PT158 · S4 · Q7 Newspaper article: Recently discovered

The argument does not need most untranslated tablets to contain literature. Its evidential foundation rests on the already-translated tablets, at least one of which appears to contain literary writing. That is sufficient to pose the challenge described in the conclusion. Whether additional untranslated tablets also contain literature would further strengthen the argument, but the argument functions perfectly well without that additional assumption. Apply the negation test: if most untranslated tablets do NOT contain literature, the argument still works because the translated literary tablet is sufficient evidence. An assumption that can be negated without destroying the argument is not a necessary assumption — it is merely a helpful bonus.

This answer describes an assumption about inferring literary records from the presence of tax records. But the argument does not make this indirect inference because it has direct evidence of literary content on the tablets. The argument does not say "they had tax records, so they must have had literature too." It says "we found literature on the tablets." The assumption described here would only be necessary if the argument were reasoning indirectly from one type of record to another. Since the literary evidence is direct and explicit, this intermediate assumption is superfluous. Additionally, the universal quantifier "every" makes this far stronger than anything the argument could reasonably require. Apply the negation test: if tax records do NOT imply other literary records, the argument survives because the literary evidence is independent of the tax records.

If some historians are already skeptical about the tablets' authenticity, that would undermine the argument, not support it. The argument treats the translated tablets as credible evidence. Historian skepticism about whether the tablets are genuine introduces doubt about the evidence's reliability, which would weaken the challenge to Sumerian primacy rather than being something the argument needs to assume. The argument needs the opposite: that the tablets are genuine and their dating is reliable. This answer describes a condition that would damage the argument if true, which is the reverse of what a necessary assumption does. A necessary assumption is something the argument requires to be true; this describes something whose truth would hurt the argument.

This answer conflates the origin of Sumerian civilization with the origin of Sumerian literature. These are distinct events separated potentially by centuries or millennia. A civilization can exist for a very long time before producing literary works. Even if Sumerian civilization arose in 5000 BC, the relevant question is when the Sumerians began writing literature, not when their civilization first appeared. The argument concerns literary chronology, not civilizational chronology. If Sumerian civilization arose in 3300 BC but their literature did not appear until 3000 BC, the Egyptian tablets would still pose a challenge. If the civilization arose in 5000 BC but literature appeared in 3200 BC, the challenge would equally hold. The founding date of the civilization is simply the wrong variable to focus on.