What destroyed the civilization of Eater Island ?

A Easter Island, or Rapu Nui as it is known locally, is home to several hundred

ancient human statues - the moai. After this remote Pacific island was settled by the
Polynesians, it remained isolated for centuries. All the energy and resources that
went into the moai - some of which are ten metres tall and weigh over 7,000 kilos -
came from the island itself. Yet when Dutch explorers landed in 1722, they met a
Stone Age culture. The moai were carved with stone tools, then transported for
many kilometres, without the use of animals or wheels, to massive stone platforms.
The identity of the moai builders was in doubt until well into the twentieth century,
Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer, thought the statues
had been created by pre-Inca peoples from Peru. Bestselling Swiss author Erich von
Daniken believed they were built by stranded extraterrestrials. Modern science -
linguistic, archaeological and genetic evidence - has definitively proved the moai
builders were Polynesians, but not how they moved their creations.
B Local folklore maintains that the statues walked, while researchers have tended
to assume the ancestors dragged the statues somehow, using ropes and logs. When
the Europeans arrived, Rapa Nui was grassland, with only a few scrawny trees. In the
1970s and 1980s, though, researchers found pollen preserved in lake sediments,
which proved the island had been covered in lush palm forests for thousands of
years. Only after the Polynesians arrived did those forests disappear. US scientist
Jared Diamond believes that the Rapanul people - descendants of Polynesian
settlers - wrecked their own environment. They had unfortunately settled on an
extremely fragile island - dry, cool, and too remote to be properly fertilised by
windblown volcanic ash. When the islanders cleared the forests for firewood and
farming, the forests didn’t grow back. As trees became scarce and they could no
longer construct wooden canoes for fishing, they ate birds. Soil erosion decreased
their crop yields. Before Europeans arrived, the Rapanui had descended into civil
war and cannibalism, he maintains. The collapse of their isolated civilisation,
Diamond writes, is a ‘worst-case scenario for what may lie ahead of us in our own
future.
C The moai, he thinks, accelerated the self- destruction. Diamond interprets
them as power displays by rival chieftains who, trapped on remote little island,
lacked other ways of asserting their dominance. They completed by building ever
bigger figures. Diamond thinks they laid the moai on wooden sledges, hauled over
log rails, but that required both a lot of wood and a lot of people. To feed the people,
even more land had to be cleared. When the wood was gone and civil war began, the
islanders began toppling the moai. By the nineteenth century none were standing.
D Archaeologists Terry Hunt of the University of Hawaii and Carl Lipo of
California State University agree that Easter Island lost its lush forests and that it
was an ‘ecological catastrophe’ - but they believe the islanders themselves weren’t
to blame. And the moai certainly weren’t. Archaeological excavations indicate that
the Rapanui went to heroic efforts to protect the resources of their wind-lashed,
infertile fields. They built thousands of circular stone windbreaks and gardened
inside them, and used broken volcanic rocks to keep the soil moist. In short, Hunt and
Lipo argue, the prehistoric Rapanui were pioneers of sustainable farming.
E Hunt and Lipo contend that moai-building was an activity that helped keep
the peace between islanders. They also believe that moving the moai required few
people and no wood, because they were walked upright. On that issue, Hunt and
Lipo say, archaeological evidence backs up Rapanui folklore. Recent experiments
indicate that as few as 18 people could, with three strong ropes and a bit of
practice, easily manoeuvre a 1,000 kg moai replica a few hundred metres. The
figures’ fat bellies tilted them forward, and a D-shaped base allowed handlers to roll
and rock them side to side.
F Moreover, Hunt and Lipo are convinced that the settlers were not wholly
responsible for the loss of the island’s trees. Archaeological finds of nuts from the
extinct Easter Island palm show tiny grooves, made by the teeth of Polynesian rats.
The rats arrived along with the settlers, and in just a few years, Hunt and Lipo
calculate, they would have overrun the island. They would have prevented the
reseeding of the slow-growing palm trees and thereby doomed Rapa Nui’s forest,
even without the settlers' campaign of deforestation. No doubt the rats ate birds’
eggs too. Hunt and Lipo also see no evidence that Rapanui civilisation collapsed
when the palm forest did. They think its population grew rapidly and then remained
more or less stable until the arrival of the Europeans, who introduced deadly
diseases to which islanders had no immunity. Then in the nineteenth century slave
traders decimated the population, which shrivelled to 111 people by 1877.
G Hunt and Lipo’s vision, therefore, is one of an island populated by peaceful
and ingenious moai builders and careful stewards of the land, rather than by reckless
destroyers ruining their own environment and society. ‘Rather than a case of abject
failure, Rapu Nui is an unlikely story of success’, they claim. Whichever is the case,
there are surely some valuable lessons which the world at large can learn from the
story of Rapa Nui.
List of Headings

