PrepTest 103, Section 3, Question 2
From the tenth century until around the year(69 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(9 more words not shown)
- Adenying the relevance(3 more words not shown)
- Bproducing evidence that(7 more words not shown)
- Cpresenting an alternative(11 more words not shown)
- Dciting a general(7 more words not shown)
- Eredefining a term(10 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
If Greenland became too cold for humans, why were the Inuit still thriving there?
That is the author's response to the proposed explanation. The explanation says the temperature drop made Greenland uninhabitable and therefore wiped out the Norse settlements. The author points to people who were living in Greenland during the same period and continued to thrive afterward. Their survival conflicts with the claim that humans could no longer live there.
Notice the limit of that response. It doesn't tell us what actually happened to the Norse settlements, and it doesn't settle every possible role the cold could have played. Communities might cope differently with the same conditions. But we can still describe the particular objection being made: the explanation says humans couldn't live there, and the author gives evidence of humans living there successfully.
What we’re looking for
For the method question, I'd put it that plainly. The author uses the surviving Inuit settlements to challenge the proposed account. Look for a description of how that evidence bears on the claim the author opposes.
Working the answers
- A
The author isn't rejecting someone's comparison between two similar cases. The opposing explanation says cold made Greenland uninhabitable; it doesn't first offer an analogy for the author to dismiss. Bringing in the Inuit settlements as evidence against that claim is a different move.
- BCorrect
The evidence is that Inuit settlers continued to thrive in Greenland. The opposed claim is that Greenland had become too cold for human habitation. People thriving there is inconsistent with that claim about the place being uninhabitable. B captures the relationship between the evidence the author supplies and the explanation being challenged.
- C
An alternative explanation would tell us what else caused the Norse settlements to disappear. The author doesn't do that. Pointing out a problem with the cold explanation is not the same as proposing a new explanation that accounts for more facts. We can challenge an account without knowing the true cause.
- D
The author supplies a particular historical fact about the Inuit, not a general rule about which temperatures humans can tolerate. A rule might say that people can always survive under certain conditions. This argument instead points to people who did survive in the place under discussion.
- E
No term is given a new meaning. The author doesn't redefine “human habitation” to make the Inuit's survival count differently. The argument uses that survival as evidence against the claim that the location was too cold for people.
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