LR Question 9 Explanation, by LSATHacks
QUESTION TEXT: Archaeologists are currently analyzing plant remains…
QUESTION TYPE: Most Strongly Supported
FACTS:
- Archaeologists found 10,000 years old plant remains at a site.
- If the plants were cultivated, then the people discovered agriculture thousands of years before others did.
- If the plants were wild, then the people ate a wider variety of plants than others did at the time.
ANALYSIS: There’s not much to say here. There are two possibilities, and you can’t combine them.
It’s safe to say that wild plants are the opposite of cultivated. So there are only two possibilities: early agriculture discovery, or wider use of plants.
This is a most strongly supported question. It means there’s some wiggle room in the right answer. On this question, it’s so subtle that you probably didn’t even notice it. I’ve written a note explaining the wiggle room at the bottom of this page. Only read that if you really want to dig deep into how this test works.
___________
- We have no idea. Maybe the archaeologists won’t be able to figure out how the plants were used.
- CORRECT. This is probably true. Either the plants were cultivated, or the group ate plants no one else ate. See the opposite page for a more precise explanation.
- This doesn’t follow. It’s possible the group had reached a more advanced stage with wild plants, and had also discovered how to farm some plants.
- It’s possible the group discovered agriculture, but didn’t cultivate plants at that site. Or maybe all the cultivated plants disintegrated and we won’t find evidence.
- We have no idea which of these two possibilities is more likely. We know one of them is true, but we can’t say which one.
Question 9 Note
Let’s call the people at the site the uggs. We know for sure that they ate a wider variety of plants than anyone else. But how do we know they used plants in a way that no one else did? We actually don’t. It’s just fairly strongly supported.
Suppose there were 1000 types of plants. The uggs ate all 1000 of them at the site.
Other tribes only used 1-2 of these plants each. Perhaps all the other tribes in the world used a total of 200 plants between them.
That means there were 800 plants the uggs used, that no one else used in that way.
Now, suppose the other tribes only used 1-2 types of plants each. But between all the other tribes, there was at least one tribe that ate each one of the 1000 types of plants.
In that case, there would be no plants that the uggs used in a way that no one else did. No tribe used as many plants as the uggs, but at least one tribe used each of the plants the uggs used.
Make sense? So we can’t say for sure that answer B is true. But it’s pretty strongly supported.
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I have a different take on why D is wrong, and also why it’s tricky and made almost 20% of people fall for it…
I don’t actually think it reverses the logic in the stimulus as some have suggested because the premise says:
if plants cultivated —> then these people discovered agriculture first
then D says:
if these people discovered agriculture first —-> then there are still remains at the site
This actually continues the conditional chain – i.e. it adds a new necessary condition (there will be remains) linked to the previous necessary condition, instead of reversing and restating the original sufficient (plants were cultivated)
So what I think they did here was try to get us to fall for thinking it was a Necessary Assumption question and the argument requires this to be assumed in order for us to believe the conclusion that the archeologists decided these plants could be the remains of agriculture…
But that’s the trick: the archeologists never actually came to any conclusion – it just says IF it turns out these plants were cultivated, then we’ll know these people discovered agriculture first. And D baits us into thinking these archeologists have come to the conclusion that these plants are at least COULD BE cultivated. But all LSAC did is state background, set up conditional premises, then make zero conclusions, which is what MSS questions do, because we’re the ones who are supposed to find something that can follow
Now if the stimulus had said anything like “these archeologists believe/concluded/are fairly sure these plants are cultivated and not wild,” we actually would need answer D because then it would be a Necessary Assumption question with a conclusion/assertion in the stimulus which would require us to assume that if these people cultivated plants, and therefore discovered agriculture first, remnants of these plants would even still exist to be studied at all. Because if – in this hypothetical scenario of a different stimulus with an actual non-conditional assertion – you reversed it and said “if these people cultivated plants/discovered agriculture first, there wouldn’t even be any remains still left to study,” then the archeologists assertion/inference would be untenable
I think D is still a hard answer to ignore completely because it’s very difficult to believe these archeologists could think a thing could even possibly be true while studying these plants that couldn’t actually be inferred from the evidence (plant remains), so the conditional itself feels like it needs an assumption
And that’s the second trick I think they pull here: we don’t actually know that it’s even the archeologists who are asserting these conditionals, they’re all just premises given to us by LSAC. If the stimulus had started out “Archeologist: my team and I are currently studying plants at a site, and we believe that if we can show these plants were cultivated….” then it would be impossible not to think D must be an assumption they’re making. But that’s not how the stimulus is actually set up
My last issue is that I don’t think you can “discover” agriculture, I think it’s technically an invention/innovation: how could you discover something that by definition requires people to create it; it’s not possible for nature to create the cultivation of plants for us to then stumble upon – cultivation is a verb with an implied doer/creator
Hows that for overthinking!
