Reading Comprehension

PT150 · S1 · P4 · Q24 Evolutionary Implications of Cooking

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It might reasonably have been expected that the adoption of cooking by early humans would not have led to any changes in human digestive anatomy.

Topic

Evolutionary effects on humans of cooking

Framework

Old / New

Main Point

People used to think that humans' use of cooking probably didn't have any effect on digestive anatomy, but now we think we've evolved so much to having a cooked diet (our teeth, jaws, and possibly intestines) that we'd be unable to survive in most cases on a raw food diet.

Summary

FIRST PARAGRAPH

- It might reasonably have been expected that X. After all, Y. However, current evidence suggests ...

These rhetorical features warn us about what the passage will likely be doing. We open with an allusion to Old beliefs, or Typical beliefs, or usual assumptions, and then we get our Author's (but / yet / however / recently) Pivot right after that.

Upon reading the first sentence, we should already be pausing and saying to ourselves,

And we'd be right. That's essentially the main point right there.

From the "However" until the end of the first paragraph, we're getting the current evidence for the fact that cooking has changed us: - we wouldn't be able to live off raw food (except under special circumstances) - this suggests we've now evolved to a form that requires cooked food - there has actually been plenty of time (on an evolutionary scale) for these changes to take place, since we have evidence that cooking started over 250,000 years ago.

The author crystallizes her takeaways at the end of the first paragraph, saying

Because we could cook, we were able to eat a diet with more high caloric density food. Because we were able to eat that type of food, our bodies adapted ways to optimize eating that type of diet, and now we're so adapted to a cooked diet that we'd struggle to live on a raw diet.

SECOND PARAGRAPH

The topic sentence here indicates that this paragraph will be discussing questions about how we've changed, to be more adapted to a cooked diet. - there's a known change in the fossil record to our tooth and jaw size around 100,000 years ago. - the author thinks that was the restul of adapting to cooked food. - she thinks it's possible that cooking started over 1 million years ago and some adaptations occurred then, but then the adaptations seen around 100,00 years ago were ones that happened when we invented the concept of boiling water.

THIRD PARAGRAPH

Since this paragraph begins by saying , it looks like this paragraph still falls under the framing idea at the beginning of the 2nd paragraph: important questions therefore arise

We know that our guts are different from those of other great apes. Some people think it's because we eat more raw meat than apes do. This author thinks that "adaptations to cooking" could just as easily explain it.

She suggests a future research direction in the final sentence, to help determine which hypothesis is more likely.

24.

Which one of the following most accurately describes the structure of the passage?

The first paragraph outlines a
Bad 3rd Match
Skipping right to the 3rd ingredient, it doesn't seem at all like "discuss a toss-up question about whether human guts are different from ape guts based on raw-meat or cooking". An "empirical disconfirmation" of a prediction would mean that there was a prediction, an experiment or measurement was conducted, and the data from that experiment/measurement didn't match the prediction. The last paragraph doesn't have any data/measurement from an experiment that is refuting a prediction.
8% picked this
The first paragraph describes a
Bad 2nd/3rd Match
Skipping right to the 3rd ingredient, the final paragraph is proposing that we continue to research whether human gut changes are the result of eating raw meat or developing cooking, but it doesn't describe the empirical test that would show which idea is right. It would also be wrong to say that the 2nd paragraph considers an alternative theory. The 2nd paragraph gets into specifics about the theory in the 1st paragraph that "learning to cook led to specific adaptations."
7% picked this
The first paragraph argues for
Bad 2nd / 3rd Match
Skipping right to the 3rd ingredient, the last paragraph was not a response to an objection. The last paragraph kind of opens up a brand new topic: "are human guts different from ape guts based on raw-meat or cooking?" The 2nd paragraph definitely does not have an objection to the claim that the 1st paragraph argues for. The 2nd paragraph is supporting the claim that the 1st paragraph argues for.
5% picked this
The second and third paragraphs
Bad Last Match
This is saying that the last paragraph describes an empirical prediction. What is an empirical prediction? It would be something like, "If this idea is true, then we should see that X is true." The two proposals outlined in the first paragraph would presumably be: 1. learning to cook would not have led to any changes in human digestive anatomy (teeth, jaw, guts) 2. learning to cook did lead to changes in human digestive anatomy (after all, we can no longer survive on a raw-food diet) The 2nd and 3rd paragraphs don't seem to be clarifying the difference between those two proposals. They are all about going into more detail about Proposal 2.
6% picked this
Correct
The second and third paragraphs
Why this is right
To be honest, if I were using the ol' Last Ingredient shortcut and I read this answer choice on a first pass, I would defer but assume it was probably wrong. It doesn't seem flagrantly wrong, as some of the others did, but it's not intuitively appealing. What claim was made in the first paragraph whose implications were discussed in P2 and P3? Well, the most natural place to look for a Framing Idea that would get unpacked is the end of the first paragraph: Selection for efficiency at using diets of high caloric density (i.e. meat?) led to an inability to survive on raw-food diets in the wild. If I'm dumbing that down, it sounds like it's saying: we learned to cook, we were able to then be more efficient at eating high-calorie foods, we then adapted to this new diet ("selected for"), and this led to us not being unable to survive on raw-food diets in the wild. The second paragraph begins, "Important questions therefore arise". This sounds like it could be setting up possible empirical implications. The second paragraph covers the effects (empirical implications) of cooking on tooth and jaw size. In the middle of the 2nd paragraph, the authors say "we suggest that [this reduction in tooth and jaw size] was a consequence of eating cooked food". That is exploring a possible empirical implication of the claim that learning to cook led to adaptations that now make it hard for us to live on raw-food. The third paragraph explores the potential effects on cooking on the soft parts of the digestive system. "The evolution of the soft parts" is a possible empirical implication of the claim that learning to cook led to adaptations that now make it hard for us to live on raw-food. The author is more tentative about announcing that the human digestive system was changed by learning to cook, but she is still "exploring this as a possible empirical implication". It seems like in this answer choices, we're supposed to interpret empirical implications of a claim as "measurable, observable consequences of the thing were were talking about".
Skill tested: Organization · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
74% picked this

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