PrepTest 123, Section 4, Question 26
In tracing the changing face of the Irish(440 more words not shown)
The passage indicates that prior(26 more words not shown)
- AThe Irish landscape(8 more words not shown)
- BCereal grain was(11 more words not shown)
- CThe history of(12 more words not shown)
- DMadder was not(12 more words not shown)
- EThe beginning of(13 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
Recall the earlier views in both examples. Historians thought the clay-heavy soils in part of Down were too difficult to till significantly before the new plough, and some thought Down had been growing flax before the eighteenth century.
What we’re looking for
Either discussion could supply the answer. Our job is to report a belief actually attributed to the historians—even if the pollen later shows that belief was mistaken.
Working the answers
- A
No belief about seventeenth-century flooding is reported.
- B
This is tempting because historians thought the clay-heavy soils weren't tilled until the seventh century. But anywhere in Ireland is much broader: their belief concerned particular soils in part of County Down. Other Irish soils could have supported earlier cultivation.
- C
No historian is said to have thought this history was well documented. The opening instead stresses how scarce and selective the surviving documents are.
- D
Madder's use as a dye plant is mentioned, but no beginning date is given. We can't turn knowledge of its use into a claim about when that use began.
- ECorrect
Some historians combined Down's eighteenth-century linen production with the knowledge of much earlier flax cultivation elsewhere in Ireland. They inferred that flax had been cultivated in that county before the 1700s (paragraph 4). The later pollen evidence challenges that belief, but the question asks what they believed, not whether they were right.
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