PrepTest 112, Section 1, Question 23
It is clear that humans during the Upper(46 more words not shown)
Each of the following, if(12 more words not shown)
- AArtifacts from early(17 more words not shown)
- BMore archaeological sites(11 more words not shown)
- CMore efficient lamp-making(11 more words not shown)
- DFire pits were(18 more words not shown)
- EMore kinds of(11 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Did people in the later period use more lamps, or are we just finding more of their lamps?
That's worth separating. The distribution is across time: the greatest number of known lamps comes from the later Upper Paleolithic, when the Magdalenian culture was dominant. We're not comparing which regions have the most lamps.
One possibility is that the later people had more reason or opportunity to use them. Maybe they spent more time in caves or had easier access to lamp fuel. Those are guesses, not historical facts. Another possibility is that our collection gives an uneven picture of what existed. A difference in the lamps we know about needn't exactly reflect a difference in the lamps people originally used.
What we’re looking for
The question asks for the exception: four choices contribute to explaining the uneven distribution, and one doesn't. So we're looking for the choice that fails to explain why more known lamps come from the later period. It can fail even if it tells us something interesting about lamps.
Working the answers
- A
Harder-to-identify early artifacts could leave fewer early lamps recognized as lamps. They might have existed without entering our count in the same way as later ones. That helps explain the distribution of known lamps. We don't need to assume the older lamps were all destroyed; difficulty identifying them is enough to contribute.
- B
Discovering more sites from the later culture gives researchers more places to find its lamps. That could produce more known later lamps even without a higher rate of lamp use at every site. B offers a difference in what researchers have had the opportunity to discover.
- C
More efficient production could make lamps easier to obtain and use. That supplies a plausible reason for the later culture to produce more of them, leaving more available to find. The answer needn't guarantee that efficiency always increases output; it only needs to contribute to an explanation.
- D
Fire pits provide another source of light. If they were much more common early on, earlier cave users may have had less need for lamps. The later shift away from fire pits could help explain more lamps later. This wasn't my particular fuel-access prediction, but it addresses the same question about why demand might differ.
- ECorrect
More kinds doesn't mean more individual lamps. A culture could make a thousand lamps of one design, while another makes ten different designs but only one of each. The second has greater variety and far fewer lamps.
Whether the lamps come in more shapes, sizes or styles doesn't establish why the count of known lamps is greater. We need an explanation of quantity across periods. E gives us variety instead, so it is the one that doesn't contribute to the explanation.
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