TOEFL Speaking Task 4 Practice Test #12

Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in a History class.

Professor: When early humans wanted to eat meat, they hunted wild animals, that’s how humans got meat for thousands of years. But then around ten thousand years ago, humans began to domesticate animals, that is, they began to control animals, to feed them, to raise them. And the domestication of animals had a number of benefits for early humans. Let’s talk about a couple of these benefits. One benefit of animal domestication was that it provided early humans with a more consistent and reliable source of meat. When early humans hunted wild animals, sometimes they were able to find and catch the animals, but other times they weren’t. So wild animals were not a reliable source of meat, but with domesticated animals, meat was always available. For example, goats were one of the first animals to be domesticated. They were easily controlled and organized into herds led by a person, a shepherd. So they could accompany groups of people as they move from place to place. And whenever the people needed meat, they could eat the goats, they were always available. Another benefit of animal domestication was the domesticated animals could supply a variety of foods other than meat. When early humans hunted wild animals, the only kind of food they got was meat. But domesticated animals were able to supply, in addition to meat, other kinds of food products. For example, let’s take a look again at domesticated goats. Live goats produce milk, so early humans could collect the milk and drink it, and they could also process the milk and turn it into other kinds of food, like yogurt and cheese, which could be stored.