Cambridge 18 Reading Test 2 - Answers With Explanation

1. "Neolithic Britons used primitive tools, which may have been fashioned out of deer antlers, to dig a massive circular ditch and bank."

2. "Deep pits... located within the circle may have once held a ring of timber posts."

3. "Stonehenge's builders fashioned sledges and rollers out of tree trunks to lug the bluestones."

4. Builders transported "the bluestones with supersized wicker baskets on a combination of ball bearings and long grooved planks, hauled by oxen."

5. "Some scientists have suggested that it was glaciers, not humans, that carried the bluestones to Salisbury Plain."

6. "Archaeologist John Aubrey made the claim that Stonehenge was the work of druids."

7. "There is consensus among the majority of modern scholars that Stonehenge once served the function of burial ground."

8. "The astronomer Gerald Hawkins suggested that the cluster of megalithic stones operated as a form of calendar."

9. Sarsens "were arranged into an outer crescent or ring," while trilithons "stand tall in the centre of Stonehenge" — both outer and central placements — TRUE.

10. Radiocarbon dating shows work continued until 1600 BCE, "with the bluestones in particular being repositioned multiple times" — not fixed in one spot — FALSE.

11. "Radiocarbon dating demonstrated that Stonehenge stood more than 1,000 years before the Celts inhabited the region" — directly undermining Aubrey's druid theory — FALSE.

12. "Bones, tools and other artefacts found on the site seem to support this hypothesis" that several distinct tribes contributed to construction — TRUE.

13. Critics of Hawkins' theory are mentioned, but the passage never identifies them as astronomers specifically — NOT GIVEN.

14. "Many experts believe this restriction is very temporary. By mid-century, we may have artificial general intelligence" — narrow AI's limits aren't expected to last.

15. The paragraph explains that "our brains run at slow biochemical processing speeds" and are size-restricted, while "machines will be free of many of the physical constraints on human intelligence."

16. King Midas "might have wished that everything he touched turned to gold, but didn't really intend this to apply to his breakfast" — a warning about specifying goals with care.

17. "We are far from reliably human-friendly ourselves... if superintelligent machines don't do a lot better than us, we'll be in deep trouble."

18. "We want them to aim for the moral high ground... they'll be better than us at finding them, and steering us in the right direction."

19. "We need to tell the machines what they're looking for with sufficient clarity... This won't be easy, given that we are tribal creatures and conflicted about the ideals ourselves."

20. "We might lose our freedom to discriminate in favour of our own communities, for example" — YES.

21. The passage discusses "ethical silicon police limiting our options" but never says anything about how many would be needed — NOT GIVEN.

22. "Few of us are likely to welcome such a future" — the opposite of comfortable — NO.

23. Pointing machines in the right direction "will require a cooperative spirit, and a willingness to set aside self-interest" — YES.

24. "AI already has some input into how resources are used in our National Health Service."

25. "We'd be depriving some humans (e.g. senior doctors) of the control they presently enjoy" — medical practitioners.

26. Those doctors would lose "the control they presently enjoy" — their professional authority.

27. The passage says 500 years have passed since Leonardo died, but never says when people first called him a genius — NOT GIVEN.

28. The passage mentions the plague's death toll but gives no death figure for the predicted climate crisis to compare — NOT GIVEN.

29. "Then, as now, radical solutions were called for to revolutionise the way people lived and safeguard humanity against catastrophe" — TRUE.

30. The ideal city project, "due to its excessive costs, would remain unfulfilled" — it was never built — FALSE.

31. "Unsustainable urban models are a key cause of global climate change today" — TRUE.

32. The passage mentions the projects at Pienza and Ferrara but says nothing about local resistance to them — NOT GIVEN.

33. "It is not easy to identify a coordinated vision of Leonardo's ideal city because of his disordered way of working with notes and sketches" — FALSE.

34. "He designed the city for the easy transport of goods and clean urban spaces."

35. "Leonardo wanted the city to be built on several levels, linked with vertical outdoor staircases."

36. "The true originality of Leonardo's vision was its fusion of architecture and engineering. Leonardo designed extensive hydraulic plants."

37. The width-to-house-height ratio is "a rule still followed in many contemporary cities across Italy."

38. "Although some of these features existed in Roman cities, before Leonardo's drawings there had never been a multi-level, compact modern city."

39. "Georges-Eugène Haussmann's renovation of Paris under Emperor Napoleon III between 1853 and 1870" applied ideas like Leonardo's.

40. "The compact city, built upwards instead of outwards" is the way forward the passage suggests.