technology and adapting it to local conditions and resources.

The diffusion of agriculture and later of iron was accompanied by a great movement of people who may have carried these innovations. These people probably originated in eastern Nigeria. Their migration may have been set in motion by an increase in population caused by a movement of peoples fleeing the desiccation, or drying up, of the Sahara. They spoke a language, proto-Bantu (“Bantu” means “the people”), which is the parent tongue of a language of a large number of Bantu languages still spoken throughout sub-Sahara Africa. Why and how these people spread out into central and southern Africa remains a mystery, but archaeologists believe that their iron weapons allowed them to conquer their hunting-gathering opponents, who still used stone implements. Still, the process is uncertain, and peaceful migration—or simply rapid demographic growth—may have also caused the Bantu explosion.

簡譯:

在非洲，早在西元前3 000年以前就有了農業的跡象。它可能是獨立發展的，但很多學者認為農業和鐵器在非洲的傳播將非洲與近東的中心和地中海世界聯繫了起來。發展：部落起初分散定居，靠打獵和採集維生，儘管是在靠近湖泊和河流的地區人們以捕魚為業，有較穩定的食物供給，聚集了較多的人口。農業技術可能來自於近東最終為非洲人所知，一旦種植的思想傳播開來，非洲人就開始培育他們自己的農作物，舉了水稻、香蕉等農作物的引進例子。

家禽也來自於非洲以外的地區。牛是從亞洲引入的，家養綿羊和山羊也可能是這樣的。馬匹顯然是由埃及的Hyksos入侵者引入的，之後就從蘇丹傳到西非。最後，駱駝大約在西元1世紀被引入到非洲。這是一次重要革新，因為駱駝有能力生存在惡劣的沙漠環境，另外，駱駝可以便宜地運輸大量的載荷，這使得它們成為了一種方便高效的運輸方式。駱駝使得沙漠從障礙轉換為一條雖依然艱難但已經更加容易接近的商路和交流通道。

鐵器來自于西亞，它傳播的路徑跟農業技術的不同。大部分非洲表現出一種奇怪的現象，那就是他們社會直接從石器時代進步到鐵器時代，而沒有經過中間過渡的銅器或青銅器冶金術。發現了一些相關證據。

科技的革新對非洲社會的複雜性產生了深刻的改變。鐵器代表著力量。在西非的很多社會裏，生產工具的鐵匠、使土地更多產的鐵鋤、使戰士更強大的鐵制武器都有著象徵意義，對西非社會有著標誌性的意義。那些掌握了制鐵技術的人們常可獲得宗教權力，有時候獲得政治權力。

非洲的冶鐵技術從相對較早的時期就開始發展;他們製造了精巧的高爐以產生冶鐵所需要的高溫，並能控制與碳和鐵礦石接觸的空氣用量以滿足冶鐵的需要。大部分非洲人直接進入了鐵器時代，他們吸取了冶鐵的基本技術並使之與當地的條件和資源相適應。

農業和後來冶鐵技術是伴隨著那些已經掌握了新技術的人們的大遷徙而傳播的。這些人可能來源於尼日尼亞東部。為了逃避撒哈拉沙漠的不斷乾旱，人們遷徙到尼日尼亞東部，使這裏的人口增多，於是這裏的人們也接著遷徙。他們說前班圖語。這些人為什麼擴散到非洲中部和南部，怎麼遷徙的仍然是迷。