GWD19-Q6

[Ivan]

Q4 to Q7:
By the sixteenth century, the Incas of South America ruled an empire that extended along the Pacific coast and Andean highlands from what is now (5) Ecuador to central Chile. While most of the Incas were self-sufficient agriculturists, the inhabitants of the highland basins above 9,000 feet were
constrained by the kinds of crops they (10) could cultivate. Whereas 95 percent of the principal Andean food crops can
be cultivated below 3,000 feet, only 20 percent reproduce readily above 9,000 feet. Given this unequal (15) resource distribution, highland Incas needed access to the products of
lower, warmer climatic zones in order to enlarge the variety and quantity of their foodstuffs. In most of the prein-
(20) dustrial world, the problem of different resource distribution was resolved by long-distance trade networks over
which the end consumer exercised little control. Although the peoples (25) of the Andean highlands participated
in such networks, they relied primarily on the maintenance of autonomous production forces in as many eco-
logical zones as possible. The (30) commodities produced in these zones were extracted, processed, and transported entirely by members of a single group.
This strategy of direct access (35) to a maximum number of ecological zones by a single group is called vertical economy. Even today, one can see Andean communities
maintaining use rights simultaneously (40)to pasturelands above 12,000 feet, to potato fields in basins over 9,000 feet,
and to plots of warm-land crops in regions below 6,000 feet. This strategy has two principal variations.(45) The first is “compressed verticality,”in which a single village resides in
a location that permits easy access to closely located ecological zones. Different crop zones or pasturelands
(50) are located within a few days walk of the parent community. Community members may reside temporarily
in one of the lower zones to manage the extraction of products unavailable (55) in the homeland. In the second varia-
tion, called the “vertical archipelago,” the village exploits resources in widely dispersed locations, constituting a
series of independent production (60) “islands.” In certain pre-Columbian Inca societies, groups were sent from
the home territory to establish perma- nent satellite communities or colonies in distant tropical forests or coastal
(65) locations. There the colonists grew crops and extracted products for their own use and for transshipment back
to their high-altitude compatriots. In contrast to the compressed (70) verticality system, in this system,
commodities rather than people circulated through the archipelago.


Q6:
The passage suggests that as a way of addressing the problem of different resource distribution in the preindustrial world, the practice of vertical economy differed from the use of long-distance trade networks in that vertical economy allowed

A.commodities to reach the end consumer faster
B.a wide variety of agricultural goods to reach the end consumer
C.a single group to maintain control over the production process
D.greater access to commodities from lower, warmer climatic zones
E.greater use of self-sufficient agricultural techniques


the answers:

(B)<---my answer. It is wrong...why? becasue of "agricultural goods " ? ot others?

(C)<---correct answer <---I am not fully agree with it becasue the single to maintain control over not only "the production process" but others else such as "extracted and transported"

please help me....thanks!

[Charleneshen]

我記得以前做這題的時候，也覺得這五個答案很爭議，不過現在重看之後，反而同意答案C，我來試著解釋看看好了。

文章提到幾種不同的方式來因應陡峭的環境，所以先提了一個network的方法，緊接著又提另一個autonomous production，之後就automonous production提出兩種實施的方案，一個是compress verticality，另一個是vertical archipelago，分別講兩種是怎樣弄的，然後可以達到resource distribution的好處。

Q6問的是vertical economy可以更怎樣？所以重點應該放在文章後半部的那兩個方案。答案ABD都是在講automonous production的優點，那是大主題，可是這題是考vertical economy的細節，所以都不對，答案E無關。所以C是正確答案。

[ellisyhliu]

是啊。。。同意前人說法。。。

仔細看Line 19-24,.....long-distance trade networks....."little control".

再看Line 34-37, ......"direct access"......

所以選C,就沒問題啦。。。。