PrepTest 150, Section 1, Question 22
It might reasonably have been expected that the(461 more words not shown)
The primary purpose of the(11 more words not shown)
- Aidentify the amount(16 more words not shown)
- Bprovide support for(12 more words not shown)
- Cpinpoint the time(11 more words not shown)
- Dundercut the suggestion(13 more words not shown)
- Eindicate the particular(8 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
Read the sentence before the parentheses: some people assume cooking is too recent to have affected biological evolution, and the authors think that assumption is wrong. The parenthetical sentence supplies evidence of fire use and apparent ovens more than 250,000 years ago.
What we’re looking for
Why insert those finds here? To show that cooking may have been around long enough to matter. The locations and ovens help identify the evidence; the argument uses their age.
Working the answers
- A
Evidence that something existed 250,000 years ago does not establish the minimum time evolution requires. This sentence tells us about the possible age of cooking, not a biological timetable that every behavior must satisfy.
- BCorrect
The ancient sites support a relatively long history of cooking. That is why the evidence follows the rejection of the too-recent assumption: it gives a reason to question the timing objection.
- C
The finds do not identify when or where humans became unable to survive on raw food. Finding an ancient oven is not the same as finding the point at which human biology became dependent on cooking. This changes the event we are dating.
- D
The sentence supports the possibility that cooking affected anatomy. It undercuts the objection that cooking is too recent, not the suggestion that cooking had an effect. D points the evidence in the opposite direction.
- E
Earth ovens are mentioned, but a detail can serve a larger purpose. We are not getting a lesson on how early people cooked. The apparent ovens matter here as evidence that the practice existed a long time ago.
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