1 . Women were less likely than men to support the Vietnam war, the Gulf war, or the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. They commit far fewer murders. They are less likely to favor strikes. For some scholars, these are grounds for thinking that a world run by women would be more peaceful.
But European history suggests otherwise, according to political scientists Oeindrila Dube and S. P. Harish. They studied how often European rulers went to war between 1480 and 1913, and found that states ruled by queens were 27% more likely to get involved in wars than those ruled by kings.
This was not all the queens’ fault: men, seeing them as soft targets, tended to attack them. Frederick the Great of Prussia once declared: ”No woman should ever be allowed to govern anything.“ Shortly after becoming king, he attacked the newly crowned Archduchess of Austria, Maria Theresa, and seized Silesia province. Despite years of war, she never recovered it.
But perceived weakness is not the whole story. Queens, the researchers found, were more likely to gain new territory. Catherine the Great expanded her empire by some 200,000 square miles. And married queens were more aggressive than single queens or kings, whether single or married.
The authors suggest several reasons for this. First, married queens may have been able to form more military alliances(联盟),making them confident enough to pick fights. Their husbands had often served in the army before they married, and were well placed to strengthen military ties between their homelands and their wives’ states.
Second, unlike most kings, queens often gave their husbands a lot of power,putting them in charge of foreign policy or the economy. During the 1740s, Maria Theresa’s husband, Francis I, reformed the Austrian economy and raised money for the armed forces while his wife ruled much of central Europe. Prince Albert was Queen Victoria’s most trusted adviser, shaping her foreign policy until his death in1861. This division of labor, the authors suggest, freed up time for queens to pursue more aggressive policies.
The modern era, too, has witnessed female leaders in wars: Golda Meir and the Yom Kippur war, or Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands. The number of countries led by women has more than doubled since 2000, but there is plenty of room for improvement: the current level of 15 represents less than 10 % of the total. A world in which more women took power might be more equal. Whether it would be more peaceful is a different question.
1. The underlined “perceived weakness” in paragraph 4 means that________.| A．women were less likely to support wars |
| B．women could not recover lost territory |
| C．women commit far fewer crimes |
| D．women were soft targets |
| A．Because their military alliances picked fights for them. |
| B．Because they were ambitious and aggressive by nature. |
| C．Because their husbands were supportive in state governing. |
| D．Because they centralized all power into their own hands. |
| A．To imply there is room for improvement in gender equality. |
| B．To indicate more females become leaders in modern times. |
| C．To illustrate female leaders cannot prevent wars in modern times. |
| D．To suggest female leaders have their share of wars in modern times. |
| A．married women are not fit to govern their states on their own |
| B．female leaders should be responsible for all wars throughout history |
| C．the world wouldn’t be more peaceful even if more women took power |
| D．the division of labor allows queens to survive economic crisis |
Chinese archaeologists have unearthed a big bronze beast. It’s one of the most highly
The bronze animal is the
The bronze beast can be seen as a cultural relic nonexistent before not just in China,
The Great Wall
As a symbol of ancient Chinese civilization, the Great Wall is one of the world’s oldest and most magnificent (壮丽的) man-made scenes,
The Great Wall was
Because its
The Great Wall is a place steeped in history and has much
With roots
The seal was first created in 221 BC. The first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, ordered his first imperial (皇帝的) seal to be carved using beautiful white jade (玉).
The Great Wall of the ancient Qi State,the oldest
“Historical records say the Qi State built the wall here to defend itself
In the 1970s，parts of the rammed earth wall(夯土墙)were dug out and used by farmers for their land, but since the early 1990s, the local government
Rapid development and
It states that local governments will establish a dynamic conservation system using remote sensing satellites, drones, information platforms and other technological
6 . Personally, there is nothing I love more than asking “stupid” questions, especially the ones that have no right answers. I remember once asking some kids what time it was, at home, in Singapore, and finally on the Moon. After a long giggling silence, finally a shy girl ventured (试探地说) to say that it was “every time” followed by an energetic Einstein who shouted it was “no time”. Both kids shared that week’s Noble Prize, because no humans live in that distant world and time is a human construct.
As a matter of fact, we are all good at asking questions by nature, but sadly as we age, we get accustomed to the world around us and take things for granted. We became more results-oriented (注重结果的) and concentrate our efforts on success. If something is working, don’t fix it or worry about the cause; just relax and go with the flow. Conventional wisdom may work well, but that does not mean it is always right. Throughout history, it has been those who have questioned conventional wisdom and those who have challenged our common-sense notions of the world that have been the ones to have ushered in (开) the major advancements of human civilization.
In 500 BC, the ancient Greeks wondered whether the Earth was round because sailors on the sea had noticed that the farther south they went, the more different stars they saw in the sky. Why was the sky changing? Nearly 2,000 years later, the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei became interested in this question and ended up demonstrating the “crazy” concept of heliocentrism (日心说), in which the Sun lies at the center of the universe while the Earth revolves (旋转) around it at 30 kilometers per second. But if the Earth is spinning around so quickly, why aren’t we being thrown off of the surface of the planet? The answer to this question would not end up being revealed to us for another century.
