Traces of cultivated emmer wheat have been found among

[RonPurewal]

was the italicized part a really meaningless premise just to throw us off from answer choice D?

most certainly not. since the argument is about where the wheat was first domesticated/cultivated, the location of the oldest known cultivated/domesticated crops is highly relevant.

analogy:
let's say that Martian anthropologists are digging stuff up after we all destroy each other in a nuclear war.
they may find baseballs under the dirt all over the place -- but, if the Martians' goal is to find out where on Earth baseball was first played, the location of the oldest baseballs will constitute particularly important/relevant information.

[davetzulin]

was the italicized part a really meaningless premise just to throw us off from answer choice D?

most certainly not. since the argument is about where the wheat was first domesticated/cultivated, the location of the oldest known cultivated/domesticated crops is highly relevant.

analogy:
let's say that Martian anthropologists are digging stuff up after we all destroy each other in a nuclear war.
they may find baseballs under the dirt all over the place -- but, if the Martians' goal is to find out where on Earth baseball was first played, the location of the oldest baseballs will constitute particularly important/relevant information.

thanks again Ron, makes complete sense.

[tim]

glad to hear it!

[aliassad]

D. In the region containing the strip where wild emmer wheat has been found, climatic conditions have changed very little since before the development of agriculture.

Now our prompt contains this information:

" The only place where the wild form of emmer wheat has been found growing is a relatively narrow strip of southwest Asia"


What I mean to ask is whether the use of wild form of emmer wheat is just to specify a location. Otherwise I do not see wild form of emmer wheat playing any other role?

Thanks in advance.

[krishnan.anju1987]

D. In the region containing the strip where wild emmer wheat has been found, climatic conditions have changed very little since before the development of agriculture.

Now our prompt contains this information:

" The only place where the wild form of emmer wheat has been found growing is a relatively narrow strip of southwest Asia"


What I mean to ask is whether the use of wild form of emmer wheat is just to specify a location. Otherwise I do not see wild form of emmer wheat playing any other role?

Thanks in advance.

IMO the wild form of a plant would be the first form to be found normally. The cultivated form could but not necessarily would be changed or acclimatized in some ways to suit the people. People try to grow the domesticated varieties of a plant. Thus, if some place does have wild variety of a plant then the plant could have originated from that place.

[RonPurewal]

krishnan.anju1987, yes.

to the previous poster -- i think you are making the mistake of thinking that "wild emmer wheat" and "cultivated emmer wheat" are two different varieties of plant (as if they were, say, brown and white emmer wheat).
this isn't the case; you have to think carefully about what "wild" and "cultivated" actually mean.

[grandtheman]

Thank you everyone for the clear explanation.

Just curious about level of difficulty of the question, what range of GMAT score that we could expect to find this question ?

[tim]

i've found that the answers to this type of question are almost never useful in preparing someone for the GMAT, so i'll decline to provide a guess as to difficulty level unless you can tell us how you will use that information to better prepare yourself for the GMAT.. :)

[RachitS713]

Mehdi, i think Ron's answer pretty solidly explains why B is not correct. If you need further help, you're going to have to explain a little more about where his explanation broke down for you..

I chose B over E.
(B) Modern experiments show that wild emmer wheat can easily be domesticated so as to yield nearly as well as traditionally domestic strains.

Reason: If we know that Wild emmer wheat can easily be domesticated, and that traces of this kind of wheat were found at other places - This would mean that there were attempts made to try to domesticate it but there was something in the land (in south-east asia) that makes this kind of wheat sustainable - and thus B would strengthen.

Please advise where I am going wrong in this?

[RonPurewal]

if choice B is true, then the reasoning would be exactly the opposite -- that wheat would be easily sustainable just about anywhere in the world.

if the wild wheat depended on some special ingredient in the SW Asian soil, then choice B couldn't possibly be true.

[Rong Cheng]

Traces of cultivated emmer wheat have been found among the earliest agricultural remains of many archaeological sites in Europe and Asia. The only place where the wild form of emmer wheat has been found growing is a relatively narrow strip of southwest Asia. Since the oldest remains of cultivated emmer wheat yet found are from village sites in the same narrow strip, it is clear that emmer wheat was first domesticated somewhere in that strip.

Which of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument?

(A) The present-day distribution of another wild wheat, einkorn, which was also domesticated early in the development of agriculture, covers a much larger area of southwest Asia.
(B) Modern experiments show that wild emmer wheat can easily be domesticated so as to yield nearly as well as traditionally domestic strains.
(C) At the time when emmer wheat was first cultivated, it was the most nutritious of all the varieties of grain that were then cultivated.
(D) In the region containing the strip where wild emmer wheat has been found, climatic conditions have changed very little since before the development of agriculture.
(E) It is very difficult, without genetic testing, to differentiate the wild form of emmer wheat from a closely related wild wheat that also grows in southwest Asia.


Source: Gmatprep
Q1. Is there a little bit of scope shift when the argument says "cultivated emmer wheat" and "wild form of emmer wheat" ?
Q2. Can some one help me by explaining the argument and its structure.
Q3. How to crack this question ? answer: d

the evidence in the argument is based on where this strain of wheat has been found growing, NOW in modern times (as you can tell from the present perfect, "has been found growing"). if we're going to argue about the domestication of this wheat, in ancient times, then we need to know that the same conditions that prevail now also prevailed back then.
this is why (d) strengthens the argument. without (d), it's irrelevant where this wheat grows today.

Hi Ron,
I'm having difficulty in understanding your reasoning, especially "if we're going to argue about the domestication of this wheat, in ancient times, then we need to know that the same conditions that prevail now also prevailed back then'. Can you explain a bit more on why is B correct?
I'm able to eliminate other options through irrelevance check, but I don't understand why B is correct.

[RonPurewal]

B is not the correct answer.