2024年6月3日发(作者：)

2021年硕士入学考试英语阅读真题附答案详解:TEXT2

2000 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, boy 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

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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 a savage 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.

55. What used to be the danger in being a man according to the first

paragraph?

[A] A lack of mates.

[B] A fierce competition.

[C] A lower survival rate.

[D] A defective gene.

56. What does the example of India illustrate?

[A] Wealthy people tend to have fewer children than poor people.

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[B] Natural selection hardly works among the rich and the poor.

[C] The middle class population is 80% smaller than that of the tribes.

[D] India is one of the countries with a very high birth rate.

57. The author argues that our bodies have stopped evolving because________.

[A] life has been improved by technological advance

[B] the number of female babies has been declining

[C] our species has reached the highest stage of evolution

[D] the difference between wealth and poverty is disappearing

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.

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难句解析：

①There 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.

▲该句是由三个递进关系的简单句组成的并列句，句法结构比较清晰。

△第一个分句的关键词在born，表明该比数是婴儿出生时的性别比例；第二个分句的

关键词在near balance（接近持平）和at the age of maturity，表示性别比例的持平状

态发生在成年时期；第三个分句的70-year-olds指代的是“70岁的人们”，作名词。

②Again, differences between people and the opportunity for natural selection

to take advantage of it have diminished.

▲注意differences between people和the opportunity for natural selection to

take advantage of it是两个并列的主语，千万不要理解成people与the opportunity

是between的并列宾语。

△and连接的两个并列部分是differences between people和the opportunity for

natural selection to take advantage of it，而不是people和the opportunity。另外注

意句中的it指代的是differences between people。

③The 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

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upper-middle-class India compared to the tribes.

▲该句的主语是The grand mediocrity，谓语是means，其后跟着that引导的宾语

从句that natural selection has lost 80％ of its power in upper-middle-class India

compared to the tribes，其中compared to the tribes是分词结构作状语，省略了

if/when being。破折号中间everyone being the same in survival and number of

offspring是典型的插入语，其中survival和number of offspring都是介词in的宾语。

△grand在此处不是“宏伟，壮丽”的意思，而是“程度很深”；mediocrity也非“平

庸，平常”，而是“平均化”或“折衷”；offspring是“后代”。另外要理解natural selection

has lost 80％ of its power in upper-middle-class India的意思，这里是指在原来的社

会不平等的情况下，印度中上层阶级拥有一些能使自己在自然选择中处于优势的特权，而

随着医疗和卫生条件的改变，下层人民也拥有同样的生存条件，因此中上层阶级就丧失了

80％的自然选择中的优势。

④Darwin had a phrase to describe those ignorant of evolution: they "look at

an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his

comprehension."

▲冒号后的句子是主句中a phrase的同位语。该同位语从句中的结构是A does

something as B does something（A做某事的样子正像B做某事的样子）。

△those ignorant of evolution指对生物进化过程一无所知的人，其后的they也指代

这些人。最后的his指代前面的a savage。beyond his comprehension超出了他的理解

范围。

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