IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 129 ( Passage 1 Tea and Industrial Revolution, Passage 2 When the Tulip Bubble Burst, Passage 3 Extinct: The Giant Deer ) we prefer you to work offline, download the test paper, and blank answer sheet.
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For Answers Academic IELTS Reading Test 129 Answers
Reading Passage 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 129 Reading Passage Tea and Industrial Revolution below.
Tea and Industrial Revolution
{A} Alan Macfarlane thinks he could rewrite history. The professor of anthropological science at King’s College, Cambridge has, like other historians, spent decades trying to understand the enigma of the Industrial Revolution. Why did this particular important event – the world-changing birth of industry – happen in Britain? And why did it happen at the end of the 18th century?
{B} Macfarlane compares the question to a puzzle. He claims that there were about 20 different factors and all of them needed to be present before the revolution could happen. The chief conditions are to be found in history textbooks. For the industry to take off, there needed to be the technology and power to drive factories, large urban populations to provide cheap labour, easy transport to move goods around, an affluent middle-class willing to buy mass-produced objects, a market-driven economy, and a political system that allowed this to happen. While this was the case for England, other nations, such as Japan, Holland and France also met some of these criteria. All these factors must have been necessary but not sufficient to cause the revolution. Holland had everything except coal, while China also had many of these factors.
{C} Most historians, however, are convinced that one or two missing factors are needed to solve the puzzle. The missing factors, he proposes, are to be found in every kitchen cupboard. Tea and beer, two of the nation’s favourite drinks, drove the revolution. Tannin, the active ingredient in tea, and hops, used in making beer, both contain antiseptic properties. This -plus the fact that both are made with boiled water- helped prevent epidemics of waterborne diseases, such as dysentery, in densely populated urban areas. The theory initially sounds eccentric but his explanation of the detective work that went into his deduction and the fact his case has been strengthened by a favourable appraisal of his research by Roy Porter (distinguished medical historian) the scepticism gives way to wary admiration.
{D} Historians had noticed one interesting factor around the mid-18th century that required explanation. Between about 1650 and 1740, the population was static. But then there was a burst in population. The infant mortality rate halved in the space of 20 years, and this happened in both rural areas and cities, and across all classes. Four possible causes have been suggested. There could have been a sudden change in the viruses and bacteria present at that time, but this is unlikely. Was there a revolution in medical science? But this was a century before Lister introduced antiseptic surgery. Was there a change in environmental conditions? There were improvements in agriculture that wiped out malaria, but these were small gains. Sanitation did not become widespread until the 19th century. The only option left was food. But the height and weight statistics show a decline. So the food got worse. Efforts to explain this sudden reduction in child deaths appeared to draw a blank.
{E} This population burst seemed to happen at just the right time to provide labor for the Industrial Revolution. But why? When the Industrial Revolution started, it was economically efficient to have people crowded together forming towns and cities. But with crowded living conditions comes disease, particularly from human waste. Some research in the historical records revealed that there was a change in the incidence of waterborne disease at that time, the English were protected by the strong antibacterial agent in hops, which were added to make beer last. But in the late 17th century a tax was introduced on malt. The poor turned to water and gin, and in the 1720s the mortality rate began to rise again.
{F} Macfarlane looked to Japan, which was also developing large cities about the same time, and also had no sanitation. Waterborne diseases in the Japanese population were far fewer than those in Britain. Could it be the prevalence of tea in their culture? That was when Macfarlane thought about the role of tea in Britain. The history of tea in Britain provided an extraordinary coincidence of dates. Tea was relatively expensive until Britain started direct trade with China in the early 18th century. By the 1740s, about the time that infant mortality was falling, the drink was common. Macfarlane guesses that the fact that water had to be boiled, together with the stomach-purifying properties of tea so eloquently described in Buddhist texts, meant that the breast milk provided by mothers was healthier than it had ever been. No other European nation drank tea so often as the British, which, by Macfarlane’s logic, pushed the other nations out of the race for the Industrial Revolution.
