2015考研英语阅读冲刺精读训练（人类社会）

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    2015考研英语阅读冲刺精读训练（人类社会）
    1 JARED DIAMOND has made a name for himself explaining why some societies
do well and others do not. In “Guns, Germs and Steel”, his 1997 bestseller, he
brushed aside the arrogant view that ascribed Europe's dominance to human
biology, stressing instead the continent's environmental advantages, notably its
native wheat and barley and its easily domesticated animals. He followed this up
eight years later with “Collapse”, another exhaustive study, this time about how
certain societies caused their own demise by ruining the environs that sustained
them. Read together, these are civilisation-scale books about survival.
    But they cover only a small portion of the human story. In his new book Mr
Diamond, a geographer at UCLA, points out that life on this scale is a recent
phenomenon. For most of history human beings lived in small groups as
hunter-gatherers. Agriculture began 11,000 years ago; state government not even
half as recently.But Mr Diamond, who has spent years studying in the jungles of
Papua New Guinea and learning from local tribes people, argues that mankind
retains important links to its distant past and can still learn a thing or two
from traditional societies.
    Mr Diamond writes, for example, that most societies have held on to some
form of religion as a way of maintaining social order, comforting the anxious
and teaching political obedience. Tribal societies in New Guinea rarely, if
ever, fight over religious matters. These societies also tend to be more
multilingual, helpful for diplomacy perhaps, and as it turns out, also a way of
protecting against Alzheimer's. There are 1,000 different languages in New
Guinea alone. Traditional societies resolve disputes by making do entirely
without the state. In stark contrast to the American criminal-justice system,
the leopard-skin-draped chief of Sudan's Nuer people has no role in settling
disputes but works to facilitate mediation and calculate traditional forms of
compensation.
    Other things have changed, not all of them for the better. The gluttonous
industrialised world could benefit from a more Palaeolithic diet. Traditional
societies have hardly a trace of the West's main non-communicable diseases, such
as heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and many forms of cancer—the hallmarks of a
diet rich in salt and saturated fat.Thanks to a cuisine of mainly low-sodium
bananas, Brazil's Yanomamo Indians consume only 50 milligrams of salt a day. One
Big Mac would give them a month's worth. Tribespeople who adopt a sedentary
lifestyle and eat processed food show a sharp increase in the same diseases that
afflict Westerners. A third of urbanised Australian aboriginals suffer from
type-2 diabetes, and among the Wanigela in Port Moresby, New Guinea's modern
capital city, the figure is closer to 40%.(Economist)
    翻译：
    贾雷德戴蒙德因为分析了一些社会运行良好一些社会难以为继的原因而名声大噪。他执笔的《枪炮、病菌与钢铁》是1997年的畅销书。书中，他对
“欧洲社会之所以运行良好，是因为其主导了人类生物学领域”
这一自负论断不屑一顾，在他看来，欧洲大陆的昌盛是因为欧洲优越的环境特别适合种植小麦、大麦以及饲养家畜。八年后，他奉献了耗时良久的又一力作-《崩溃:社会如何选择成败兴亡》。书中主要内容是介绍一些人类社会是如何毁掉自己赖以生存的周遭环境，进而导致自己灭亡的。两本书都是文明层面上有关人类生存的书籍。
    不过，这两本书中写到的只是人类故事的冰山一角。现任教于美国加州洛杉矶分校地理学系的贾雷德.戴蒙德在他的新书中写到人类今天以这种模式生存只是近代才有的一种现象。在历史的大部分时期，人们一直以类似于狩猎者一样聚居的方式生存，毕竟人类开始从事农业生产的历史也才11,000多年，国家政府也是在近代5500多年前才出现。戴蒙德教授花了八年时间呆在巴布亚新几内亚的丛林里，研究当地的部落居民，得出了这样的结论：人类仍旧与遥远的过去保持着重要的联系，传统社会有很多事情值得我们借鉴。
    比如，戴蒙德教授在书中就这样写到：大部分人类社会都保留了某种宗教形式，用于维持社会治安、安抚社会急躁情绪、 维持政治统治。不过，
新几内亚的部落居民却从未因为宗教事务发生过冲突。这些原始的部落使用的语言不止一种，
或许这样有助于人们交往。事实上证明，使用多种语言也是防治老年痴呆症的好方法。单单在新几内亚就有1000多种语言。传统社会一般在没有国家机器的状态下，就能解决所有冲突。与美国刑事司法系统截然不同的是，苏丹身穿豹纹皮的努尔部落首领没有权力解决纠纷，但是可以采用传统的计算方法核算补偿，从中进行调停。
    很多事情已经改变，但是并不尽如人意。
生活在贪婪的工业社会的人们可以多学学旧石器时代的饮食习惯，相信会受益良多。生活在传统社会的人，几乎没人得过类似于心脏病、中风、糖尿病和多种癌症等困扰西方人的常见非传染疾病。这些疾病是食用含盐量高和脂肪饱和食物的有力证明。多亏了食用含钠较低的香蕉，巴西的雅诺玛莫印度人一天食盐摄入量只有仅仅50毫克。一个大苹果，就能让他们大快朵颐。那些习惯了长时间坐着工作、食用加工食品生活方式的部落居民，患上那些困扰西方人疾病的几率聚居上升。生活在城里的澳大利亚原住民，有三分之一患上了Ⅱ型糖尿病。生活在巴布亚新几内亚的现代化首都摩尔贝斯港的Wanigela人，患该类糖尿病的比例将近40%。