Logical Reasoning

PT112 · S1 · Q23 It is clear that humans

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It is clear that humans during the Upper Paleolithic period used lamps for light in caves.

Given that ...

We know humans during the Upper Paleolithic period used lamps for light in caves

and that ...

lamps can be dated to the entire Upper Paleo period

Why is it that ...

we know of many more lamps associated with the late Upper Paleo period (when the Magdalenian culture was dominant) than with the early / middle Upper Paleo period?

Evaluate

We need to find four reasons why we find more lamps in the late Upper Paleo period. - maybe there were more of them - maybe it's easy to salvage the later stuff because the earlier stuff got more destroyed / lost - maybe the Magdalenians loved them some lamps, because they were dominant during the late Upper Paleo period

Goal

The correct answer could be irrelevant to explaining why we've found more late lamps than early/middle lamps. Or it could even go in the wrong direction and make it seem surprising to find so many late lamps.

23.

Each of the following, if true, contributes to an explanation of the skewed distribution of lamps EXCEPT:

  1. Artifacts from early in the

    Helps Explain

    There are more lamps known from the late period, because ... it's harder to classify and identify artifacts from the early period. This is a causal explanation for why the stuff we find from the late period can be more feasibly classified as lamps. We find stuff from the early period, but is it a lamp? Hmm, not sure. Let's put it in the "unknown" pile.

    10% picked this

  2. More archaeological sites have been

    Helps Explain

    There are more lamps known from the late period, because ... that was the time period when Magdalenian culture was dominant and we have more artifacts from Magdalenian (including lamps) than we do from earlier cultures. This is a causal explanation for why we would find more lamps from the late period.

    8% picked this

  3. More efficient lamp-making techniques were

    Helps Explain

    There are more lamps known from the late period, because ... that was the time period when Magdalenian culture was dominant and Magdalenians made lamps more efficiently than earlier cultures (so it would have been feasible for them to make more lamps). This is a causal explanation for why there may have actually been more lamps in the late period.

    15% picked this

  4. Fire pits were much more

    Helps Explain

    There are more lamps known from the late period, because ... in the early period, they used fire pits more commonly to illuminate their caves. This is a causal explanation for why we there may have been fewer lamps in the early period (they were less popular than fire pits).

    21% picked this

  5. Correct

    More kinds of lamps were

    Why this is right

    This feels tempting since Magdalenian was dominant during the late period, so this is saying "there were more kinds of lamps produced during the late period than during the early period". But does producing more types of something make it more likely that we'd find a greater number of them? To explain why we find a greater quantity of lamps in the late period, we need to know there were more lamps in the late period, or if there were a comparable number of lamps why it's easier to find more lamps from the late period. But having different kinds of lamps doesn't have any common sense connection to overall quantity of lamps that would have been left as artifacts. A car dealership that sells "more kinds of cars" than another car dealership doesn't necessarily have more cars on the lot. They have a wider variety, but that doesn't mean they have a larger quantity.

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

    46% picked this

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