五、閱讀測驗(36-50 題，請選出最適當的選項)
Passage 1        Meaning “land between the rivers,” Mesopotamia is widely considered to be the cradle ofcivilization. It was here, in 5000 B.C., that people settled into an agricultural lifestyle by the mightyTigris and Euphrates rivers. Because there was little rain, the people depended on these rivers fortheir survival. In particular, the Mesopotamians created canal channels to distribute the flood watersthat flowed for a short duration each year to water their crops； the efficiency of their irrigationsystems allowed their society to flourish in spite of little rainfall. This enables them to create theworld’s first towns and cities. At the center of each town stood a temple complex with food stores, atreasury, and living spaces, all incorporated into the overall design. Over time, these towns evolvedinto city-states, eventually becoming an empire.       In the beginning, there arose a need to keep reliable records of daily commodities traded；and out of this need, cuneiform－a wedge-shaped writing system－was invented. Later, this specialwriting system proved to be very versatile and quickly spread to uses other than documenting dailybusiness transactions； for instance, the Sumerian scribed to record daily major life events and towrite the first major literary work known to Western civilization. Perhaps the best known ofMesopotamia’s civilizations was Babylon. During the second millennia B.C., it rose from a regionalcapital to become the center of a kingdom that stretched across southern Iraq and beyond. Its king,Hammurabi, left his mark with a remarkable collection of laws. Hammurabi’s code defined theconstraints of private property, as well as legal decisions for crimes, and family disputes.       Although its architecture was eventually lost to the sands of time, Mesopotamia left alegacy of law, literature, and engineering, for modern civilizations to build on. In fact, much of whatwe know of that chapter in the region’s history has come from excavations of ruined cities,supplemented by recent discovery and written translations of Mesopotamia clay tablet texts.
【題組】36. According to the text, who were the first people to record historical events and write literary works?
(A) Sumerians
(B) Asia-Pacific Islanders
(C) Egyptians
(D) Iraqis