BEST IELTS General Reading Test 466

BEST IELTS General Reading Test 466

IELTS General Reading Test

Rare 400-year-old-map traces Indigenous roots in Mexico

A rare, indigenous-made map of Mexico from the era of the Nahuatl people’s first contact with Europeans is now in the collection of the U.S. Library of Congress. The library announced that it acquired the so-called Codex Quetzalecatzin (also known as the Mapa de Ecatepec Huitziltepec) and that a digitally preserved copy is now available online. Among other things, the map covers some recognizable geographic terrain. It features the church of Todos Santos in modern-day Mexico City suburb of Ecatepec, the now-drained Lake Texcoco and the Atoyac River.

For more than 100 years, the map had passed through private collections, including that of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst. According to the Library of Congress, few manuscripts of this kind have survived into the present, and the codex, created in 1593, is a rare example of the many maps that were produced for the Spanish Empire to document the histories of local families-and their resources.

IELTS General Reading Test

The manuscript shows the genealogy of the members of the “de Leon” family, indigenous Nahuatl people who were descended from a political leader named Quetzalecatzin. The map also illustrates the land and property this family owned, using Aztec style graphic symbols for riversand roads, and hieroglyphic writing. But there are also traces of Spanish influence in the manuscript. Some hieroglyphic labels are translated with the Latin alphabet. The names of indigenous elites-like “don Alonso” and “don Matheo”-imply that some locals had been baptized with Christian names.

The map also “shows churches, some Spanish place names and images suggesting a community adapting to Spanish law and rule,” said John Hessler, curator of the Jay I. Kislak Collection for the Archaeology of the Early Americas of the Library of Congress. “The codex shows graphically the kinds of cultural interactions taking place at an important moment in American history,” Hessler said in a statement. “In a sense, we see the birth of what would be the start of what we would come to know as the Americas.”

IELTS General Reading Test

Complete questions 30-35 from the nine options provided below.

i. genealogy of the members of the “de Leon” family

ii. is called Codex Quetzalecatzin

iii. that the community was adapting to Spanish law and rule

iv. for more than past 100 years

V. implies that some locals had been baptized with Christian names

vi. structure of the Spanish empire

vii. and was last part of William Randolph Hearst’s collection

viii. the church of Todos Santos

ix. is available online

IELTS General Reading Test

30. A digitally preserved copy of the map

31. The map has been part of private collections

32. The Codex shows the

33. The use of certain names in the Codex

34. The depiction of churches and Spanish place names on the map

35. The map covers geographical terrain such as

IELTS General Reading Test

The True story behind Plymouth Rock

A. Plymouth Rock, located on the shore of Plymouth Harbor in Massachusetts, is reputed to be the very spot where William Bradford, an early governor of Plymouth colony, and other Pilgrims first set foot on land in 1620. Yet, there is no mention of the granite stone in the two surviving firsthand accounts of the founding of the colony- Bradford’s famous manuscript Of Plymouth Plantation and Edward Winslow’s writings published in a document called “Mourt’s Relation.”

B. In fact, the rock went unidentified for 121 years. It wasn’t until 1741, when a wharf was to be built over it, that 94-year-old Thomas Faunce, a town record keeper and the son of a pilgrim who arrived in Plymouth in 1623. reported the rock’s significance. Ever since, Plymouth Rock has been an object of reverence, as a symbol of the founding of a new nation.

IELTS General Reading Test

С. “It is important because of what people have turned it into,” says Larry Bird, a curator in the National Museum of American History’s division of political history. “To possess a piece of it is to look at a historical moment in terms of image making and imagery. We choose these moments, and these things become invested with values that continue to speak to us today.”

D. In 1774, Plymouth Rock was split, horizontally, into two pieces. “Like a bagel,” writes John McPhee in “Travels of the Rock,” a story that appeared in the New Yorker in 1990. “There were those who feared and those who hoped that the break in the rock portended an irreversible rupture between England and the American colonies,” writes McPhee. Actually, the upper half was transported to the town square where it was used to rile up New Englanders to want to gain independence from the Mother Country. Meanwhile, over the course of the next century, people. wanting a stake in the history, slowly chipped away at the half of the rock still on shore.

IELTS General Reading Test

E. The National Museum of American History has two pieces of Plymouth Rock in its collection. “The one that I like is painted with a little affidavit by Lewis Bradford, who is a descendent of William Bradford,” says Bird. “He paints on it the exact moment of time in which he chips it from the ‘Mother Rock.” The label on the small, four- inch by two-inch rock reads, “Broken from the Mother Rock by Mr. Lewis Bradford on Tues. 28th of Dec. 1850 4 1/2 o’clock p.m.” The artifact was donated to the museum in 1911 by the family of Gustavus Vasa Fox, a former Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

F. Much larger, weighing in at 100 pounds, the second hunk of rock was once part of a 400-pound portion owned by the Plymouth Antiquarian Society. The organization came into possession of the rock in the 1920s; it bought the Sandwich Street Harlow House, where the stone was being used as a doorstep. The society ended up breaking the 400-pound rock into three pieces, and the museum acquired one in 1985.

IELTS General Reading Test

The above write-up has been divided into six paragraphs, A-F

Which paragraph mentions the following?

Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet.

Note: You may use any letter more than once.

36. The Plymouth Rock is important because of what people have turned it into.

37. The Plymouth Rock has been a symbol of the founding of a new nation.

 38. The second piece of the Plymouth Rock is much larger than the first piece.

39. The upper half of the Plymouth Rock was transported to the town square.

40. There is no mention of the Plymouth Rock in two important manuscripts.

IELTS General Reading Test

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BEST IELTS General Reading Test 466

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IELTS General Reading Test

30. IX

31. IV

32. I

33. V

34. III

35. VII

36. C

37. B

38. F

39. D

40. A

IELTS General Reading Test

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