In ancient Mesopotamia, prior to 2900 B.C.

Answer choices

1. A

   No Impact10% picked this

   The cultivation of barley requires considerably less water than does the

   If the author had thought that lack of water contributed to the decline of wheat, then this would strengthen the plausibility of why wheat would decline while barley would rise. But the author thought excessive irrigation (an abundance of water) is what led to wheat's decline.

   10%
2. B

   Correct75% picked this

   Barley has much greater resistance to the presence of salt in soil

   Why this is right

   The most common type of plausibility-strengthener is an answer that sort of gives you a "No Cause, No Effect" data point. The author thought that excessive salt in the soil killed off wheat. If she were right, then shouldn't excessive salt in the local soil have also killed off barley? According to this answer, no. Barley can tolerate a lot of salt. So if the author thinks "sensitivity to salt in the soil caused the decline of wheat", then it adds some plausibility to have a data point that looks like "this other contemporaneous thing, barely, that didn't have sensitivity to salt, didn't decline (it increased sharply)."

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

   75%
3. C

   No Impact2% picked this

   Prior to 2900 B.C., barley was cultivated along with wheat, but the amount of barley produced was far less than

   This seems to just be telling us that barley has been around for a while, though not as popular as it became after 2900 B.C. But it doesn't give us any clues as to why that switch occurred (decline wheat, uptick in barley), and the why is what we're investigating.

   2%
4. D

   Weakens8% picked this

   Around 2900 B.C., a series of wheat blights occurred, destroying much of the wheat crop

   This offers an Alternate Explanation for the decline of wheat, so it would weaken the need for the Author's Explanation.

   8%
5. E

   Weakens, if anything5% picked this

   Literary and archaeological evidence indicates that in the period following 2900 B.C., barley became the principal grain in the diet of most

   This is either like (C), in that it's just telling us what we already know ... "Prior to 2900, wheat was the star. After 2900, barely got big." Or it's like (D), in that it's giving us an alternate explanation for why wheat declined and barley surged: it wasn't that salty soil killed off wheat; people just wanted lots of barley in their diet.

   5%