■社会人、超難関大学の難易度レベル
今回も大学入試問題を扱ってみます。
大阪大学2022年度の外国語学部以外で、IIの問題です。
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ご容赦ください。
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そちらを参照してみてください。
それでは、下に掲載します。
II 次の英文を読んで、以下の設問に答えなさい。
Take a moment to pay attention to your hands. It will be time well spent, because they are evolutionary (i)marvels. Hold one up and examine it. Open and close it. Play with your fingers. Touch the tips of your four fingers with your thumb. Rotate your wrist. You should be able to turn it 180 degrees with ease. Ball your hand up into a fist until your thumb lies on top of and lends support to your index, middle, and ring fingers. That is something no ape can do.
Twenty-seven bones connected by joints and ligaments, thirty-three muscles, three main nerve branches, connective tissue, blood vessels, and skin equipped with highly sensitive touch receptors are behind (A)the most delicate and most complex tool for grasping and touching that evolution has ever produced. The palm is protected by a massive sheet of fibrous tissue that makes it possible to grip things powerfully. The fingers are slender and small-boned, partly because they contain no muscles. They are controlled remotely, like puppets hanging from strings. But those strings are highly flexible *tendons attached to muscles found not only in the palm of the hand and forearm but also all the way up to the shoulder.
Between this equipment and our complex brains, we can do things no other creatures on the planet are capable of doing: kindling fire, gathering the finest (ii)kernels of grain from the ground, knitting, cutting, knotting nets, turning tiny screws, typing on a keyboard, or playing basketball or a musical instrument.
Our thumbs have a special role to play in our (iii)dexterity. We can easily match them up with any finger. That allows us to feel and touch, to grab and hold. The saddle joint at the base of the thumb rotates like a ball joint. Our thumb is much longer, more powerful, and more flexible than that of our nearest relatives, the great apes. It allows us to (iV)execute a delicate grip as easily as a powerful pinch. Chimpanzees can also clamp small objects between the sides of their thumbs and their fingers, but much less forcefully and without any sensory input from their fingertips. That means they have no means to hold or move tools such as pens or screws precisely between the tip of their thumb and their other fingers.
A great ape holds larger tools – a stick, for example – pressed into their palm at right angles to their forearm. There are not many other options available to them. In contrast to chimpanzees and gorillas, we have highly flexible wrists that allow us to hold an object so that it becomes an extension to our forearm. B)This intensifies the force of a blow. It also means enemies and dangerous animals can be kept at arm’s length. If an animal does come within range and full advantage is then taken of the extra *leverage, bones can be broken.
It is not only the flexibility granted by the fully opposable thumbs that makes the human hand so special, but also its extraordinary ability to feel and to touch. It operates almost like an independent sensory organ. We use it to feel the temperature of a breeze and of water. With its help we are able to fit a key directly into a lock, even in the dark. We can detect uneven surfaces with our fingers that we cannot see with our naked eye. With a little bit of practice, we can use our fingers to tell real silk from synthetic silk or real leather from fake leather, even with our eyes closed.
Our sense of touch detects delicate differences and sends this information via a dense network of receptors and neural pathways to our spinal cord and from there to our brain. Our fingers can even replace our eyes as ways to perceive the world, as the Dutch paleontologist Geerat Vermeij, who has been blind since the age of three, can attest. A specialist famous for his work on marine *mussels and their ecosystems, he has never seen a fossil. Out in the field, he feels the complex structures of mussels and of the rocks in which they are found. With his fingers, he “sees” details many sighted scientists miss. There is no doubt about it: our hands are (v)exceptional development in the history of evolution.
(Böhme, Madelaine, Braum, Rüdiger & Breier, Florian. 2020. Ancient bones: Unearthing the astonishing new story of how we became human (Jane Billinghurst, Trans.). Greystone Booksより一部改変)
*tendons: 腱
*leverage: てこの作用、力
*mussels: ムラサキガイ
設問(1) 下線部(i)~(v)の語句の本文中での意味に最も近いものを、(イ)〜(ニ)から1つ選び、記号で答えなさい。
(i) marvels
(ｲ) concepts
(ﾛ) innovations
(ﾊ) outcomes
(ﾆ) wonders
(ii) kernels
(ｲ) breeds
(ﾛ) points
(ﾊ) seeds
(ﾆ) waves
(iii) dexterity
(ｲ) elegance
(ﾛ) manipulator
(ﾊ) skillfulness
(ﾆ) strength
(iv) execute
(ｲ) imitate
(ﾛ) perform
(ﾊ) relax
(ﾆ) select
(v) exceptional
(ｲ) advanced
(ﾛ) characteristic
(ﾊ) major
(ﾆ) remarkable
設問(2) 下線部(A) the most delicate and most complex toolは具体的には何を指しているか、日本語で答えなさい。
設問(3) 第2段落で著者は人の指について「糸で吊るされた操り人形のようだ」と述べていますが、これは人の指がどのような仕組みで動くことを表したものですか、本文中から読み取り、45字程度の日本語で答えなさい。句読点も1字に数えます。
設問(4) 下線部(B)Thisの指す内容を日本語で答えなさい。
設問(5) 本文の中で類人猿の手の能力を示すものとして言及されているものを下記の(ｲ)〜(ﾎ)から2つ選び、記号で答えなさい。
(ｲ) Holding a fist so that the thumb lies on top of and lends support to other fingers
(ﾛ) Holding object and pressing it into the palm at right angles to the forearm
(ﾊ) Holding an object between the tip of the thumb and other fingers
(ﾆ) Holding enemies and dangerous animals at arm’s length
(ﾎ) Holding tiny things using no sensory input from the fingertips
設問(6) 世界を知覚するにあたって指が目の代わりになることを古生物学者のGeerat Vermeij氏の例はどのように示しているか、本文の内容に即して65字程度の日本語で説明しなさい。句読点も1字に数えます。