跟读练习: Indus Valley Civilization: Crash Course World History #2 - 通过视频学习英语口语
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Hi, I'm John Green and this is Crash Course World History.
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Let's begin today with a question.
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Why am I alive?
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Also, why don't I have any eyes?
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Ah, that's better.
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The way we answer that question ends up organizing all kinds of other thoughts, like what we should value, and how we should behave, and if we should eat meat, and whether we should dump that boy who is very nice
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but insanely clingy in a way that he cannot possibly think is attractive.
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All of which adds up- Mr. Green, Mr. Green, uh, are you talking about me?
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Yes, I am talking about you, me from the past.
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I am telling you that one of the reasons we study history is so that you can be a less terrible boyfriend.
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But more on that momentarily.
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Today we're going to talk about civilizations, but in order to do that, we have to talk about talking about civilizations, because it's a problematic word.
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So problematic, in fact, that I have to turn to camera two to discuss it.
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Certain conglomerations of humans are seen as civilizations, whereas, say, nomadic cultures generally aren't, unless you are, say it with me, the Mongols.
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By calling some groups civilizations, you imply that all other social orders are uncivilized, which is basically just another way of saying that they're savages or barbarians.
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Side note, originally Greek, the word barbarian denoted anyone who did not speak ancient Greek, because to the Greeks, all other languages sounded like bar bar bar bar bar bar bar.
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So that is to say that we are all essentially barbarians, except for the classics majors, which is worth remembering when we're discussing civilizations.
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Civilizations are like most of the things we like to study.
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They're intellectual constructs.
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No one woke up in the city of Thebes in Egypt one morning and said, What a beautiful morning!
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I sure am living at the height of Egyptian civilization.
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Still, they're useful constructs, particularly when you're comparing one civilization to another.
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They're less useful when you're comparing a civilization to a non-civilization type social order, which is why we will try to avoid that.
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And yes, I am getting to the good boyfriend stuff.
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Patience, grasshopper.
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So what is a civilization?
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Well, diagnosing a civilization is a little like diagnosing an illness.
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If you have four or more of the following symptoms, you might be a civilization.
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Surplus production.
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Once one person can make enough food to feed several people, it becomes possible to build a city, another symptom of civilization.
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It also leads to the specialization of labor, which in turn leads to trade.
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Like if everybody picks berries for a living, there is no reason to trade, because I have berries and you have berries.
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But if I pick berries for a living and you make hammers, suddenly we have cause to trade.
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are also usually associated with social stratification, centralized government shared values, generally in the form of religion, and writing.
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And at least in the early days, they were almost always associated with rivers.
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These days you can just bisect a segment of land horizontally and vertically and boom, build a city, but 5,000 years ago civilizations were almost always associated with rivers,
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whether that's the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Yellow River, the Nile, the Amazon basin, the Coatzacoalcos.
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Gah, I was doing so good until I got to Coatzacoalcos!
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Coatzacoalcus.
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Coatzacoalcus, maybe.
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Why river valleys?
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They're flat, they're well watered, and when they flood they deposit nutrient rich silt.
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We'll have more to say about most of these civilizations later, but let's talk about this guy, the Indus Valley Civilization, because it's my all-time favorite.
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The Indus Valley Civilization was located in the flood plain of the Indus and Souardi Rivers, and it was about the best place in the world to have an ancient civilization
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because the rivers flooded very reliably twice a year, which meant that it had the most available calories per acre of pretty much anywhere on the planet.
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We know the Indus Valley Civilization flourished a long time ago, probably around 3000 BCE.
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Why is that question literally hanging over my head?
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But people of the Indus Valley were trading with Mesopotamians as early as 3500 BCE.
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We also know that it was the largest of the ancient civilizations.
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Archaeologists have discovered more than 1500 sites.
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So what do we know about this civilization?
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Let's go to the Thought Bubble.
