Archaeologists are currently analyzing

Answer choices

1. A

   Too Strong: will be able15% picked this

   The archaeologists analyzing the plant remains at the site will be able to determine whether the plants were

   Just because we're being told what the takeaway will be if they determine X vs. if they determine not-X, that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll determine either one.

   15%
2. B

   Correct63% picked this

   The people who occupied the site used some plants in ways that no other people

   Why this is right

   This gets at the "In Either Case, these inhabitants are going to blow our minds" common denominator to the two outcomes. Either, these people - discovered agriculture 1000s of years before the first known occurrence (which implies they used plants to grow crops, i.e. agriculture, at a time when no one else is known to have done so) vs. - ate a wider variety of wild plants than did any other people at the time (they used plants in such a way that they ate plants W, X, Y, and Z, whereas other people only ate 2 or 3 from that list) This correct answer is definitely Most Supported, not Must Be True, because we don't know for sure that other cultures of the time weren't doing agriculture, but it's highly supportable.

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

   63%
3. C

   Out of Scope: more advanced stage3% picked this

   If the people who occupied the site had reached a more advanced stage in the use of wild plants than any other people at

   The passage never talks about a "more advanced stage" of wild plants. We might think to ourselves, "Isn't agriculture a more advanced stage in the use of wild plants?" But agriculture means we're using cultivated plants, not wild plants. Wild plants is this second scenario where the group eats a wider variety than anyone else, but that doesn't necessarily mean they "reached a more advanced stage" in the use of wild plants. They might have just been fortunate enough to live where there was a wider than usual variety of edible wild plants.

   3%
4. D

   Reversed Logic17% picked this

   If the people who occupied the site discovered agriculture thousands of years before people anywhere else are known to have done so, then there

   This takes the first conditional, plants ppl who occupied site discovered were ? agriculture thousands of yrs before cultivated any other known people ... and just says it backwards. Classic conditional logic trap answer.

   17%
5. E

   Unsupported Comparison: more likely2% picked this

   It is more likely that the people who occupied the site discovered agriculture thousands of years before people anywhere else did than it is

   We don't have any way to judge which of these two scenarios the author is describing is more likely to have been the truth. If anything, the more conservative guess is that they ate a wider variety of plants than others, not that we should blow up our timeline of when humans invented agriculture (we were off by thousands of years, in that case!)

   2%