职称英语综合类考试教材阅读判断文章及译文.docVIP

2014年职称英语综合类考试教材阅读判断文章及译文（10） 2014年职称英语考试时间为3月29日。小编为您整理职称英语教材中，阅读判断部分的文章及译文，希望对您有所助益。 Plants and Mankind Botany(植物学), the study of plants, occupies a peculiar position in the history of human knowledge. We don’t know what our Stone Age ancestors knew about plants, but from what we can observe of preindustrialial societies that still exist, a detailed learning of plants and their properties must be extremely ancient. They have always been enormously important to the welfare of people, not only for food, but also for clothing, weapons, tools, dyes, Medicines, shelter, and many other purposes. Tribes living today in the jungle of the Amazon recognize hundreds of plants and know many properties of each. To them botany has no name and is probably not even recognized as a special branch of “knowledge” at all. Unfortunately, the more industrialized we become the farther away we move from direct contact with plants. And the less distinct our knowledge of botany grows. Yet everyone comes unconsciously on an amazing amount of botanical knowledge, and few people will fail to recognize a rose, an apple, or an orchid. When our Neolithic ancestors, living in the Middle East about 10,000years ago, discovered that certain grasses could be harvested and their seeds planted for richer yields the next season, the first great step in a new association of plants and humans was taken. Grains were discovered and from them flowed the marvel of agriculture: cultivated crops. From then on, humans would increasingly take their living from the controlled production of a few plants, rather than getting a little here and a little there from many varieties that grew wild and the accumulated knowledge of tens of thousands of years of experience and intimacy with plants in the wild would begin to fade away. 词汇： botany 植物学 yield 产量，收益 detailed 详细的，详尽的 marvel 令人惊奇的事(人)，奇迹 property 特征;财产，资产 logical 逻辑的，合乎逻辑的 pyramid 金字塔 variety 品种，变种;变化，多样化 accumulate 积累，积聚 welfare 福利，幸福，康乐 intimacy 亲近，亲密 注释： 1.Stone