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1. Word Pretest

For each italicized word or phrase , choose the best meaning below.

1. They were arguing vehemently.

　A. friendly

　B. forcefully

　C. bitterly

2. The people of this tribe have outlandish accessories and ornaments.

　A. strange

　B. exquisite

　C. conventional

2 Text
2.1Cultural Background

Herodotus：希罗多德(约西元前485一前425)，希腊历史学家。 生于小亚细亚的哈利卡纳苏斯。他游历小亚细亚和中东各地。西元前443年进入殖民地图里城，访问西西里和南意大利，为他那部伟大的叙事体历史著作搜集材料，这部历史记叙了希腊人与波斯人之间的历次战争。他被称为“历史之父”。

Scythians：西徐亚人，希腊一罗马时代原住在俄罗斯草原上的游 牧民族。他们在西元前8世纪迁移到黑海地区，赶走该地固有居民辛梅里安人(cimmefians)。希腊人对他们十分熟悉，他们与希腊人贸易，以粮换奢侈品。

Taeitus：塔西图斯(约55—120)，罗马历史学家。曾在罗马学修辞学。后任行政长官。以演说负盛名。主要著作是两部历史研究，一为日卷的《历史》(Histvriae)，现仅前回卷完整无缺；一为《编年史》(Annales)，可能共18卷，保存完整的只有8卷。他的简洁而生动的散文笔法对后世作家有很大影响。

Halmnurabi：汉穆拉比(西元前18世纪)，巴比伦的阿莫里特族国王(约前1792--前1750)。以以他命名的法典著称。他还以军事征服闻名。他通过征服将巴比伦变成美索不达米亚最强大的国家。

What is Anthropology?

　　In one sense anthropology is an old study .The Greek historian , Herodotus, sometimes called the “father of anthropology”as well as the “father of history”, described at length the physique and customs of the Scythians, Egyptians, and other “barbarians”. Chinese scholars of the Han dynasty wrote monographs upon the Hiung - Nu, a light-eyed tribe wandering near China’s northwestern frontier. The Roman historian Tacitus produced his famous study of the Germans. Long before Herodotus, even, the Babylonians of the time of Hammurabi collected in museums objects made by the Sumerians, their predecessors in Mesopotamia.
　　The astonishing thing is that during the last decade or so the word “anthropology” and some of its terms have come ort of hiding to appear with increasing frequency in The New Yorker, Life, the Saturday Evening post , detective stories ,and even in moving pictures. It is also symptomatic of a trend that many colleges and universities and some secondary schools have indicated their intention of introducing anthropology in their revised courses of study. Although anthropologists---like psychiatrists and psychologists---are still regarded with a bit of suspicion, present-day society is beginning to feel they have something useful as well as diverting to offer.
　　We don’t know ourselves very well. We talk about a rather vague thing called “human nature” .We vehemently assert that it is “human nature” to do this and not to do that .Yet anybody who has lived in the American Southwest, to cite but one instance, knows from ordinary experience that the laws of this mysterious “human nature” do not seem to work out exactly the same way for the Spanish-speaking population, and for the various Indian tribes .This is where the anthropologists come in. It is their task to record the variations and the similarities in human physique, in the things people make, in ways of life .Only when we find out just how men who have had different upbringing, who come from different stocks, who speak different languages, who live under different physical conditions, meet their problems can we be sure as to what all human beings have in common. Only then can we claim scientific knowledge of raw human nature.
　　The main trends of anthropological thought have been focused on a few questions of broad human interest, such as: what has been the course of human evolution, both biologically and culturally? Are there any general principles or “laws” governing this evolution? What necessary connections, if any , exist between the physical type, the speech, and the customs of the peoples of past and present? What generalizations can be made about human beings in groups? How plastic is man? How much can he be molded by training or by necessity to adapt to environmental pressures? Why are certain personality types more characteristic of some societies than of others?
　　To most people, however, anthropology still means measuring skulls, treating little pieces of broken pottery with fantastic care, and reporting the outlandish customs of savage tribes. The anthropologist is the grave robber, the collector of Indian arrowheads, the queer fellow who lives with unwashed cannibals. As Sol Tax remarks, the anthropologist has had a function in society “something between that of an Einstein dealing with the mysterious and that of an entertainer”. His specimens, his pictures, or his tales may serve for an hour’s diversion but are pretty dull stuff compared to the world of grotesque monsters from distant ages which the paleontologist can recreate, the wonders of modern plant and animal life described by the biologist ,the excitement of unimaginably far-off universes and cosmic processes roused by the astronomer .Surely anthropology seems the most useless and impractical of all the “-ologies”. In a world of rocket ships and international organizations, what can the study of the obscure and primitive offer to the solution of today’s problems?
　　“The longest way round is often the shortest way home. ”The preoccupation with insignificant nonliterate peoples that is an outstanding feature of anthropological work is the key to its significance today. Anthropology grew out of experience with primitives and the tools of the trade are unusual because they were forged in this peculiar workshop.
　　Studying primitives enables us to see ourselves better. Ordinarily we are unaware of the special lens through which we look at life . It would hardly be fish who discovered the existence of water. Students who had not gone beyond the horizon of their own society could not be expected to perceive custom which was the stuff of their own thinking. The scientist of human affaifs needs to know as much about the eye that sees as the object seen. Anthropology holds up a great mirror to man and lets him look at himself in his infinite variety. This, and not the satisfaction of idle curiosity nor romantic quest, is the meaning of the anthropologist’s work in nonliterate societies.
　　A perfectly legitimate question at this point would be:＂Well, perhaps anthropologists in working in nonliterate societies did happen to pick up some skills that have given good results when applied to studies of our society. But in the name of everything, why, if you anthropologists re really interested in modern life, do you keep on bothering with these inconsequential little tribes?＂
　　The anthropologist’s first answer would be that the life ways of these tribes are part of the human record and that it is his job to see that these things get recorded. Indeed anthropologists have felt this responsibility very keenly. They have felt that they had no time to write general books when each year saw the extinction of aboriginal cultures that had not yet been described. The descriptive character of most anthropological literature and the overpowering mass of detail are to be traced to the anthropologist’s obsession with getting down the facts before it is too late.
　　The primitive society is the closest to laboratory conditions the student of man can ever hope to get. Such groups are usually small and can be studied intensively by a few people at slight expense. They are ordinarily rather isolated so that the question does not arise as to where one social system begins and another ends. The members of the group have lived their lives within a small area and have been exposed continually to the pressure of the same natural forces. They have had an almost identical education. All of their experiences have much more in common than is the case with members of complex societies. Their ways of life are comparatively stable. Commonly there is a high degree of biological inbreeding so that and member of the society chosen at random has about the same biological inheritance as any other. In short, many factors can be regarded as more or less constant, and the anthropologist is free to study a few variables in detail with real hope of ferreting out the connections between them.
　　Nonliterate societies represent the end results of many different experiments carried out by nature. Groups that have largely gone their way without being absorbed in the great civilizations of the West and the East show us the variety of solutions which men have worked out for perennial human problems and the variety of meanings that peoples attach to the same and to different cultural forms. Contemplation of this vast tableau gives us perspective and detachment. By analyzing the results of these experiments, the anthropologist also gives ur practical information on what works and what doesn’t.                                                                                            

Total Words: 1 241
Total Reading Time: _______

The text is based on Mirror for Man by Clyde Kluckhohn, New York: Fawcett World Library, 1970.

1. Reading Comprehension