PrepTest 136, Section 4, Question 18
A high-calorie diet providing adequate fats was a(57 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(12 more words not shown)
- AEarly humans had(18 more words not shown)
- BThe brains of(14 more words not shown)
- CPrehistoric savanna and(12 more words not shown)
- DThe techniques used(13 more words not shown)
- EGathering food in(19 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Why did the brain's evolution happen mostly inland if the richest food supply was on the shore?
Maybe the shore had other disadvantages. Predators could have made it dangerous, or suitable shelter could have been harder to find. Perhaps there was simply much more savanna and woodland available. Those are guesses, but each gives us something to investigate beyond the amount of food present.
What we’re looking for
The puzzle concerns early humans during the development of the modern brain. They needed a high-calorie diet with enough fat, and the most abundant, reliable resources for that diet were near the shore. Still, most of the evolution occurred in savanna and woodland. An explanation should show why the apparently better food supply did not make shore environments the better setting.
Working the answers
- A
More efficient use of fat reserves might help early humans generally. But A compares early humans with modern humans, not early humans at the shore with early humans inland. It does not explain the geographical pattern we are trying to understand.
- B
Smaller brains in the earliest humans fit the fact that the brain later evolved. The question is where that development occurred despite the distribution of food. The size difference gives no reason to favor savanna and woodland over shore environments.
- C
This compares ancient inland environments with those same environments today. Our comparison is between ancient inland environments and ancient shores. Inland resources could have been better than today's and still have been less abundant than shore resources, just as the passage says.
- D
This tells us when archaeological techniques became available. It does not explain why the evolution actually occurred mostly inland. To use it, we would have to add a further claim that the apparent inland pattern is merely a result of missing evidence, which the answer does not provide.
- ECorrect
Food can be plentiful and still be costly to obtain. If gathering it at the shore burns substantially more calories, the abundance there may be less advantageous than it first appears. Inland food could leave people with more usable energy even if the total available supply is smaller.
Imagine obtaining 1,000 calories of food at the shore requires spending 800 calories, while obtaining 700 inland requires spending only 200. The smaller food haul leaves more calories available afterward. Those numbers are illustrative, not reported facts. They show why gathering costs can help reconcile plentiful shore resources with brain evolution mostly occurring elsewhere.
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