{G} But, if tea is a factor in the puzzle, why didn’t this cause an industrial revolution in Japan? Macfarlane notes that in the 17th century, Japan had large cities, high literacy rates and even a futures market. However, Japan decided against a work-based revolution, by giving up labour-saving devices, even animals, to avoid putting people out of work. Astonishingly, the nation that we now think of as one of the most technologically advanced, entered the 19th century had almost abandoned the wheel. While Britain was undergoing the Industrial Revolution, Macfarlane notes wryly, Japan was undergoing an industrious one.
Questions 1-7
Reading passage 1 has seven paragraphs, A-G
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-G from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-x, in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.
| List of headings
(i) Cases of Japan, Holland and France (ii) City development in Japan (iii) Tea drinking in Japan and Britain (iv) Failed to find a plausible cause for the mystery about the lower mortality rate (v) Preconditions necessary for the industrial revolution (vi) Time and place of industrialization (vii) Conclusion is drawn from the comparison with Japan (viii) Relation between population and changes of drink in Britain (ix) Two possible solutions to the puzzle |
(1) Paragraph A
(2) Paragraph B
(3) Paragraph C
(4) Paragraph D
(5) Paragraph E
(6) Paragraph F
(7) Paragraph G
Questions 8-13 IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 129
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet, write
| TRUE | if the statement is True |
| FALSE | if the statement is false |
| NOT GIVEN | If the information is not given in the passage |
(8) The industrialization did not happen in China because of its inefficient railway transportation.
(9) Tea and beer contributed to protecting people from waterborne disease.
(10) Roy Porter disagreed with the proposed theory about the missing factors
(11) The reason for lower child deaths is fully explained by food.
(12) The British made beer by themselves.
(13) Tax on malt indirectly affected the increase of population in late 17th century
Reading Passage 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 129 Reading Passage When the Tulip Bubble Burst below.
When the Tulip Bubble Burst
because they are nearly identical. These six tepals are often marked on
Tulips are spring-blooming perennials that grow from bulbs. Depending on the species, tulip plants can grow as short as 4 inches (10 cm) or as high as 28 inches (71 cm). The tulip’s large flowers usually bloom on scapes or sub-scapose stems that lack bracts. Most tulips produce only one flower per stem, but a few species bear multiple flowers on their scapes (e.g. Tulipa turkestanica). The showy, generally cup or star-shaped tulip flower has three petals and three sepals, which are often termed tepals the interior surface near the bases with darker colorings. Tulip flowers come in a wide variety of colors, except pure blue (several tulips with “blue” in the name have a faint violet hue)
{A} Long before anyone ever heard of Qualcomm, CMGI, Cisco Systems, or the other high-tech stocks that have soared during the current bull market, there was Semper Augustus. Both more prosaic and more sublime than any stock or bond, it was a tulip of extraordinary beauty, its midnight-blue petals topped by a band of pure white and accented with crimson flares. To denizens of 17th century Holland, little was as desirable.
{B} Around 1624, the Amsterdam man who owned the only dozen specimens was offered 3,000 guilders for one bulb. While there’s no accurate way to render that in today’s greenbacks, the sum was roughly equal to the annual income of a wealthy merchant. (A few years later, Rembrandt received about half that amount for painting The Night Watch.) Yet the bulb’s owner, whose name is now lost to history, nixed the offer.
{C} Who was crazier, the tulip lover who refused to sell for a small fortune or the one who was willing to splurge. That’s a question that springs to mind after reading Tulip mania: The Story of the World’s Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused by British journalist Mike Dash. In recent years, as investors have intentionally forgotten everything they learned in Investing 101 in order to load up on unproved, unprofitable dot-com issues, tulip mania has been invoked frequently. In this concise, artfully written account, Dash tells the real history behind the buzzword and in doing so, offers a cautionary tale for our times.
