PrepTest 119, Section 4, Question 6
Skeletal remains of early humans indicate clearly that(22 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(6 more words not shown)
- AA healthy diet(4 more words not shown)
- BSkeletal remains indicate(10 more words not shown)
- CThe diet of(11 more words not shown)
- DEarly humans had(21 more words not shown)
- EDiet is by(9 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Better teeth could have more than one explanation.
The remains indicate that early humans had fewer dental problems. Accept that. But why jump straight to a different diet? Maybe people died before they had time to develop the problems we see today. Or imagine, however unlikely it sounds, that they had some better way of caring for their teeth. Those possibilities show what the argument still needs to explain: why the difference in teeth points specifically to a difference in food.
What we’re looking for
We're strengthening the argument, so I'd look for a connection between diet and dental health. If diet is the biggest influence on teeth, different dental outcomes would give us a better reason to suspect different diets. We don't need an answer proving every detail of what early humans ate; we need something that makes this particular explanation more convincing.
Working the answers
- A
This makes a healthy diet one way to get healthy teeth, but it doesn't make diet the most likely explanation for the difference. It also describes 'healthy' teeth, whereas the evidence compares amounts of dental trouble. Both populations could have fairly healthy teeth, with one having fewer problems for some other reason. E connects diet more directly to the comparative evidence.
- B
Some early humans having cavities doesn't explain why early humans overall had fewer dental problems. A group can have fewer problems without having none. This observation doesn't connect the difference to diet.
- C
Variety within a diet isn't the same as a difference between two diets. Two groups could each eat a wide variety of foods, whether their foods are the same or quite different. C tells us about variety without explaining the dental discrepancy.
- D
This supports one of our alternative explanations. If early humans died younger and serious problems tend to appear late in life, they may have avoided those problems because they didn't live long enough to develop them. That weakens the inference to different diets rather than strengthening it.
- ECorrect
Diet is by far the most significant contributor to dental health. That makes it more reasonable to look to diet when we observe a difference in dental problems. Other explanations remain possible, but the argument is stronger because the factor it points to is now identified as the main influence on the evidence.
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