PrepTest 105, Section 2, Question 1
French divers recently found a large cave along(58 more words not shown)
The information above most strongly(6 more words not shown)
- AThe Mediterranean Sea(12 more words not shown)
- BThe water level(10 more words not shown)
- CThe French divers(14 more words not shown)
- DThere was once(9 more words not shown)
- ESeawater in the(16 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
How could water drip onto the cave floor if the cave was already full of water? The stalagmites and the current water level don't fit together unless conditions have changed.
The passage explains the process for us. Drops land repeatedly in the same place, leaving minerals behind until a pillar grows. That process needs somewhere for the drops to fall. It wouldn't work as described with the floor already submerged beneath a completely flooded cave.
What we’re looking for
So the water must once have been lower. We don't need to know when that happened or exactly how the cave later filled. For the question asking what is most strongly supported, that's my prediction: the cave wasn't always filled as it is now.
Working the answers
- A
This concerns the level of the entire Mediterranean, while our evidence concerns water inside one cave. If a change in sea level caused the cave to flood, the relevant story would involve water rising, not being higher before. But even that connection is not established: the cave might previously have been sealed off from seawater. We can infer a change inside the cave without inferring this history of the whole sea.
- BCorrect
The cave is completely full now, but the stalagmites formed through a process requiring a lower water level. So the water inside the cave is higher now than it was at some earlier time. This captures the prediction without needing a claim that every part of the cave was completely dry or an explanation of what caused the change.
- C
Finding the cave recently does not establish that nobody knew about the tunnel before these divers did. Earlier people might have known about it. The passage gives us no history of human knowledge of this place.
- D
The water level could have changed without a second entrance ever existing. The current tunnel might once have been above water, for example. We don't know that this happened, but it shows why a lower water level doesn't require an additional entrance. The evidence supports the water-level inference, not a particular layout of past entrances.
- E
Mineral deposits are part of the formation process, but we have no comparison between past and present mineral concentrations in Mediterranean seawater. The obstacle we're identifying is that drops couldn't fall onto the floor as described while the cave was full. We don't need a decline in mineral content to explain why the pillars aren't forming that way now.
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