Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.
Ocean exploration changed human history
One of humanity’s greatest achievements has been mastering routes across the world’s oceans. Communities separated by thousands of miles 【小题1】(bring) into contact and religious ideas have spread across the waters, while artistic creativity has been motivated by the experience of seeing the products of different civilizations. Customs have been decisively altered by the movement of ships across the oceans. No one drank tea in medieval Europe, but 【小题2】 contact had been made with the tea-drinking Chinese, tea became popular with millions of people from Sweden to the United States.
We tend to hold the view 【小题3】 the opening of the oceans was the work of the great explorers, especially the 15th century pioneers who edged their way through uncharted waters to southern Africa, the Indian Ocean and the lands of the Indies. These were sailors 【小题4】 Christopher Columbus, who chanced upon unsuspected lands that blocked the expected sea route from Europe to China and Japan. But while these men 【小题5】 give the Age of Discovery its name, they didn’t start the exploration of the world’s oceans — and there were also scores of merchants who followed in 【小题6】 route, taking full advantage of new knowledge about the open ocean to develop trade links across the world, 【小题7】 laid the foundation for modern globalization. These were the people who really mastered the oceans and brought the continents into contact.
Since then, the oceans have only continued 【小题8】(tie) the world together — most dramatically when new routes were literally carved out, with the building of the Sues Canal in the 19th century and the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914. The first goods to pass through the Panama Canal consisted of a cargo of 【小题9】(tin) pineapples from Hawaii. The Pacific and the Atlantic were 【小题10】(closely) tied together than ever before.
