考研英语阅读精读精析这段文字选自一本学术著作，这是英语一翻译，当然，英语一的翻译也有逐渐简单化的趋势，近些年来都很少选专业的学术著作了，而是一些通识读本！当然，英语二就更简单了，翻译成中文以后就是小学生睡前故事读物，比如2018年英语二讲的关于比尔·盖茨的事情。大家可以试试看！
　　In the making of connections between human societies, the role of the sea is particularly fascinating. Connections across large open spaces have brought together peoples, religions and civilizations in stimulating ways.
　　(1) Sometimes this has been through individual encounters, as travellers, including pilgrims and merchants, found themselves visiting alien environments; sometimes it has been the result of mass migrations that have changed the character of regions; sometimes it has been the result as much of the movement of goods as of people, when the inhabitants of distant lands saw, admired, and imported or copied the art works of another culture, or read its literature, or were taken aback by some rare and precious item that opened their eyes to its existence. Such contacts were made overland and up and down river systems, as well as by sea; but overland they were mediated by the cultures that lay along the routes being followed, whereas links across the sea could tie together very different worlds, as far apart as Portugal and Japan or Sweden and China.
　　(2) The three major oceans have attracted increasing interest as the study of maritime history has expanded beyond what might more properly be called naval history, which concentrates on warfare (or peace-keeping) on the surface of the sea, to greater involvement with the wider questions of how, why and when people crossed large maritime spaces, whether for trade or as migrants, and what sort of interdependence was created between lands far apart from one another by this movement across the oceans. This has led to debates about the origins of globalization, some of which have been conducted at cross-purposes, since the concept of ‘globalization’ is a vague one that can be defined in many ways.
　　(3) A question related to the theme of globalization that has often been raised is why Europeans opened up routes across the world after 1500, in the wake of Columbus and da Gama, while the Chinese, under Zheng He, launched extraordinarily ambitious voyages in the early fifteenth century that came to a sudden stop. This leads into a range of questions about the ‘Great Divergence’ between Europe and Asia or other continents, although, as with globalization, much depends on the criteria one adopts to measure the process. This book makes plain the dramatic effect of the entry of European traders and conquerors into distant oceans following the voyages of Columbus and da Gama, while also insisting that Columbus, da Gama and the worlds they explored can only be explained by looking at their long antecedents.