Passage Discussion

[chike_eze]

Passage Organization

Lowe explains process of mayan collapse
- process of investigation
- civilization stopped expanding, construction stopped = vanished
Support for Lowe's claim
- the Elites (those damn elites)
- Elites => population growth, declined prod, domino effect
Author is not convinced
- Possible flaw = unverified assumption underlying collapse
- Better data may yield different conclusion

Comments:

1. The last paragraph was unexpected. I expected agreement and impact of study not "but you know, there's a flaw..."
2. I guessed on Q24 cos I didn't know where to look and I sort of ran out of time.
3. I was surprised that none of the questions addressed Lowe's evidence for the collapse directly (Q25 perhaps indirectly)

[noah]

Good write-up of the passage. As for the scale, it seemed to me that the other side was waiting in the wings through the first two paragraphs. This was because of the wording "bases his study" and "Lowe assumes" - classic phrases used to note someone's theory that you'll later critique. (And, in this case, for those very points where those phrases are used.)

The third paragraph gives us the other side, leaving us with this scale (in my opinion!):

Lowe's data is sufficient to draw conclusion VS. Lowe's data is insufficient to draw conclusion

Or, perhaps I should flesh it out a bit:

Lowe's arch. data is sufficient and assumptions sound VS. Lowe's data is insufficient and assumptions unsound