PrepTest 151, Section 1, Question 10
Through years of excavations and careful analysis of(461 more words not shown)
If the horse remains found(30 more words not shown)
- AThe Botai targeted(5 more words not shown)
- BThe Botai caught,(6 more words not shown)
- CThe Botai had(7 more words not shown)
- DThe Botai had(7 more words not shown)
- EThe Botai incorporated(8 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
Change the evidence, then revisit the two uses of a domesticated herd. For meat or milk, herders typically kill most males before they mature and retain females. For riding, Olsen reasons, they would have a reason to keep more males alive into adulthood.
What we’re looking for
The hypothetical now gives us mainly adult females and young males among the remains. That fits the first pattern: males killed young, females allowed to live longer. It removes the unusual abundance of adult males that helped support the riding explanation. We're looking for a hypothesis this pattern would support, not a conclusion it would prove beyond every alternative.
Working the answers
- A
Male bachelor pods would not explain the predominance of female remains. The wild group with females and young is the family group, not the all-male group named here. Recognizing a hunting possibility doesn't make this particular hunting claim fit.
- B
The pattern doesn't show that the Botai caught and rode only wild horses. It tells us about sex and age at death, not that exclusive source of riding animals. More importantly, Olsen's argument associates riding with keeping males alive; the hypothetical instead emphasizes males dying young.
- CCorrect
This looks like the management of domesticated food animals described at the start of paragraph two. Most males are killed before adulthood rather than kept as mounts. Combining that comparison with Olsen's reason for retaining riding males gives us support for domestication without riding. The two steps matter: a familiar herd-management pattern supports domestication, while the missing adult-male pattern weakens the specific riding interpretation.
- D
Nothing about these horses' ages and sexes establishes another food source. The Botai could still have obtained meat from the horses represented in these remains.
- E
A mortality pattern doesn't establish a cultural ritual. The actual discussion of a broader relationship draws on carefully arranged burials with humans, not this hypothetical change in the animals' ages and sexes.
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