{D} The Dutch were not the first to go gaga over the tulip. Long before the first tulip bloomed in Europe–in Bavaria, it turns out, in 1559–the flower had enchanted the Persians and bewitched the rulers of the Ottoman Empire. It was in Holland, however, that the passion for tulips found its most fertile ground, for reasons that had little to do with horticulture.
{E} Holland in the early 17th century was embarking on its Golden Age. Resources that had just a few years earlier gone toward fighting for independence from Spain now flowed into commerce. Amsterdam merchants were at the center of the lucrative East Indies trade, where a single voyage could yield profits of 400%. They displayed their success by erecting grand estates surrounded by flower gardens. The Dutch population seemed torn by two contradictory impulses: a horror of living beyond one’s means and the love of a long shot.
{F} Enter the tulip. “It is impossible to comprehend the tulip mania without understanding just how different tulips were from every other flower known to horticulturists in the 17th century,” says Dash. “The colors they exhibited were more intense and more concentrated than those of ordinary plants.” Despite the outlandish prices commanded by rare bulbs, ordinary tulips were sold by the pound. Around 1630, however, a new type of tulip fancier appeared, lured by tales of fat profits. These “florists,” or professional tulip traders, sought out flower lovers and speculators alike. But if the supply of tulip buyers grew quickly, the supply of bulbs did not. The tulip was a conspirator in the supply squeeze : It takes seven years to grow one from seed. And while bulbs can produce two or three clones, or “offsets,” annually, the mother bulb only lasts a few years.
{G} Bulb prices rose steadily throughout the 1630s, as ever more speculators wedged they could to raise cash to begin trading. In 1633, a farmhouse in Hoorn changed hands for three rare bulbs. By 1636 any tulip–even bulbs recently considered garbage–could be sold off, often for hundreds of guilders. A futures market for bulbs existed, and tulip traders could be found conducting their business in hundreds of Dutch taverns. Tulip mania reached its peak during the winter of 1636-37, when some bulbs were changing hands ten times in a day. The zenith came early that winter, at an auction to benefit seven orphans whose only asset was 70 fine tulips left by their father. One, a rare Violetten Admirael van Enkhuizen bulb that was about to split in two, sold for 5,200 guilders, the all-time record. All told, the flowers brought in nearly 53,000 guilders.
{H} Soon after, the tulip market crashed utterly, spectacularly. It began in Haarlem, at a routine bulb auction when, for the first time, the greater fool refused to show up and pay. Within days, the panic had spread across the country. Despite the efforts of traders to prop up demand, the market for tulips evaporated. Flowers that had commanded 5,000 guilders a few weeks before now fetched one-hundredth that amount. Tulip mania is not without flaws. Dash dwells too long on the tulip’s migration from Asia to Holland. But he does a service with this illuminating, accessible account of incredible financial folly.
{I} Tulip mania differed in one crucial aspect from the dot-com craze that grips our attention today: Even at its height the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, well-established in 1630, wouldn’t touch tulips. “The speculation in tulip bulbs always existed at the margins of Dutch economic life,” Dash writes. After the market crashed, a compromise was brokered that let most traders settle their debts for a fraction of their liability. The overall fallout on the Dutch economy was negligible. Will we say the same when Wall Street’s current obsession finally runs its course?
Questions 14-18 IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 129
The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-I.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-I, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.
(14) Difference between bubble burst impacts by tulip and by high-tech shares
(15) Spread of tulip before 17th century
(16) Indication of money offered for rare bulb in 17th century
(17) Tulip was treated as money in Holland
(18) Comparison made between tulip and other plants
Questions 19-23
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 19-23 on your answer sheet, write
| TRUE | if the statement is True |
| FALSE | if the statement is false |
| NOT GIVEN | If the information is not given in the passage |
(19) In 1624, all the tulip collection belonged to a man in Amsterdam.
