职称英语理工类网络课堂阅读理解讲义[3]
PASSAGE 3 Plants and Mankind Botany, the study of pants, 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 preindustrial societies that still exist, a detailed learning of plants and their properties must be extremely ancient. This is logical. Plants are the basis of the food pyramid for all living things, even for other plants. They have always been enormously important to the welfare of people, not only for food, but also for clothing, weapon, 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. 1. It is logical that a detailed learning of plants and their properties must be extremely ancient. 2. People cannot survive without plants. 3. Tribes living today in the jungle of the Amazon teach botany to their children at school. 4. Our direct contact with plants grows with the process of industrialization. 5. Today people usually acquire a large amount of botanical knowledge from textbooks. 6. People living in the Middle East first learned to grow plants for food about 10,000 years ago. 7. Once mankind began farming, they no longer had to get food from many varieties that grew wild.
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