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Everything we know about the Indus Valley Civilization comes from archaeology, because while they did use written language, we don't know how to read it, and no Rosetta Stone has thus far appeared to help us learn it.
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I meant the other Rosetta Stone thought bubble.
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Yeah, although come to think of it, either would be acceptable.
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So here's what we know.
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They had amazing cities.
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Harappa and Mohenjo-daro are the best known, with dense, multi-story homes constructed out of uniformly sized bricks along perpendicular streets.
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I mean, this wasn't some ancient world version of Houston, more like Chicago.
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This means they must have had some form of government and zoning, but we don't know what gave this government its authority.
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Cities were oriented to catch the wind and provide a natural form of air conditioning.
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And they were clean.
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Most homes were connected to a centralized drainage system
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that used gravity to carry waste and water out of the city in big sewer ditches that ran under the main avenues, a plumbing system that would have been the envy of many 18th century European cities.
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Also, in Mahendradara, the largest public building was not a temple or a palace, but a public bath, which historians call the The Great Bath.
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We don't know what the Great Bath was used for, but since later Indian culture placed a huge emphasis on ritual purity, which is the basis for the caste system,
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some historians have speculated that the bath might have been like a giant baptismal pool.
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Also, they traded.
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One of the coolest things that the Indus Valley civilization produced were seals, used as identification markers on goods and clay tablets.
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These seals contain the writing that we still can't decipher and a number of fantastic designs, many featuring animals and monsters.
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One of the most famous and frightening is of a man with what looks like water buffalo horns on his head, cross-legged between a tiger and a bull.
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We don't know what's really going on here, but it's safe to say that this was a powerful dude because he seems to be able to control the tiger.
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How did these seals let us know that they traded?
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Well because we found them in Mesopotamia, not the Indus Valley.
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Plus, archaeologists have found stuff like bronze in the Indus Valley that is not native to the region.
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So what did they trade?
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Cotton cloth.
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Still such a fascinating export, incidentally, that it will be the subject of the 40th and final video in this very series.
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Here's the most amazing thing about the Indus Valley people.
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They were peaceful.
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Despite archaeologists finding 1,500 sites, they have found very little evidence of warfare and almost no weapons.
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Thanks, Thought Bubble.
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Okay, before we talk about the fascinating demise of the Indus Valley civilization, it's time for the open letter.
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Magic!
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I wonder what the secret compartment has for me today.
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Oh!
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Fancy clothes!
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I guess the secret compartment didn't think I was dressed up enough for the occasion.
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An open letter to historians.
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Dear historians, The Great Bath?
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Really?
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The Great Bath?
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I'm trying to make history fascinating and you give me a term that evokes scented candles, bath salts, and Frederick Fekai hair products?
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I know sometimes the crushingly boring names of history aren't your fault.
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You didn't name the Federalist Papers or the Austro-Hungarian Empire or Adam Smith.
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But when you do get a chance to name something, you go with The Great Bath?
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Not the epic bath of Mohenjo-Daro, or the bath to end all baths, or the pool that ruled, or the moist mystery of Mohenjo-Daro, or the wet wonder.
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The Great Bath?
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Really?
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You can do better.
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Best wishes, John Green.
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So what happened to these people?
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Well, here's what didn't happen to them.
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They didn't morph into the current residents of that area of the world, Hindu Indians or Muslim Pakistanis.
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Those people probably came from the Caucasus.
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Instead, sometime around 1750 BCE, the Indus Valley civilization declined until it faded into obscurity.
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Why?
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Historians have three theories.
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One, conquest.
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Turns out to be a terrible military strategy not to have any weapons, and it's possible people from the Indus Valley were completely overrun by people from the Caucasus.
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Two, environmental disaster.
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It's possible they brought about their own end by destroying their environment.
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Three, earthquake.
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The most interesting theory is that a massive earthquake changed the course of the rivers
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so much that a lot of the tributaries dried up adequate water supplies for irrigation, the cities couldn't sustain themselves, so people literally just picked up and left for greener pastures.
