托福阅读素材：太平洋群岛居民起源(社会科学篇)

　　托福阅读素材社会科学篇：关于太平洋群岛居民的起源有很多种说法。三餐都吃巧克力蛋糕对心脏有好处?新东方在线托福网为大家带来托福阅读素材：太平洋群岛居民的起源(社会科学篇)，希望对大家托福备考有所帮助，更多精彩尽请关注新东方在线托福网!

　　The Origin of the Pacific Island People

　　太平洋群岛居民的起源

　　1.The greater Pacific region, traditionally called Oceania, consists of three cultural areas: Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Melanesia, in the southwest Pacific, contains the large islands of New Guinea, the Solomons, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia. Micronesia, the area north of Melanesia, consists primarily of small scattered islands. Polynesia is the central Pacific area in the great triangle defined by Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand. Before the arrival of Europeans, the islands in the two largest cultural areas, Polynesia and Micronesia, together contained a population estimated at 700,000.

　　段落梗概：广义的太平洋地区，传统上被称作大洋洲，由三块文化区域组成：美拉尼西亚，密克罗尼西亚和波利尼西亚。美拉尼西亚在西南太平洋，包含了新几内亚岛、所罗门、瓦努阿图和新喀里多尼亚的广大岛屿。密克罗尼西亚在美拉尼西亚的北边，主要由一些分散的岛屿组成。波利尼西亚是太平洋中心地区，位于由夏威夷、复活节群岛和新西兰的三大岛屿组成的三角区域中。

　　2.Speculation on the origin of these Pacific islanders began as soon as outsiders encountered them, in the absence of solid linguistic, archaeological, and biological data, many fanciful and mutually exclusive theories were devised. Pacific islanders are variously thought to have come from North America, South America, Egypt, Israel, and India, as well as Southeast Asia. Many older theories implicitly deprecated the navigational abilities and overall cultural creativity of the Pacific islanders. For example, British anthropologists G. Elliot Smith and W. J. Perry assumed that only Egyptians would have been skilled enough to navigate and colonize the Pacific. They inferred that the Egyptians even crossed the Pacific to found the great civilizations of the New World (North and South America). In 1947 Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl drifted on a balsa-log raft westward with the winds and currents across the Pacific from South America to prove his theory that Pacific islanders were Native Americans (also called American Indians). Later Heyerdahl suggested that the Pacific was peopled by three migrations: by Native Americans from the Pacific Northwest of North America drifting to Hawaii, by Peruvians drifting to Easter Island, and by Melanesians. In 1969 he crossed the Atlantic in an Egyptian-style reed boat to prove Egyptian influences in the Americas. Contrary to these theorists, the overwhelming evidence of physical anthropology, linguistics, and archaeology shows that the Pacific islanders came from Southeast Asia and were skilled enough as navigators to sail against the prevailing winds and currents.

　　段落梗概：对于太平洋群岛居民起源有很多奇异并且互斥的理论。许多古老的理论含蓄地贬低了太平洋群岛居民的航海能力和综合文化创造力。比如说，英国人类学家推断埃及人甚至曾经穿越过太平洋去寻找新世界的文明;挪威探险家推测太平洋群岛居民是美国本土居民;与这些理论相矛盾的是，有关物理人类学、语言学和考古学的权威证据表明，太平洋岛居民来自东南亚，并且他们有足够的能力来逆着风和洋流航行。

　　3.The basic cultural requirements for the successful colonization of the Pacific islands include the appropriate boat-building, sailing, and navigation skills to get to the islands in the first place, domesticated plants and gardening skills suited to often marginal conditions, and a varied inventory of fishing implements and techniques. It is now generally believed that these prerequisites originated with peoples speaking Austronesian languages (a group of several hundred related languages) and began to emerge in Southeast Asia by about 5000 B.C.E. The culture of that time, based on archaeology and linguistic reconstruction, is assumed to have had a broad inventory of cultivated plants including taro, yarns, banana, sugarcane, breadfruit, coconut, sago, and rice. Just as important, the culture also possessed the basic foundation for an effective maritime adaptation, including outrigger canoes and a variety of fishing techniques that could be effective for overseas voyaging.

　　段落梗概：成功地将太平洋群岛殖民地化需要的基础文化条件有哪些。来源是什么。

　　4.Contrary to the arguments of some that much of the pacific was settled by Polynesians accidentally marooned after being lost and adrift, it seems reasonable that this feat was accomplished by deliberate colonization expeditions that set out fully stocked with food and domesticated plants and animals. Detailed studies of the winds and currents using computer simulations suggest that drifting canoes would have been a most unlikely means of colonizing the Pacific. These expeditions were likely driven by population growth and political dynamics on the home islands, as well as the challenge and excitement of exploring unknown waters. Because all Polynesians, Micronesians, and many Melanesians speak Austronesian languages and grow crops derived from Southeast Asia, all these peoples most certainly derived from that region and not the New World or elsewhere. The undisputed pre-Columbian presence in Oceania of the sweet potato, which is a New World domesticate, has sometimes been used to support Heyerdahl’s “American Indians in the Pacific” theories. However, this is one plant out of a long list of Southeast Asian domesticates. As Patrick Kirch, an American anthropologist, points out, rather than being brought by rafting South Americans, sweet potatoes might just have easily been brought back by returning Polynesian navigators who couldhave reached the west coast of South America.

　　段落梗概：与那个太平洋人很多都是波利尼西亚人偶然迷失并漂流而定居下来的说法相反的是，这些功绩是通过有意的殖民远征来实现的，他们那些准备周详，出发时满载食物、已培育好的植物和以驯化的动物。原因一：通过电脑模拟对风向和洋流进行的详细研究表明，船只漂流是最不可能的殖民太平洋的途径。原因二：共同的语言及作物表明他们起源于东南亚居民。