People like routine, but past performance is no guarantee of future results. While those who challenge conventional wisdom tend to be subjected to abuse, the progress of humankind would have otherwise been impossible without these persistent people and their “stupid”questions.
1. What is the best title of this article?| A．Asking “stupid” questions. |
| B．Is conventional wisdom useless? |
| C．Some major advancements of human civilization |
| D．What caused them to ask conventional questions? |
| A．We lay too much emphasis on process. |
| B．We still refuse to relax and go with the flow. |
| C．We start to challenge common-sense notions of the world |
| D．We gradually lose the ability to question conventional wisdom. |
| A．An ancient Greek scientist living in 500 BC |
| B．Galileo Galilei living between 1564 and 1642. |
| C．Isaac Newton living between 1643 and 1727. |
| D．Albert Einstein living between 1879 and 1955. |
| A．By comparison and contrast. |
| B．By using supporting examples. |
| C．By using time and space order. |
| D．By generalization and definition |
7 . If you travel to nearly any Chinese city in the summertime, you will see people, mostly men wearing T-shirts, sitting out on the sidewalks on low chairs in the shade, playing a game with large round disks of wood.
And, though it may look quite a bit different than Western chess, Xiangqi is actually quite similar in what the pieces can do and how the game is played. Like Western chess, the object of the game is to capture the other player’s “king”.
Unlike Western chess, instead of placing the pieces in squares, the pieces are placed on the intersections of lines. Another big difference between Western chess and Xiangqi is that there is a large empty space in the middle of the board, which the elephants cannot cross.
| A．Actually, in Xiangqi he is just a general. |
| B．During the Qing Dynasty its popularity grew. |
| C．It is called “the Chu River and the Han Boundary”. |
| D．The game is called Xiangqi, a game of ordinary people. |
| E．There are many differences between Xiangqi and Western chess. |
| F．An intense battle is about to take place on this small chessboard. |
| G．Several sayings related to Xiangqi are in common use in China today. |
In China, 2024 is the Year of the Dragon, or “loong,” as is known in Chinese. This creature appears on many cultural artifacts
Unlike Western dragons,
For thousands of years, the Chinese have respected the loong,
At a historical site in Liaoning Province, a stone sculpture of a loong was discovered in 1994.
Living Heritage: Guqin
Wandering sounds, irregular rhythms
10 . Today, the Vikings are mostly known as violent pirates (海盗). But they were also traders. At their height, the Vikings attacked, settled or traded on four continents.
All of their travel, trade and warfare were made possible by Viking ships, which were far more advanced than anything else sailing around Europe at the time. The most famous, and most feared, was the drekar. At sea, these ships could move quickly thanks to their large sails. The hulls (船体) of the ships were shallow and fat, which made them ride high in the water. The ships were also light enough that they could be carried from one body of water to another over short sections of land. This greatly extended their range.
But Viking ships weren’t just built for warfare. Another type, called the knarr, had cargo (货物) holds built in the hull. One such cargo ship was capable of carrying 24 tons. The knarrs would have looked similar to the drekars except they were longer, fatter and taller. These were the backbones of the Viking empire, which they used to carry everything from gold coins to spices and fine fabrics.
Both the drekar and the knarr were built using the same method. Traditionally, oceangoing ships have used a keel (龙骨), shaped like the fin of a fish. The keel sinks into the water below the hull. It helps the ship maintain a straight line through the water and counters the force of the wind against the sail, which otherwise might blow the ship over. Viking ships had no deep keel. Instead, they were built fat enough to carry lots of soldiers or pieces of cargo whose weight helped keep the ship planted in the water.
Viking ships were so advanced for their time that they often were the biggest, tallest and most striking ships many people had ever seen. A monk at the St. Omar Monastery, in Franco, wrote this description of a royal Viking ship in 1013.
“On one side lions molded in gold were to be seen on the ships, on the other birds on the tops of the poles indicated by their movements the winds as they blew…”
The Vikings built a wealthy empire through trade as well as robbery and used their wealth to continuously improve their ships.
1. What does the author intend to tell us?| A．The Vikings were not violent pirates but traders. |
| B．The Vikings used to take a lead in the world trade. |
| C．Viking ships could carry more cargo than ships today. |
| D．Viking ships contributed to the extension of their empire. |
| A．They were not designed for warfare. |
| B．They were faster than the drekars. |
| C．They were designed to carry soldiers. |
| D．They served the same purpose as drekars. |
| A．They both use a deep keel shaped like the fin of a fish. |
| B．They both make the hull shallow and fat with large sails. |
| C．They both take measures to keep the ship planted in water. |
| D．They both install something to counter the force of wind. |
| A．To show how advanced Viking ships were for their time. |
| B．To show how interested the monk was in traveling by sea. |
| C．To show that Viking ships were designed in a strange way. |
| D．To show that Viking ships were continuously improved. |