(20) Tulips were first planted in Holland according to this passage.
(21) Popularity of tulips in Holland was much higher than in any other country in the 17th century.
(22) Holland was the most wealthy country in the world in the 17th century.
(23) From 1630, Amsterdam Stock Exchange started to regulate the Tulips exchange market.
Questions 24-27
Summary
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using no more than two words from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 24-27 on your answer sheet.
| Dutch concentrated on gaining independence by ________24________ against Spain in the early 17th century; consequently spare resources entered the area of ________25________
Prosperous traders demonstrated their status by building great ________26________ and with gardens in surroundings. Attracted by the success of profit on tulips, traders kept looking for ________27________ and speculators for sale. |
Reading Passage 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 129 Reading Passage Extinct: the Giant Deer below.
Extinct: the Giant Deer
Toothed cats, mastodons, giant sloths, woolly rhinos, and many other big, shaggy mammals are widely thought to have died out around the end of the last ice age, some 10,500 years ago.
{A} The Irish elk is also known as the giant deer (Megaloceros giganteus). Analysis of ancient bones and teeth by scientists based in Britain and Russia show the huge herbivore survived until about 5,000 B.C. – more than three millennia later than previously believed. The research team says this suggests additional factors, besides climate change, probably hastened the giant deer’s eventual extinction. The factors could include hunting or habitat destruction by humans.
{B} The Irish elk, so-called because its well-preserved remains are often found in lake sediments under peat bogs in Ireland, first appeared about 400,000 years ago in Europe and central Asia. Through a combination of radiocarbon dating of skeletal remains and the mapping of locations where the remains were unearthed, the team shows the Irish elk was widespread across Europe before the last “big freeze.” The deer’s range later contracted to the Ural Mountains, in modern-day Russia, which separated Europe from Asia.
{C} The giant deer made its last stand in western Siberia, some 3,000 years after the ice sheets receded, said the study’s co-author, Adrian Lister, professor of palaeobiology at University College London, England. “The eastern foothills of the Urals became very densely forested about 8,000 years ago, which could have pushed them on to the plain,” he said. He added that pollen analysis indicates the region then became very dry in response to further climactic change, leading to the loss of important food plants. “In combination with human pressures, this could have finally snuffed them out,” Lister said.
{D} Hunting by humans has often been put forward as a contributory cause of extinctions of the Pleistocene megafauna. The team, though, said their new date for the Irish elk’s extinction hints at an additional human-made problem-habitat destruction. Lister said, “We haven’t got just hunting 7,000 years ago – this was also about the time the first Neolithic people settled in the region. They were farmers who would have cleared the land.” The presence of humans may help explain why the Irish elk was unable to tough out the latest of many climatic fluctuations – periods it had survived in the past.
{E} Meanwhile, Lister cast doubt on another possible explanation for the deer’s demise – the male’s huge antlers. Some scientists have suggested this exaggerated feature – the result of females preferring stags with the largest antlers, possibly because they advertised a male’s fitness – contributed to the mammal’s downfall. They say such antlers would have been a serious inconvenience in the dense forests that spread northward after the last ice age. But, Lister said, “That’s a hard argument to make, because the deer previously survived perfectly well through wooded interglacials (warmer periods between ice ages].” Some research has suggested that a lack of sufficient high-quality forage caused the extinction of the elk. High amounts of calcium and phosphate compounds are required to form antlers, and therefore large quantities of these minerals are required for the massive structures of the Irish Elk. The males (and male deer in general) met this requirement partly from their bones, replenishing them from food plants after the antlers were grown or reclaiming the nutrients from discarded antlers (as has been observed in extant deer). Thus, in the antler growth phase, Giant Deer were suffering from a condition similar to osteoporosis. When the climate changed at the end of the last glacial period, the vegetation in the animal’s habitat also changed towards species that presumably could not deliver sufficient amounts of the required minerals, at least in the western part of its range.
