High-Q | English פסיכומטרי

Unit 10

Text I

The earliest phase of agricultural civilization is commonly known as the Bronze Age. The use of copper and bronze (an alloy of copper and tin) gave rise to a variety of techniques and devices and to a complex of skilled artisans. Copper ores had to be mined and tin ores collected, often from distant sources, thereby encouraging commerce, cultural intercourse, and sometimes conquest; furnaces, crucibles, and fuels had to be provided for 5 the smelting of the ores; and intricate molds, often made of several pieces, had to be prepared for the casting of the metal. Copper and bronze hand weapons came into use, but by far the most important innovation in military technology during the Bronze Age was the horse-drawn two wheeled chariot. Although cumbersome two and four-wheeled carts had been invented 10 earlier, the highly mobile war chariot carrying an archer armed with the short, compound bow revolutionized military tactics after 1700 BC. Building technology also developed rapidly during the Bronze Age and, in the form of pyramidal structures, reached monumental proportions. In Mesopotamia molded, kiln dried bricks were the favored building material for large structures, whereas in Egypt the 15 famous pyramids were commonly built of limestone blocks. After this limestone was quarried with wooden, stone, and copper tools, the blocks were transported to the building site by barges and sledges. Methods of construction and the achievement of structural stability, however (rather than the quarrying and transportation of materials), presented the most formidable problems that Bronze Age builders succeeded in solving. 20 The substantial technical and cultural progress of these early civilizations, the emergence of crafts whose practitioners were relieved of the need to participate in food production, the increase in population, and the rise of many urban societies centered in impressively wealthy cities were entirely based on the productivity, and hence on the food surpluses, of plow agriculture. At first, surpluses adequate to sustain civilization were 25 possible only on irrigated land, so that the earliest civilizations were confined to alluvial river valleys. As the technology of plow agriculture improved, civilization spread to rain fed lands away from the river valleys.

13. According to the first paragraph, commerce was encouraged by -

(1) the different ways of obtaining copper and tin (2) the expansion of cultural intercourse (3) the distance between different ore's origins (4) the availability of furnaces, crucibles and fuels

שורות 3-4 : "עפרת נחושת נכרו ועפרות בדיל נאספו, פעמים רבות ממקורות רחוקים, ועל ידי כך עודדו

מסחר"

232

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