Archaeologist: How did the Parthenon's

Answer choices

1. A

   No Impact: modern attempts1% picked this

   Modern attempts to recreate columns like those at the Parthenon have only

   It really doesn't make any difference how successful modern attempts have / haven't been. If we said that a modern team tried to use a scale drawing like the one at Didyma and couldn't seem to get the columns to bulge identically, that would weaken the plausibility that a scale drawing was the correct explanation of how the Parthenon was built.

   1%
2. B

   Weakens Very Slightly4% picked this

   The construction of the temple at Didyma was begun over a century after the

   This somewhat detracts from the plausibility of the author's explanation. If Didyma happened over a century after the Parthenon, it opens up the possibility that at the time of the Parthenon's construction, these scale drawings didn't even exist yet.

   4%
3. C

   Correct87% picked this

   Scale drawings were commonly used in many types of construction in

   Why this is right

   This adds to the plausibility of the Author's Explanation. He thinks that they used a scale drawing like the one at Didyma to get those matching column bulges. This answer says that scale drawings were commonly used in many types of construction. Okay, so it sounds like that could be a correct guess. The fact that Didyma was a temple (whereas the Parthenon is a government building, I believe) might have been a concern. Are these buildings too different to have employed the same building method? But learning that scale drawings were common in many types of construction increases the odds that the people building the Parthenon were familiar with scale drawings, had access to them, had seen them before, etc. On a first pass, I was not attracted to this, because it's very unspecific to the Parthenon. But it does more than nothing, and that's all it takes to win the contest of "most strengthens" if every other answer does nothing or goes the wrong way. If we're trying to figure out how Jessica killed Billy and our hypothesis is "she poisoned him with arsenic", it somewhat adds plausibility to that hypothesis to be told that "arsenic was commonly found in the pantry of many types of homes in the city where Jessica and Billy lived".

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

   87%
4. D

   Unclear Impact3% picked this

   The surviving columns at Didyma are almost twice as tall as the columns

   Some people might argue this weakens, because it makes the construction project at Didyma seem significantly different than the one at the Parthenon. The sort of techniques you use to build a skyscraper might be different from the ones you use to build a building half its size. Other people might think this strengthens, in the sense of "If scale drawings could handle the challenge of super tall Didyma, then they must have been capable of handling the more modest challenge of the Parthenon". The fact that we could argue it weakens or strengthens illustrates that it has no clear impact.

   3%
5. E

   Weakens, if anything5% picked this

   The Parthenon's stonemasons had considerable experience carving columns before they started work

   This doesn't suggest anything about scale drawings, so it's not adding plausibility to the author's explanation. It almost seems to be suggesting an Alternate Explanation for how the masons got the matching column bulges -- they were just wicked good masons with lots of column-carving experience.

   5%