A purse containing 32 ancient gold coins that had been minted in Morocco was discovered in the ruins of an ancient Jordanian city some 4,000 kilometers to the east of Morocco.
Statements
A purse with coins minted in Morocco was found 4,000 km east of Morocco, in a Jordanian city that was an important trading center along the trade route linking China and Europe.
Pilgrims going between Morocco and Mecca would also stop in this city.
A trader's purse would probably have contained a more diverse set of coins (than what was found in this purse).
Evaluate
Our goal is to put claims together to derive something, but there aren't traditional clue words here like Conditionals, Causal claims, or Pivots.
It seems more like this is an Explain Curious Fact setup (pretty rare among Most Supported questions). In fact, the question stem describes each answer choice as a "hypothesis", i.e. "a causal explanation for something".
It's odd for this purse of coins to be in a city 4000 km east of where it was minted. How did these coins get here?
We have two potential hypotheses: - this city lies on a trading route from China to Europe, so maybe the coins got there via traders trading with each other.
- Pilgrims would stop here on their voyage between Morocco and Mecca, so maybe a pilgrim began in Morocco with these coins in their purse and then dropped the purse in this city en route to Mecca.
The final claim helps to make the 1st hypothesis less likely. If this purse really belonged to a trader, it probably would have contained a more diverse set of coins.
Goal
So it seems like the most supported way to Solve the Causal Mystery of where these coins came from is to guess that they belonged to a pilgrim heading from Morocco to Mecca?
That's a pretty speculative guess, so if there's anything more provable we'll gladly pick that.