Q2: Ancient humans in eastern North America hunted

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Necessary Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: This ancient settlement in eastern NA was occupied at a time when mammoths lived nearby.
Evidence: We found a fossil bone with an engraving of a mammoth there.

Answer Anticipation:
There's no condtional logic or symbol repetition in this argument, so I'm putting away my Idea Math helmet and putting on my Come Up With Objections helmet:

"GIVEN THAT we found a fossil bone with an engraving of a mammoth at this settlement, HOW COULD I ARGUE THAT there were NOT mammoths living in the area at the time?"

Well, I might engrave a drawing of a unicorn on a tree outside my house. That doesn't mean that there are unicorns living there. I'm just familiar with the look of a unicorn, so I can draw it if I want to. We could similarly argue that the people at this settlement might be familiar with the shape of a mammoth, even though no mammoths live nearby.

Finally, any time an argument is based on a found artifact, the author tends to assume the artifact came from that spot / from that time, as opposed as being brought there earlier or later by someone else.

Correct Answer:
A

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) YES, if we negated this it would badly weaken. If the mammoth engraving wasn't contemporaneous with the settlement's being occupied, then the argument loses the temporal glue that was supposed to tie together mammoths-alive with settlement-occupied.

(B) Negating this would strengthen, if anything. If the fossil WAS made on a mammoth bone, that sounds like evidence that mammoths were living in the area.

(C) Extreme: "there were NO mammoths anywhere". Also, this is very out of scope, since we're only talking about whether mammoths lived IN THIS AREA.

(D) Extreme: "unique".

(E) Extreme: "there was NO way of dating the engraving". Also, if we negated this and there WERE a way of dating when the engraving of the mammoth was made, that certainly wouldn't hurt the argument. It might even help it.

Takeaway/Pattern: The argument pattern here is "We found this artifact in area X. This tells us something about time Y." Usually with this pattern, LSAT is interested in testing the idea that this artifact didn't necessarily "grow up" in this area; it may have been deposited here by some other means.

Being aware of the "Caution: Strong Language" bias on Necessary Assumption makes it easier to get rid of C, D, and E.

#officialexplanation