{F} The extinction of megafauna around the world was almost completed by the end of the last ice age. It is believed that megafauna initially came into existence in response to glacial conditions and became extinct with the onset of warmer climates. Tropical and subtropical areas have experienced less radical climatic change. The most dramatic of these changes was the transformation of a vast area of north Africa into the world’s largest desert. Significantly, Africa escaped major faunal extinction as did tropical and subtropical Asia. The human exodus from Africa and our entrance into the Americas and Australia were also accompanied by climate change. Australia’s climate changed from cold-dry to warm-dry. As a result, surface water become scarce. Most inland lakes became completely dry or dry in the warmer seasons. Most large, predominantly browsing animals lost their habitat and retreated to a narrow band in eastern Australia, where there was permanent water and better vegetation. Some animals may have survived until about 7000 years ago. If people have been in Australia for up to 60 000 years, then megafauna must have coexisted with humans for at least 30 000 years. Regularly hunted modern kangaroos survived not only 10 000 years of Aboriginal hunting, but also an onslaught of commercial shooters.
{G} The group of scientists led by A.J. Stuart focused on northern Eurasia, which he was taking as Europe, plus Siberia, essentially, where they ‘ve got the best data that animals became extinct in Europe during the Late Pleistocene. Some cold-adapted animals, go through into the last part of the cold stage, and then become extinct up there. So you’ve actually got two phases of extinction. Now, neither of these coincide — these are Neanderthals here being replaced by modern humans. There’s no obvious coincidence between the arrival of humans or climatic change alone and these extinctions. There’s a climatic change here, so there’s a double effect here. Again, as animals come through to the last part of the cold stage, here there’s a fundamental change in the climate, reorganization of vegetation, and the combination of the climatic change and the presence of humans — of advanced Paleolithic humans — causes this wave of extinction. There’s a profound difference between the North American data and that of Europe, which summarize that the extinctions in northern Eurasia, in Europe, are moderate and staggered, and in North America severe and sudden. And these things relate to the differences in the timing of human arrival. The extinctions follow from human predation, but only at times of fundamental changes in the environment.
Questions 28-32 IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 129
Summary
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using no more than three words from the Reading Passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 28-32 on your answer sheet.
| Having been preserved well in Europe and central Asia, the remains of the Irish elk was initially found approximately _______28_______ Around _______29_______, they were driven to live in the plain after being restricted to the Ural Mountains. Hunting was considered as one of the important factors of Irish elk’s extinction; people did not start hunting until _______30_______ when Irish elk used to get through under a variety of climatic fluctuations.
The huge antlers may possibly contribute to the reason why Irish elk became extinct, which was highly controversial as they live pleasantly over the span of _______31_______. Generally, it is well-known that, at the last maximum ice age, mammals become extinct about_______32_______ |
Questions 33-35 IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 129
Answer the questions below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.
(33). What kind of physical characteristics eventually contributed to the extinction of Irish elk?
(34). What kind of nutrient substance needed in maintaining the huge size of Irish elk?
(35). What geographical evidence suggested the advent of human resulted in the extinction of Irish elk?
Questions 36-39 Matching
choose the letter A-D and fill in box 37-39
| (A) Eurasia | (B) Australia | (C) Asia | (D) Africa |
(36) the continents where humans imposed little impact on large mammals extinction
(37) the continents where the climatic change was mild and fauna remains
(38) the continents where both humans and climatic change are the causes
(39) the continents where the climatic change along caused a massive extinction
Question 40 Which statement is true according to the Stuart team’s finding?
(A) Neanderthals rather than modern humans caused the extinction in Europe
(B) Paleolithic humans in Europe along kill the big animals such as Giant deer
(C) the climatic change was not solely responsible for the megafauna extinction in Europe
(D) moderate and staggered extinction was mainly the result of fundamental climatic change
For Answers Academic IELTS Reading Test 129 Answers
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