i Evidence of innovative environment v The future of Easter Island

management practices vi Two opposing views about the
ii An undisputed answer to a question Rapanui people
about the moai vii Destruction outside the inhabitants’
iii The future of the moai statues control
iv A theory which supports a local viii How the statues made a situation
belief worse
ix Diminishing food resources
14 Paragraph A Đáp án: 17 Paragraph D Đáp án:
15 Paragraph B Đáp án: 18 Paragraph E Đáp án:
16 Paragraph C Đáp án: 19 Paragraph F Đáp án:
20 Paragraph G Đáp án:
The Lost City
An explorer’s encounter with the ruined city of Machu Picchu, the most famous
icon of the Inca civilisation
A When the US explorer and academic Hiram Bingham arrived in South America in
1911, he was ready for what was to be the greatest achievement of his life: the
exploration of the remote hinterland to the west of Cusco, the old capital of the Inca
empire in the Andes mountains of Peru. His goal was to locate the remains of a city
called Víteos, the last capital of the Inca civilisation. Cusco lies on a high plateau at
an elevation of more than 3,000 metres, and Bingham’s plan was to descend from
this plateau along the valley of the Urubamba river, which takes a circuitous route
down to the Amazon and passes through an area of dramatic canyons and mountain
ranges.
B When Bingham and his team set off down the Urubamba in late July, they had an
advantage over travellers who had preceded them: a track had recently been
blasted down the valley canyon to enable rubber to be brought up by mules from the
jungle. Almost all previous travellers had left the river at Ollantaytambo and taken a
high pass at ross the mountains to rejoin the river lower down, thereby cutting a
substantial corner, but also therefore never passing through the area around Machu
Picchu.
C On 24 July they were a few days into their descent of the valley. The day began
slowly, with Bingham trying to arrange sufficient mules for the next stage of the trek.
His companions showed no interest in accompanying him up the nearby hill to see
some ruins that a local farmer, Melchor Arteaga, had told them about the night
before. The morning was dull and damp, and Bingham also seems to have been less
than keen on the prospect of climbing the hill. In his book Lost City of the Incas, he
relates that he made the ascent without having the least expectation that he would
find anything at the top.
D Bingham writes about the approach in vivid style in his book. First, as he climbs up
the hill, he describes the ever-present possibility of deadly shakes, ‘capable of
making considerable springs when in pursuit of their prey’; not that he sees any. Then
there’s a sense of mounting discovery as he comes across great sweeps of terraces,
then a mausoleum, followed by monumental staircases and, finally the grand
ceremonial buildings of Machu Picchu. ‘It seemed like an unbelievable dream ... the
sight held me spellbound ...’he wrote.
E We should remember, however, that Lost City of the Incas is a work of hindsight,
not written until 1948, many years after his journey. His journal entries of the time
reveal a much more gradual appreciation of his achievement. He spent the afternoon
at the ruins noting down the dimensions of some of the buildings, then descended
and rejoined his companions, to whom he seems to have said little about his
discovery. At this stage, Bingham didn’t realise the extent or the importance of the
site, nor did he realise what use he could make of the discovery.
F However, soon after returning it occurred to him that he could make a name for
himself from this discovery. When he came to write the National Geographic
magazine article that broke the story to the world in April 1913, he knew he had to
produce a big idea. He wondered whether it could have been the birthplace of the
very first Inca, Manco the Great, and whether it could also have been what
chroniclers described as ‘the last city of the Incas’. This term refers to Vilcabamba
the settlement where the Incas had fled from Spanish invaders in the 1530s. Bingham
made desperate attempts to prove this belief for nearly 40 years. Sadly, his vision of
the site as both the beginning and end of the Inca civilisation, while a magnificent
one, is inaccurate. We now know that Vilcabamba actually lies 65 kilometres away
in the depths of the jungle.
G One question that has perplexed visitors, historians and archaeologists alike ever
since Bingham, is why the site seems to have been abandoned before the Spanish
Conquest. There are no references to it by any of the Spanish chroniclers - and if
they had known of its existence so close to Cusco they would certainly have come in
search of gold. An idea which has gained wide acceptance over the past few years
is that Machu Picchu was a moya, a country estate built by an Inca emperor to
escape the cold winters of Cusco, where the elite could enjoy monumental
architecture and spectacular views. Furthermore, the particular architecture of
Machu Picchu suggests that it was constructed at the time of the greatest of all the
Incas, the emperor Pachacuti (c. 1438-71). By custom, Pachacuti’s descendants
built other similar estates for their own use, and so Machu Picchu would have been
abandoned after his death, some 50 years before the Spanish Conquest.

Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-viii, in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings

I Different accounts of the same journey v A dramatic description

Ii Bingham gains support vi A new route
Iii A common belief Vii Bingham publishes his theory
iv The aim of the trip Viii Bingham’s lack of enthusias

14 Paragraph A Đáp án: 17 Paragraph D Đáp án:

15 Paragraph B Đáp án: 18 Paragraph E Đáp án:
16 Paragraph C Đáp án: 19 Paragraph F Đáp án:
20 Paragraph G Đáp án:

Questions 21-24
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 21-24 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

21 Bingham went to South America in search of an Inca city.

22 Bingham chose a particular route down the Urubamba valley because it was the
most common route used by travellers.
23 Bingham understood the significance of Machu Picchu as soon as he saw it.
24 Bingham returned to Machu Picchu in order to find evidence to support his
theory.

Questions 25-26
Complete the sentences below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 25-26 on your answer sheet.
25 The track that took Bingham down the Urubamba valley had been created for the
transportation of ________
26 Bingham found out about the ruins of Machu Picchu from a _________ in the
Urubamba valley.

Why being bored is stimulating - and useful, too

This most common of emotions is turning out to be more interesting than we thought
A We all know how it feels - it’s impossible to keep your mind on anything, time
stretches out, and all the things you could do seem equally unlikely to make you feel
better. But defining boredom so that it can be studied in the lab has proved difficult.
For a start, it can include a lot of other mental states, such as frustration, apathy,
depression and indifference. There isn’t even agreement over whether Doredom is
always a low-energy, flat kind of emotion or whether feeling agitated and restless
counts as boredom, too. In his book, Boredom: A Lively History, Peter Toohey at the
University of Calgary, Canada, compares it to disgust - an emotion that motivates
us to stay away from certain situations. ‘If disgust protects humans from infection,
boredom may protect them from “infectious" social situations,’ he suggests.
B By asking people about their experiences of boredom, Thomas Goetz and his
team at the University of Konstanz in Germany have recently identified five distinct
types: indifferent, calibrating, searching, reactant and apathetic. These can be
plotted on two axes - one running left to right, which measures low to high arousal,
and the other from top to bottom, which measures how positive or negative the
feeling is. Intriguingly, Goetz has found that while people experience all kinds of
boredom, they tend to specialise in one. Of the five types, the most damaging is
‘reactant’ boredom with its explosive combination of high arousal and negative
emotion. The most useful is what Goetz calls ‘indifferent’ boredom: someone isn’t
engaged in anything satisfying but still feels relaxed and calm. However, it remains
to be seen whether there are any character traits that predict the kind of boredom
each of us might be prone to.
C Psychologist Sandi Mann at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, goes
further. All emotions are there for a reason, including boredom,’ she says Mann has
found that being bored makes us more creative. ‘We're all afraid of being bored but
in actual fact it can lead to all kinds of amazing things,’ she says. In experiments
published last year, Mann found that people who had been made to feel bored by
copying numbers out of the phone book for 15 minutes came up with more creative
ideas about how to use a polystyrene cup than a control group. Mann concluded
that a passive, boring activity is best for creativity because it allows the mind to
