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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 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 pass 100,000 years--- even the past 100year ---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.

5. 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. 6. What does the example of India illustrate? 〔A〕Wealthy people tend to have fewer children than poor people. 〔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. 7. 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 8. 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

重点词汇： 1.maturity （成熟）←matur（e）+ity，mature（成熟的v.成熟），-ity名词后缀。Love is quiet understanding and the mature acceptance of imperfection.爱情是静静的理解和对不足之处的成熟接受。 2.mortality（死亡率）←mortal+ity，mortal（致命的；凡人），-ity名词后缀。 3.survive（v.幸存；比……活的长）即sur+vive，sur-（=super-）前缀“超”，vive词根“活的”，于是“超过别人活的长度”→比别人活得长→幸存；survival（n.幸存；幸存者）←surviv（e）+al名词后缀。同根词：revive（v.恢复；复苏）。evolution? （n.进化；发展），动词形式为evolve 4.diminish（v.缩小，减少）即di+min+ish，di-前缀“使”，min词根“小”=mini，-ish动词后缀。 5.mediocrity（平常）可看作medi+ocr+ity，medi-前缀“中间”（如medium→medi+um后缀→中间的；媒介），ocr看作Optical Character Recognition（光学字符识别），-ity名词后缀，用中等（medi）识别率OCR的效果是平常（medicocrity）的。 6.upper-middle-class 上中阶层。 7.Utopia ?（乌托邦）是英国空想社会主义者托马斯?莫尔（Thomas More）所著书名的简称，书中描写了作者所想象的没有阶级的幸福社会——乌托邦，意即“没有的地方”。 8.involve （v.陷入；涉及）←in+volve，in-前缀=into，volve词根“卷”，“把东西卷到里面” 9.transform （v.转变；改造）即trans+form，trans-前缀“改变”，form词根“形状”。Marriage is the miracle that transform a kiss from a pleasure into a duty, and a life from a luxury into a necessity.婚姻是个奇迹，它把接吻从快乐化为义务，把生活从享乐化为必需。 10.describe（v.描述，形容）←de向下+scribe写，“写下来”，名词为description。A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another's.在描述另一个人的性格时，人最清楚地显露自己的性格。 11.descendant （后裔）即de+scend+ant，de-向下，scend词根“爬”，-ant名词后缀表“人”。同根词：descend→de+scend→“向下爬”→下降；ascend→a+scend→“向上爬”→攀登。One of the best things people could do for their descendants would be to sharply limit the number of them.人们能为后代做的最好的事情之一大概就是严格限制自己的数量。难句解析： ① 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. 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。 ② Again, 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。 ③ The 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 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。 ④ 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." 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。