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Since the 1970s, archaeological sites in China`s Yangtze River region have yielded evidence of sophisticated rice-farming societies that predate signs of rice cultivation elsewhere in East Asia by a thousand years. Before this evidence was discovered, it had generally been assumed that rice farming began farther to the south. This scenario was based both on the geographic range of wild or free-living rice, which was not thought to extend as far north as the Yangtze, and on archaeological records of very early domestic rice from Southeast Asia and India (now known to be not so old as first reported). Proponents of the southern-origin theory point out that early rice-farming societies along the Yangtze were already highly developed and that evidence for the first stage of rice cultivation is missing. They argue that the first hunter-gatherers to develop rice agriculture must have done so in this southern zone, within the apparent present-day geographic range of wild rice.
Yet while most strands of wild rice reported in a 1984 survey were concentrated to the south of the Yangtze drainage, two northern outlier populations were also discovered in provinces along the middle and lower Yangtze, evidence that the Yangtze wetlands may fall within both the present-day and the historical geographic ranges of rice`s wild ancestor.
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Which of the following, if true, would most clearly undermine the conclusion that the author makes based on the 1984 survey?
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Based on the passage, skeptics of the idea that rice cultivation began in the Yangtze River region pointed to which of the following for support?
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Which of the following can be inferred from the passage about the "southern-origin theory?"
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The disappearance of Steller`s sea cow from the Bering and Copper islands by 1768 has long been blamed on intensive hunting. But its disappearance took only 28 years from the time Steller first described the species, a remarkably short time for hunting alone to depopulate the islands, especially given the large populations initially reported. However, by 1750, hunters had also targeted nearby sea otter populations. Fewer otters would have allowed sea urchin populations on which the otters preyed to expand and the urchins` grazing pressure on kelp forests to increase. Sea cows were totally dependent on kelp for food, and within a decade of the onset of otter hunting, Steller noted that the islands` sea cows appeared malnourished.
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Which of the following can be inferred from the passage about kelp forests in the Bering and Copper is lands between 1750 and 1768?
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According to the passage, it is likely that during the mid-1700s, sea urchin populations near the Bering and Copper islands
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The conventional story of the American colonists` revolt against Britain holds that the founders of the United States established a form of government that, although flawed by its leaders` failure to recognize the rights of women and African Americans, was nevertheless unsurpassed in its promise of human equality. There is, however, a cynical counterstory, which details the founders` lust for property and their crass manipulation of the colonial population, and characterizes leaders like Thomas Jefferson as having wielded promises of equality merely as deceptive tools, discarded once the Revolution was won, and as having deliberately allowed the United States to be governed by a small, powerful elite. Both of these stories assume that a homogeneous revolutionary leadership employed an equally homogeneous egalitarian discourse to justify its actions. Even a cursory examination of the public discourse from the period, however, makes it clear that the leadership was anything but homogeneous in its discourse, and that overall the relative emphasis placed on the words "liberty" and "property" was far greater than that placed on "equality".
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The author of the passage implies that an examination of public discourse from the Revolutionary period shows that the
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According to the passage, which of the following best summarizes the primary difference between two accounts of the American Revolution?
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A subsequent research uncovered the following materials, which of them would most clearly call into question the position taken by the author in the highlighted portion
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Zora Neale Hurston's 1942 autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, has received some of the most negative criticism of any of Hurston`s books. Among critics` complaints-some from Hurston's warmest admirers-is the work`s fragmentary nature, a nature which, while presented in other Hurston texts, including the universally acclaimed novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, is particularly conspicuous in Dust Tracks. The complaints about Dust Tracks are valid if one insists on the cardinal conventions of autobiography: traditional autobiographical structure and formal organization, and a focused projection of the autobiographical persona. But Dust Tracks portrays a persona that resists reduction to a coherent unity-a person of many moods who is in tension with the world in which she moves. In order to correspond better to this persona, Dust Tracks focuses on the fragmented life of Hurston`s imagination: the psychological dynamics of her family, community stories, and characters of friends.
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The primary purpose of the passage is to
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The author of the passage suggests that critics' complaints about the structure of Dust Tracks are
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African American painter Malvin Gray Johnson (1896-1934) grew up in urban environments, including New York City, but in 1934 visited and painted scenes from the small town of Brightwood, Virginia. Some critics have celebrated the Brightwood paintings, which depict a vibrant natural landscape and close-knit Black community, as Johnson`s discovery of an "authentic" African American life in the rural South. This view, which reflects a common tendency to regard African American artists` imagery as unmediated documentation of direct experience, overlooks Johnson`s interpretive thinking. In truth, Johnson`s conceptualization of the South was largely formed before he left New York, where he had studied the French expressionist Paul Cézanne. Johnson`s Brightwood paintings reflect Cézanne`s stylistic influence and tendency to present rural life as an idyllic alternative to modern industrialism.
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The primary purpose of the passage is to
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Which of the following best describes the organization of the passage?
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The highlighted sentence has which of the following functions in the passage?
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The ability to recognize specific individuals has profound implications for the evolution of complex social behaviors such as reciprocal altruism. Many researchers assumed that recognition of individuals, a phenomenon predominantly observed in laboratory studies of fish, might also operate extensively in free-ranging fish populations, where it could underpin these complex interactions. In fact, evidence of individual recognition in free-ranging fish populations is equivocal. The possibility exists that for many species, individual recognition observed in the laboratory might be an artifact of experimental designs, which enforce prolonged interaction between individuals and which prevent the diluting effects on social structure of immigration into and emigration from the shoal, factors that in nature would erode group stability and prevent the learning of individual identities.
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The author would likely agree with which of the following statements about the prevalence of specific individual recognition that occurred in fish in the laboratory studies discussed?
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