wander. In fact, she goes so far as to suggest that we should seek out more boredom
in our lives.
D Psychologist John Eastwood at York University in Toronto, Canada isn’t
convinced. ‘If you are in a state of mind-wandering you are not bored,’ he says. ‘In
my view, by definition boredom is an undesirable state.’ That doesn't necessarily
mean that it isn’t adaptive, he adds. 'Pain is adaptive - if we didn’t have physical
pain, bad things would happen to us. Does that mean that we should actively cause
pain? No. But even if boredom has evolved to help us survive, it can still be toxic if
allowed to fester.’ For Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is a failure to put
our ‘attention system’ into gear. This causes an inability to focus on anything, which
makes time seem to go painfully slowly. What's more, your efforts to improve the
situation can end up making you feel worse. ‘People try to connect with the world
and if they are not successful there’s that frustration and irritability,’ he says.
Perhaps most worryingly, says Eastwood, repeatedly failing to engage attention can
lead to a state where we don’t know what to do any more, and no longer care.
E Eastwood’s team is now trying to explore why the attention system fails. It’s early
days but they think that at least some of it comes down to personality. Boredom
proneness has been linked with a variety of traits. People who are motivated by
pleasure seem to suffer particularly badly. Other personality traits, such as
curiosity, are associated with a high boredom threshold. More evidence that
boredom has detrimental effects comes from studies of people who are more or less
prone to boredom. It seems those who bore easily face poorer prospects in
education, their career and even life in general. But of course, boredom itself cannot
kill - it’s the things we do to deal with it that may put us in danger. What can we do
to alleviate it before it comes to that? Goetz’s group has one suggestion. Working
with teenagers, they found that those who ‘approach’ a boring situation - in other
words, see that it’s boring and get stuck in anyway - report less boredom than those
who try to avoid it by using snacks, TV or social media for distraction.
F Psychologist Françoise Wemelsfelder speculates that our over-connected
lifestyles might even be a new source of boredom. ‘In modern human society there is
a lot of overstimulation but still a lot of problems finding meaning,’ she says. So
instead of seeking yet more mental stimulation, perhaps we should leave our phones
alone, and use boredom to motivate us to engage with the world in a more
meaningful way.

Questions 14-19
Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F.
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-viii, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i The productive outcomes that may result from boredom
ii What teachers can do to prevent boredom
iii A new explanation and a new cure for boredom
iv Problems with a scientific approach to boredom
v A potential danger arising from boredom
vi Creating a system of classification for feelings of boredom
vii Age groups most affected by boredom
viii Identifying those most affected by boredom

14 Paragraph A Đáp án: 17 Paragraph D Đáp án:

15 Paragraph B Đáp án: 18 Paragraph E Đáp án:
16 Paragraph C Đáp án: 19 Paragraph F Đáp án:

Questions 20-23
Look at the following people (Questions 20-23) and the list of ideas below.
Match each person with the correct idea, A-E.
Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 20-23 on your answer sheet.
20 Peter Toohey
21 Thomas Goetz
22 John Eastwood
23 Francoise Wemelsfelder
List of Ideas
A The way we live today may encourage boredom.
B One sort of boredom is worse than all the others.
C Levels of boredom may fall in the future.
D Trying to cope with boredom can increase its negative effects.
E Boredom may encourage us to avoid an unpleasant experience.