ELTS Reading Passage passage below. ROM man’s first steps to the year 0" F was a period like no other in the history of invention. Never again would man’s survival be so dependent on his ability to invent ways to solve fundamental problems. ‘And never again would man’s technological creativity be the most significant factor in his evolution and the establishing of civilization. By the time modern man (homo sapiens or ‘man-the-wise’) appeared, probably somewhere in Africa between 100,000 and 250,000 years ago, his forefathers, the early hominids, had already invented stone tools. Itis possible that they had also manufactured crude canoes and shelters. However, it would take many more years and a succession of vital inventions for man to evolve from a primitive, nomadic hunter-gatherer to the highly technologically literate citizen of the time of the Roman Empire. We like to think that we are currently living through a period when technology has an unparalleled hold on society, but it is nothing compared with that of the ancient world, when invention and technology were the most powerful forces shaping civilization. Throughout the ancient world, technology was the one factor that made all the other changes ~ social, political and cultural — possible. Without the inventions of ink and Papyrus, many of man’s ideas would not have spread as fast nor as widely. Without weapons and, later, the wheel, armies would not have conquered new territories as quickly. The single largest step in early man’s social evolution came around 10,000 years ago with the invention of animal husbandry and agriculture. This enabled him to progress from living in nomadic communities to settling in villages and small towns. The progress was brought about by a combination of climatic change and man’s invention of more efficient hunting tools, of a means of controlling and utilising fire to clear undergrowth and of ways of building lasting shelters. It led to a massive growth in Population, which in turn triggered a further rapid increase in technological innovation. Most of this change took place in the eastern Mediterranean, where the climate and the annual flooding of fertile soils favoured d later of the development of agriculture an You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on the yay s ling ET, cities such as Babylon. By around 6500 Rcp Jericho is believed to have been the largest ” city in the world, with a population of 2,599, Four thousand years later, the urban revolution had brought about a momentous cultural transition that in turn generated new needs. These were met by a quantum leap in technological innovation and the establishment of craftsmen and scientists, For the first time, manufacturing became established as man invented ways of making textiles, firing ceramics, producing metalwork and processing foodstuffs. This prompted barter methods to evolve into more sophisticated trading arrangements, culminating in the invention of tokens or early money. With these technological changes came a corresponding increase in the complexity of the social and political organization of human groups, which in turn necessitated the invention of written language, first to keep track of trading arrangements, then to communicate and record events, processes, philosophies and, of course, inventions. The history of invention is littered with inventions that had little or no purpose and never caught on, but this was still a period of invention for necessity’s sake. It would be some time before an invention would be greeted with questions as to its role ~ and even longer until Michael Faraday would retort, ‘What use is a baby?’ when asked what use his dynamo had. It was also a period when science and technology's symbiotic relationship was reversed. Technology, now often the application of scientific discovery and observation, predated science and in this period was empirical and handed down through the generations. By the time the city states were flowering in the early centuries BCE, scientist-inventors began to emerge. Figures such as Hero, Strato, Ctesibius and Philon used observations and measurements of the physical and natural world to devise inventions. However, they were all minnows when compared with Archimedes. Here was aman of the calibre that the world would not see again until Sir Isaac Newton in the 17th century. The inventor had truly arrived.Questions 1-7 Do the following statements Write: TRUE FALSE NOT GIVEN agree with the information given in the reading passage? if the statement agrees with the information if the statement contradicts the information if there is no information on this Man was more creative when civilizations were growing. Before the arrival of modern man there were no tools. Technology nowadays does not drive our society as much as it did in ancient civilizations. \fink and papyrus had not been invented, ideas wouldn't have been disseminated easily. The cultivation of crops and the rearing of animals was by far the biggest achievement of early man. apron + An increase in population led to more advances in the technology of early man. 7 Jericho was the world’s first large city. Questions 8-12 Classify the following events according to whether the reader states that they occurred during A the early evolution of nomadic man B the early urban period C the period of the urban revolution 8 The recording of a wide range of human activity. 9 The possible production of the first boats. 10 Food production as a process. 11. The ability to construct stronger buildings. 