PrepTest 123, Section 4, Question 24
In tracing the changing face of the Irish(440 more words not shown)
The passage indicates that pollen(11 more words not shown)
- AThe moldboard plough(8 more words not shown)
- BIn certain parts(16 more words not shown)
- CIn certain parts(15 more words not shown)
- DCereal grain cultivation(6 more words not shown)
- ECereal grain cultivation(7 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
What beliefs did the pollen overturn? First, historians thought the difficult soils in part of Down weren't tilled much before the seventh century; cereal pollen shows cultivation by about 400 A.D. Second, some thought flax had been grown in Down before the eighteenth century; its pollen appears only from that century onward.
What we’re looking for
Those are two possible places to look. We need the older belief that the evidence contradicts, not a fact the evidence supports or an assumption it leaves in place.
Working the answers
- A
Keep the activity separate from the tool. Earlier tilling doesn't require an earlier moldboard plough; people could have worked the soil by another method before the plough's seventh-century introduction.
- BCorrect
Significant cereal-grain pollen appears “beginning by about 400 A.D.” That is evidence of cultivation before the seventh century, contradicting the proposed absence of significant cultivation in those parts of Down.
- C
Continuous cultivation would mean no interruption after the plough arrived. Evidence of cereal cultivation by 400 doesn't tell us whether it continued without interruption over the later centuries, so it doesn't refute this claim.
- D
The need for tilling is a premise used to infer earlier tilling, not a belief the evidence challenges. Because cereal cultivation requires tilled soil, finding evidence of the crop pushes back the date of the tilling.
- E
Evidence of cultivation by about 400 is consistent with this proposed date, not evidence against it. It also doesn't prove cultivation began exactly then.
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