“Eating a wider variety of plants” barely supports “using some plants in ways that no other people did at that time.” It’s just as likely that other tribes accounted for the same spread of edible plants — albeit not all at once like the tribe in question — as it is that the evidence referenced in answer D degraded over time. Seems like a bad question to me as the likelihood of B and D each have gaping holes in them.
While it’s true that B isn’t a perfect answer (as described in Graeme’s note at the bottom), D is certainly worse. The question tells us that cultivated plants indicate discovery of agriculture, but D flips that around to say that if the tribe discovered agriculture, we will definitely find evidence of cultivated plants. This inversion doesn’t follow the logic of the passage.
It’s like saying “paw prints in the snow mean an animal was outside”. The equivalent to answer D here would be saying “if an animal was outside, there will be paw prints in the snow”. There are many reasons for the paw prints to disappear, and the same is true for evidence of cultivated plants thousands of years before any other evidence.
I take your point, but I disagree–the question implies that there are plant remains to begin with.
Common sense dictates that if the people from the site discovered agriculture, then their plant remains would be agricultural. Why would you bother with gathering when the work of agriculture makes harvesting so much more productive (and likely safer) than gathering? Which is probably why in the question, the archeologists are not discussing “both” cultivated and uncultivated as an analysis outcome. Either way, their plant food remains are there.
To your analogy, given that there are plant remains to test and given that they are either cultivated or uncultivated, the equivalent would be “Given there are prints in the snow that are either animal or human, if there is an animal outside, the prints are animal prints.”
Can you explain how you get to the conclusion in the note that we know for sure they ate a wider variety of plants than anyone else? Isn’t it possible that if the plants were cultivated, they might have been grown for medicine or even if they were eaten, that other tribes ate the same plants grown in the wild and the uggs have simply learned to cultivate those plants?
In this hypothetical situation, there are only 1000 types of plants. The uggs ate all 1000 of them. Now imagine there are other tribes that only used 200 types of plants between them. This means that there are 800 plants that the uggs used that the other tribes didn’t. Using 800 versus using 1-2 plants is definitely a wider variety.
The rest of your question is over-complicating the scenario because the question’s stimulus sets up a dichotomy: the plants are either cultivated or they were wild. Yes, what you’ve mentioned is possible, but that’s besides the point. In the note, we’re only talking about wild plants. And if you eat a plant that no one else does, then you are using it in a way no one else does.
I guess I’m confused with your explanation for why D is not correct but B is. I agree with RJ that B allows for the possibility that other, undiscovered people *could* have been using plants in this manner, meaning this group was not using plants in ways NO other people were. That could be a false answer. In the same way, D *could* be false because it’s saying if they discovered agri. years before, then there will be remains of cultivated plants. You said that doesn’t HAVE to be true, because they *could* have disintegrated. What’s the difference between B and D in this respect? If both choices don’t have to be fully true, why is the *could* in B more preferable than the *could* in D?
This question is is asking which of the answer choices that the stimulus most strongly supports. This means that it’s possible that none of the answer choices turn out to be true, but we’re looking for which one is most possible to have happened, which is B. Most strongly supported answers are merely likely, but they could be false.
Let’s look at this by breaking down the stimulus into conditional statements:
If cultivated –> discovered agriculture
If ~cultivated –> ate wider variety
D actually incorrectly inverses the stimulus’ second sentence. As a conditional statement, D looks like this:
If discovered agricuture –> cultivated
This is incorrect and disqualifies D as a possibility.
I don’t like b being more strongly supported over d.
Another way b could be false is if the plants are cultivated and there is another civilization that is yes undiscovered that cultivated as well. This is hinted in the question where it says “any other people are known to have done so”.
Also b requires us to assume thAt others did not total the same variety of foods cumulative like you pointed out or that no other people cultivated.
D is also supported by that exAct “people are known to have done so” language.
As well d is supported in that, while the premise doesn’t guarantee the conclusion, , the premise is necessary for the conclusion to take place. So while it doesn’t guarantee but it does support by providing a necessary by product of the conclusion was true.
To babble more.
Arguing against d the only thing I can think of is its not necessarily true because it doesn’t prove.
To argue against b to say that “used” as in the meaning to eat or to satisfy hunger which is necessary for the gathering bit is as big a stretch of not more in saying that everybody used plants as food and it doesn’t say they used different plants or a greater variety of plants in “b” it just says used in different ways. Therefore this isn’t really supported by the second half of info in the question but only by the first which should be enough to eliminate it completely.
You’re being too nitpicky. This is a most strongly supported question. Those don’t require 100% truth. So an answer can be correct even if there are ways it could be wrong – the answer just has to be likely.
So even if you add your objection to the objection I raised, the answer is still fairly well supported.
Thank you for this explanation! I didn’t choose B because I was focused on the fact that it was not necessarily true; this helps me understand why it’s still the correct answer.
Glad I could help! It took me a while to realize that MSS answers didn’t HAVE to be 100% true.