Q7 - Cumbersome spears

[syed_s_hus]

Can someone explain this question? Please be detailed as possible.

[a3friedm]

I thought this was a pretty cool question.

The evidence in the stimulus gives us this:
in the early bronze age, certain tribes used "cumbersome" or heavy/inconvenient spears as weapons before intertribal conflicts had widespread casualties. Recently, they found tombs of the same tribes from the late bronze age, that indicated wars were frequent and there was a higher casualty rate.

They use this evidence to conclude (you can discern this is the conclusion from the structural indicator hence):
some archaeologists claim that by the late bronze age, these tribes had developed new methods of warfare designed to inflict many casualties

So before we even look at the question stem we can see that there is a gap in between the evidence and the conclusion. Ie. How did they go from higher casualty rate to the claim there was new weapons? What if they ran out of medicinal herbs, or were unable to care for the wounded etc. etc.

The question stem gives us "Which one of the following, if true, most supports the archaeologists' claim?"

(A) A Royal tomb dating to the early Bronze Age contained pottery depicting battle scenes in which warriors use spears.

This doesn't help us because we already knew that warriors used spears in the early bronze age. We're looking for something that will strengthen the conclusion, we can get rid of this.

(B) There is evidence that many buildings dating to the late Bronze Age were built by prisoners of war taken in battles between enemy tribes

For the most part i'd say this is just irrelevant. If they were taking more prisoners though that could potentially mean there was less casualties which would even hurt this argument (I know that's a stretch) but all the more reason to get rid of this.

(C)Scenes of violent warfare, painted in bright hues, frequently appear on pottery that has been found in some early Bronze Age tombs of warriors.

Irrelevant, we already know there was conflict in the early bronze age. We need something to strengthen our argument

(D) Some tombs of warriors dating to the late Bronze Age contain armor and weapons that anthropologists believe were trophies taken from enemies in battle

We're running out of answer choices, so this is starting to look a little tempting. It doesn't really tell us anything, and weapons and armor as trophies doesn't really do anything to strengthen our argument. You could try and make the argument, well they found some late bronze age weapons that were apparently valuable, but that's a pretty far stretch. Regardless, Let's keep it for now

(E)The marks on the bones of many of the late Bronze Age warriors whose tombs were excavated are consistent with the kind of wounds inflicted by arrowheads also found in many late Bronze Age settlements.

This is exactly what we needed. Evidence that the tribes developed arrowheads in the late bronze age would strengthen archaeologists claim that these tribes had developed new methods of warfare.

Hope this helped

[bramon.elizabeth]

My concern is that choice E entails a classic LSAT pitfall: we have to assume that the arrowheads weren't already part of the spear. Can anyone help me find the evidence is that it was [b]developed[b] during the late Bronze Age? Am I reading the question wrong?

I'm really cautious about answers to Support questions that require us to insert an assumption.

[a3friedm]

If it was a part of the spear it most likely would have been referred to as a spearhead, so we can be fairly confidant arrowhead indicates new weaponry.

[tommywallach]

Hey All,

Great response from a3friedm here. I really think he nailed it.

Elizabeth, I wanted to respond to your general issue about assumptions and make sure you're on the right track. Be aware that ALL strengthen questions are based on an assumption that the argument is making. Now, this is different than an INFERENCE question, and both of them use the word "support." So you gotta be careful:

INFERENCE: The argument is being used to support an answer choice.

STRENGTHEN: The answer choices are being used to support the argument.

This is a strengthen question, because the correct answer is said to support the argument. This means the stimulus MUST have an assumption. As a3friedm said, the argument assumes that just because there were more tombs/casualities, there were "new methods of warfare." (E) provides a new weapon.

And spearheads and arrowheads aren't the same thing. Arrows are much much smaller! : )

-t

[bramon.elizabeth]

Thanks, guys!

Especially for going the extra mile to clean up that Strengthen/Inference train wreck I had going on there, tommywallach:)

[WaltGrace1983]

So (D) would be wrong because we aren't exactly sure what "weapons" are being referred to. These "weapons" could simply be spears! Meanwhile (E) is right because it gives us a new type of weapon - the arrowhead. It isn't exactly the most vindicating answer but (A) (B) and (C) pretty much suck so it seems to strengthen the claim the most.

[Mab6q]

More to the point on why D is wrong, notice that it talks about weapons founds that are believed to be trophies taken from enemies from war. We don't know if they actually used these weapons once they took them; we don't know whether these weapons caused causalities or were like the spears in that the precluded causalities; and finally we don't know that in getting these weapons, they caused causalities on their enemies - maybe they were still using their spears.