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1、智 课 网 托 福 备 考 资 料托福听力TPO18原文 Lecture 3-智课教育旗下智课教育下面就让小编来为大家介绍一下托福听力TPO18原文中Lecture 3 的文本内容吧，大家要好好把握，这些都是非常有价值的材料，同时， 大家也可以登录智课教育论坛进行TPO练习辅导，希望能够给准备托福 听力的同学带来帮助。 TPO 18 Lecture 3 European History Professor：In order to really study the social history of the Middle Ages, you have to understand the role
2、 of spices. Now, this might sound a little spurring, even a little strange. But what seem like little things now were back then actually rather big things. So first lets define what a spice is. Technically speaking, a spice is part of an aromatic plant that is not a leaf or herb. Spices can come fro
3、m tree bark like cinnamon, plant roots like ginger, flower buds like cloves. And in the Middle Ages. Europeans were familiar with lots of different spices, most important being pepper, cloves, ginger, cinnamon, maize and nutmeg. These spices literarily dominated the way Europeans lived for centuries
4、, how they traded and even how they used their imaginations. So why this medieval fascination with spices? We can boil it down to there general ideas briefly. One was cost and rarity. Uh two was exotic taste and fragrance. And third, mysterious origins and kinds of mythical status. Now for cost and
5、rarity, spices arent native to Europe and they had to be imported. Spices only grew in the East Indies and of course transportation costs were incredibly valuable even from the very beginning. Here is an example. In 408 AD, the Gothic General who captured Rome demanded payment. He wanted 5000 pounds
6、 of gold among other things but he also wanted 3000 pounds of pepper. Maybe that would give you an idea of exactly where pepper stood at the time. By the Middle Ages, spices were regarded as so important and expensive they were used indiplomacy, as gifts by heads of state and ambassadors. Now for th
7、e taste. The diet then was relatively bland, compared to todays. There wasnt much variety. Especially the aristocracy who tended to eat a lot of meat, they were always looking for new ways to prepare it, new sources, new tastes and this is where spices came in. Now, this is a good point to mention o
8、ne of the biggest myths about spices. Its commonly said that medieval Europeans wanted spices to cover up the taste of spoiled meat. But this isnt really true. Anyone who had to worry about spoiled meat couldnt afford spices in the first place. If you could afford spices, you could definitely afford
9、 fresh meat. We also have evidence that various medieval markets employed a kind of police to make sure that people did not sell spoiled food, and if you were caught doing it, you were subject to various fines, humiliating public punishments. So what actually was true was this: In order to have meat
10、 for the winter, people would preserve it in salt, not a spice. Spices actually arent very effective as preservatives. And throughout winter, they would eat salted meat, but the taste of the stuff could grow really boring and depressing after a while.So the cook started looking for new ways to impro
11、ve the taste and spices were the answer, which brings us to mysterious origins and mythical status. Now the ancient Romans had a thriving spice trade and they sent their ships to the east and back. But when Rome collapsed in the fifth century and the Middle Ages began, direct trade stopped, and so d
12、id that kind of hands-on knowledge of travel and geography. Spices now came by way of the trade routes with lots of intermediaries between the producer and the consumer. So these spices took on an air of mystery. Their origins were shrouded in exotic travels. They had the allure of the unknown, of w
13、ild places. Myths grew up of fantasy lands, magical faraway places made entirely of food andspices. And to that, spices themselves had always been considered special or magical not just for eating and this was already true in the ancient world where legends about spices were abundant. Spices inspire
14、d the medieval imagination. They were used as medicines to ward off diseases, and mixed into perfumes, incent. They were used in religious rituals for thousands of years. They took on a life of their own and they inspired the medieval imagination, spurred on the age of discovery in the 145th and 16t
15、h centuries. When famous explorers like Columbus and da Gama and Magellan left Europe in their ships, they werent looking for a new world.; they were looking for spices. And we know what important historical repercussions some of those voyages had.教授：同学们，要理解中世纪的社会发展历史，你们必须要理解香 料的重要作用。现在，我这样说，听上去有些难懂
16、，甚至诡异。但是， 你们现在觉得是小事情的东西，在过去可能是很重要的事情。那么，我 们先来给香料下一个定义吧!从技术上讲，香料是一种带有香味的植物， 而不单纯是植物的叶子或者根部。香料可以由肉桂等植物的树干，姜等 的根，四叶草等的花蕾制成。并且在中世纪的时候，欧洲人已经知道许 许多多种香料了，其中最重要的有胡椒、丁香、姜、肉桂、玉薯和豆蔻 。这些香料几个世纪以来一直都驾驭着欧?奕说纳睿?甚至贸易以及思 维。这样的话，我们不禁会问：为什么中世纪的人们如此沉迷于香料? 我们可以归因于三条主要原因，其一是价值和稀有性，其二是域外风味 和香味，第三则是香料的某种神秘性。第一条是香料的价值和稀有性。 欧洲并不能生产香料，所以必须依靠进口。香料只能产于东印度一代， 所以运输的费用是难以相信的天文数字。譬如，公元408年，占领了罗 马的哥特将军索要赎金。他想要5000磅黄金，外加其他的东西，但他同 时想要3000磅胡椒。这个例子可能很精确地告诉你胡椒的价值所在。到 中世纪，香料极其受到重视，异常昂贵，甚至被用到了外交场合，被用 作赠送给外国元首或使节的礼物。第二是香料的口味。和今
