One day, Mr. Arnold was teaching a lesson, and things
were going as normally as ever. He was explaining the story of mankind to his
pupils. He told them that, in the beginning, men were nomads; they never stayed
in the same place for very long. Instead, they would travel about, here and
there, in search of food, wherever it was to be found. And when the food ran
out, they would move off somewhere else.
He taught them about the invention of farming and
keeping animals. This was an important discovery, because by learning to
cultivate(耕作)the land, and care for animals, mankind
would always have food steadily available. It also meant that people could
remain living in one place, and this made it easier to set about tasks that
would take a long while to complete, like building towns, cities, and all that
were in them. All the children were listening attracted by this story, until
Lucy jumped up:
“And if that was so important and improved everything
so much, why are we nomads all over again, Mr. Arnold?”
Mr. Arnold didn’t know what to say. Lucy was a very
intelligent girl. He knew that she lived with her parents in a house, so she
must know that her family were not nomads; so what did she mean?
“We have all become nomads again,” continued Lucy,
“The other day, outside the city, they were cutting the forest down. A while
ago a fisherman told me how they fish. It’s the same with everyone: when
there’s no more forest left the foresters go elsewhere, and when the fish run
out the fishermen move on. That’s what the nomads did, isn’t it ?
The teacher nodded, thoughtfully. Really, Lucy was
right Mankind had turned into nomads. Instead of looking after the land in a
way that we could be sure it would keep supplying our needs, we kept developing
it until the land was bare. And then off we would go to the next place! The
class spent the rest of the afternoon talking about what they could do to show
how to be more civilized.
The next day everyone attended class wearing a green
T-shirt, with a message that said “I am not a nomad!”
And , from then on, they set about showing that indeed
they were not. Every time they knew they needed something, they made sure that
they would get it using care and control. If they needed wood or paper, they
would make sure that they got the recycled kind. They ordered their fish from
fish farms, making sure that the fish they received were not too young and too
small. They only used animals that were well cared for, and brought up on
farms.
And so, from their little town, those children managed
to give up being nomads again, just as prehistoric men had done, so many
thousands of years ago.
1.From Paragraph 2, we can know that______ .
A.people got
tired of living in the same place
B.people
gradually got used to living in cities
C.people tended
to settle down after learning farming
D.people spent
a long time in learning to keep animals
2.In the teacher’s opinion, Lucy’s argument was______
A.shocking B.ridiculous C.puzzling D.reasonable
3.Which of the following agrees with the message “I am
not a nomad” (Paragraph 7)?
A.People eat
young fish for its delicious taste.
B.Foresters
leave the place where wood is not available.
C.Fishermen
move elsewhere when there is no fish left.
D.People use
recycled materials as much as possible.
4.The writer tries to make us believe that ______.
A.mankind has
been progressing mainly through traveling about
B.it’s unwise for mankind to use the land in an
uncontrolled way
C.it’s quite good for students to learn more about the
history of mankind
D.in the
beginning men were nomads.