Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow:
As the climate in the Middle East changed beginning around 7000 B.C., conditions emerged that were conducive to a more complex and advanced form of civilization in both Egypt and Mesopotamia. The process began when the swampy valleys of the Nile in Egypt and of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia became drier, producing riverine lands that were both habitable and fertile, and attracting settlers armed with the newly-developed techniques of agriculture. This migration was – further encouraged by the gradual transformation of the once hospitable grasslands of these regions into deserts. Human population became increasingly concentrated into pockets of settlement scattered along the banks of the great rivers.
These rivers profoundly shaped the way of life along their banks. In Mesopotamia, the management of water in conditions of unpredictable drought, flood and storm became the central economic and social challenge. Villagers began early to build simple earthworks, dikes,
canals and ditches to control the waters and reduce the opposing dangers of drought during the dry season (usually the spring) and flooding at harvest time.
Such efforts required a degree of cooperation among large numbers of people that had not previously existed. The individual village containing only dozen or so houses and families, was economically vulnerable; but when several villages, probably under the direction of a council
of elders, learned to share their human resources in the building of a coordinated network of water-control systems, the safety, stability, and prosperity of all improved. In this new cooperation, the seeds of the great Mesopotamia civilizations were being sown.
Answer the following questions
(a) What was the impact of climate changes on the valleys of the Nile in Egypt and on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia? How did these changes affect the advancement
of civilizations?
(b) Why did human population get concentrated along the river banks?
(c) How did the settlers cope with the conditions of drought, floods and storms?
(d) What were the factors that helped in bringing about stability, safety and prosperity?
(e) Find words in the passage which mean the following:
(i) Suitable for people to live in
(ii) Long periods of time when there is little or no rain.
Pick out the correct form of the verbs:
i. In the UK today, the number of women in work reached/has reached nearly 50% of the working population.
ii. In the 1950s and early 1960s, very few women went/have gone out to work.
iii. In those days, husbands often didn't let/haven't let their wives get jobs.
iv. Today the situation changed/has changed a lot.
v. In the 1970s, new laws made/have made employers offer women and men equal pay and conditions.
vi. Several changes in the present law gave/have given women today better conditions than before.
vii. However, women's average salaries at the moment didn't rise/haven't risen to average level of men's salaries.
viii. This is partly because the biggest increase in work for women in the last 20 years was/has been in part-time jobs.
ix. It is also because most of today's women didn't climb/haven't climbed to higher levels of management.
x. Most of the women didn't try/haven't tried to do so either.