12 The use of tokens. Question 13 Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D. Which of the following is the most suitable title for the reading passage? ‘A The importance of science and technology B Why man evolved from the apes C How technology made civilization possible D How philosophers changed the world ee CL Teter)TS Reading Passage ee Passage below, Renewable energy: Dreams bec WV EAT doa small talian village, community of millionaires in Oregon and a town in Austria have in common? Nearly all of their electricity needs are supplied by renewable energy. They are by no means the only ones. A growing number of communities are working towards using only electricity generated by renewables. At the same time, many of the largest cities around the world have set themselves ambitious targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions to less than half present levels in the coming decades, and they will be relying heavily on renewable energy sources to do this. For example, London aims to cut its emissions by 60 per cent of 1990 levels by 2025 with the help of renewables. While no country — except geothermally blessed Iceland ~ gets all of its electricity from renewables, some resource-rich, sparsely populated countries, including Austria, Sweden and Norway, aim to get between 60 and 90 per cent of their electricity from renewables by 2010. One of the first towns to adopt a predominantly renewable supply, without compromising on its wealthy residents’ modern lifestyle, was Three Rivers in Oregon. ‘We have everything ~ the Internet, satellite TV, a washer and dryer — there is nothing I do without, says Elaine Budden, who has lived in Three Rivers for 12 years. Ever since the mid-1980s, when the town’s first permanent houses were built, Three Rivers has used folar power. The nearest power lines are several kilometres away and extending the grid would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. So instead, Three .s decided to purchase their own torage packs. The Rivers resident: photovoltaic panels and battery s You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-1 3, which are based on the reaing ome reality nrovide up to 2 kilowatts (kW) of pow. or 80 1095 per cent of each household's rest is supplied by propane or panels enough electricity needs. Th diesel generators. One community in Italy has got around the intermittent nature of solar power without the help of fossil fuels. In 2002, Varese Ligure, a village of 2,400 people in northern Italy, became the first municipality in Europe to get all its electricity from renewable energy. Instead of relying entirely on one source, it uses a mix of solar, wind and small-scale hydropower. Four wind turbines on a ridge above the village provide 32 megawatts of electricity, 141 solar ranels on the roofs of the town hall and the primary school provide 17 kW, and a small hydro station on a nearby river provides an additional 6 kW. Together, these sources now provide more than three times the community's electricity needs. Ifrenewable energy is going to play a significant role worldwide, however, it will need to be employed onamuch larger scale. Gussing, a town of 4,000 in eastern Austria, recently went 100 per cent renewable in electricity production with a highly efficient 8-megawatt biomass gasification plant fuelled by the region's oak trees. By 2010, Gussing plans to use biomass to provide electricity to the rest of the district's 27,000 inhabitants. Meanwhile, larger communities are also beginning to make the switch. Freiburg, a city of 200,000 in south-west Germany has invested €43 million in photovoltaics in the past 20 years and has set a goal of reducing CO? emissions to 25 per cent below 1992 levels by 2010. And if all goes well, Masdar City, a planned development in Abu Dhabi that will be home | to 50,000 people, will get al its electricity from the sun, wind and composted food waste when itis completed in 2016. New Zealand, which like Iceland also relies heavily on geothermal energy and hydropower, now gets 70 per cent of its electricity from renewables and, with the help of additional wind power, aims to increase this figure to 90 per cent by 2025 From the smallest village to an entire nation, the evidence is already out there that powering our world with renewables can be more than a pipe dream. Now all we need is the investment to make it arealitya Questions 1-9 | Complete the summary using the list of words, A-Q, below. Renewable energy in small communitie: While many of the world's largest cities are yet to achieve their 1 reducing their carbon 2 onsen, number of smaller communities have already — | achieved this as the majority of the electrical 3 . they use comes from renewables. One country is 4......... - enough to obtain alll its energy needs from environmentally-friendly sources. Others 5 to achieve this by 2010, but thanks to having a small 6 ... f natural resources. Because of the distance from the nearest access to the electricity grid, one town in Oregon already sources most of its energy needs from the 8 energy. This was made possible by investing in solar panels and 9 . for storage. A community B pretend © geographical | D_ population E photovoltaic F energy | G assets H_ solar 1 resource | J goals K cities L apparatus | M footprint N. sun's © hope P lucky @ way Questions 10-13 Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in the reading passage? Write: YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer NOT GIVEN fit is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this 10 Iceland is not the only place in the world to obtain all of its energy entirely from renewable sources. 41. A European community has an oversupply of electricity from its efforts to stay green. 12 Solar powers often unreliable in colder northern countries. 13. Many new jobs will be created in the field of renewable energy. Scan the text again and find six pairs of adverbs that modify verbs or adjectives that have the same meaning as 1-6 below. depend on lucky to have an abundant source of ree energy’ very few residents mainly ‘non-ending’ (energy supply) completely based on very productive/'non-wasting’ aan ena