Logical Reasoning

PT103 · S3 · Q12 The Levant—the area that borders

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The Levant—the area that borders the eastern Mediterranean-was heavily populated in prehistoric times.

Facts

The Levant was heavily populated in prehistoric times.

Around 6,000 years ago, the southern Levant was abandoned while the northern Levant stayed populated.

The two areas have the same climate.

The southern abandonment was caused by an economic collapse driven by deforestation.

Evaluate

On Must Be False, the correct answer almost always contradicts a conditional in the stimulus or contradicts some MBT inference we can make by combining claims from the stimulus.

This stimulus has no conditionals. We can probably infer something though from the fact that these two regions have the same climate, but one of them was abandoned from an economic collapse due to deforestation and the other one stayed populated.

Can we infer that the norther area, which stayed populated, didn't have an economic collapse / didn't have deforestation?

Can we infer something like,

Goal

I don't feel great about any definitive must be true inferences we can make, so I'm not sure what we're looking for (no targets in mind for what they'll contradict).

Let's just keep an open mind and ask ourselves whether stuff we were told would contradict any of these answers.

12.

If the statements above are true and the archaeologists' hypothesis is correct, which one of the following CANNOT be true?

  1. The sheep and goats herded

    Could Be True

    This seems very compatible with the story we heard. When deforestation happens in the southern Levant around 6,000 years ago, the tree seedlings and saplings would start to disappear. So it makes sense that sheep and goats were able to graze on this until 6,000 years ago. In fact, gobbling up young trees may even have been what caused the deforestation.

    1% picked this

  2. Trees were used in the

    Could Be True

    Like (A), this seems very compatible with the story we heard. Deforestation happened in the southern Levant around 6,000 years ago, which is when they stopped being able to use trees in the production of lime plaster. Furthermore, the extensive use of trees to make this plaster could have caused the deforestation.

    1% picked this

  3. Organic remains from the northern

    Could Be True

    This seems very compatible with the story we heard. The northern Levant wasn't abandoned. The southern Levant was abandoned, due to deforestation. So we were probably assuming that the northern Levant didn't suffer from the same deforestation. It sounds from this answer like that is true: tree species flourished there without interruption.

    12% picked this

  4. Correct

    Carbon dating of organic remains

    Why this is right

    This contradicts the causality described in the final sentence. In order for deforestation (the loss of forests) to lead to economic collapse, there has to be a forest to lose! This says there were no forests in the southern area prior to 6,000 years ago. You can't deforest an area that isn't forested, so this would make the final sentence impossible.

    Skill tested: Must be False · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    83% picked this

  5. Since there are few traces

    Could Be True

    Like our other wrong answers, this seems very compatible with the story we heard, in the sense that it describes a reason that trees would be disappearing in the southern Levant. Buildings were built almost entirely of timber, so they would have needed to cut down a lot of trees to make buildings.

    2% picked this

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