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Well, probably not pastures, it's unlikely they became nomads, they probably just moved to a different plain and continued their agricultural ways.
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I am already boring you and I haven't even told you yet how to be a better boy and or girlfriend.
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I'm gonna do that now.
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So we don't know why the Indus Valley civilization ended, but we also don't really know why it started.
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Why did these people build cities and dig swimming pools and make unnecessarily ornate seals?
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Were they motivated by hunger, fear, a desire for companionship, the need to be near their sacred spaces, or a general feeling that city life was just more awesome than foraging?
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Thinking about what motivated them to structure their life as they
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did helps us to think about how we structure our own lives.
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In short, you're clingy because you're motivated by fear and a need for companionship.
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And she finds it annoying
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because it's enough work having to be responsible for herself without having to also be responsible for you.
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So you're not really helping her by clinging, and from the Indus Valley in the Bronze Age to school life today, human life is all about collaboration.
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Trading cloth for bronze, building cities together, and collaborating to make sure that human lives are tilted to catch the wind.
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Next week we will travel here to discuss the hot Mesopotamia, but in the meantime, if you have any questions,
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leave them in comments and our team of semi-trained semi-professionals will do their best to answer them.
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Also you'll find some suggested resources in the video info below, he said pointing at his pants.
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Thanks for watching and we'll see you next week.
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Don't forget to be awesome.
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本节课学习内容
通过观看这段关于印度河流域文明的视频，你将练习英语听力理解与口语表达。视频中John Green以轻松幽默的语气讲述历史知识，涵盖文明定义、印度河文明特点及消亡原因等内容。你可以跟着模仿他的语速、语调，同时学习历史相关词汇，提升英语口语的流畅度与发音准确性。
核心词汇与短语
- civilization：文明
- surplus production：剩余生产
- social stratification：社会分层
- centralized government：中央政府
- ritual purity：仪式纯净
- environmental disaster：环境灾难
影子跟读练习技巧
视频中John Green的语速中等，语气生动，非常适合进行“英语影子跟读”（shadowspeaks）练习。建议你先完整听一遍，熟悉内容后，逐句跟读。注意模仿他的停顿和重音，比如在讲述“为什么河流谷地适合文明发展”时，“flat”“well watered”“nutrient-rich silt”等词的强调。遇到长句子，如“Civilizations are like most of the things we like to study, they're intellectual constructs”，可拆分短语进行练习。
练习时，可使用“shadow speech”方法，即延迟0.5-1秒跟读，训练耳朵与嘴巴的协调能力。重点关注历史术语的发音，如“Mohenjo Daro”“Coatzacoalcos”，通过重复模仿纠正发音。坚持每天练习10-15分钟，不仅能提高英语发音，还能增强英语口语的流利度。记住，影子跟读是提升口语的有效方式，慢慢来，你会看到进步！
视频中的语法
说话人最常用的结构，并附上视频中的原话：
| 结构 | 视频中的用法 |
|---|---|
| 被动语态 be + 过去分词 — 强调发生了什么，而不是谁做的 | are seen · are uncivilized · are also usually associated |
| 现在完成时 have/has + 过去分词 — 过去发生但与现在仍有关联的事 | have discovered · have speculated · have found |
| 定语从句 who / which + 从句 — 补充说明人或事物 | uncivilized, which is · anyone who did · majors, which is |
什么是跟读法？
跟读法 (Shadowing) 是一种有科学依据的语言学习技巧，最初开发用于专业口译员的培训，并由多语言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。这个方法简单而强大：您在听英语母语原声的同时立即大声重复——就像是一个延迟1-2秒紧跟说话者的影子。与被动听力或语法练习不同，跟读法强迫您的大脑和口腔肌肉同时处理并模仿真实的讲话模式。研究表明它能显着提高发音准确性，语调，节奏，连读，听力理解和口语流利度——使其成为雅思口语备考和真实英语交流最有效的方法之一。