#16 - Concept Reference, Must Be True, Subject Perspective

[Administrator]

Please post below with any questions!

[ChicaRosa]

I had a hard time with this question and would like to know why D is correct?

I originally chose C as a desperate guess because I was struggling to relate the answer choices to the passage. Is D correct because of the token system being replaced by marks on clay tablets?

Thanks!

[David Boyle]

I had a hard time with this question and would like to know why D is correct?

I originally chose C as a desperate guess because I was struggling to relate the answer choices to the passage. Is D correct because of the token system being replaced by marks on clay tablets?

Thanks!

Hello ChicaRosa,

Pretty much.

Hope this helps,
David

[andreakun]

Hi! I'm still confused about why the correct answer choice is D, as opposed to C. I chose D because of the italicized sentence below -- I assumed that these villagers' contributions meant that the society mentioned in the passage functioned on this sharing-basis and hence, "whatever was produced by any individual as the common property of all".

Schmandt-Besserat theorizes that the envelopes contained official records of villagers’ contributions to temple-based grain and livestock pools

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi andreakun

The issue is that just because the villagers made contributions to a communal pool doesn't mean they saw all that they produced as communal property. After all, we make contributions to a communal pool of resources via taxation, and I doubt that many would consider Americans to generally view all their property as community property. Having some property contributions tracked is just as consistent with a system of taxation as it is with a system of all community property. We simply don't know based on the passage what sort of system was being described. Because of that, answer choice (C) cannot be the correct answer.

Answer choice (D) on the other hand, describes something that we know is true based on the final paragraph. It describes an evolution of a system, which started with the clay tokens, but ended with signs on a tablet. Those signs replaced the tokens to describe the same information. That completely supports answer choice (D).

Hope that helps!
Rachael

[VamosRafa19]

Hi,

I picked D because felt it was most supported by the passage. But I could not really eliminate E. They used clay so much for the tokens, that they must have had a readily available supply. Is E incorrect because if it wasn't for clay they might have used some other material and E is too strong?

[KelseyWoods]

Hi VamosRafa19!

You're exactly right--answer choice (E) is too strong. Answer choice (E) is a conditional statement ("without") that says that having a readily available supply of raw clay was necessary to the development of a system of representation that used tokens. We know that they made their tokens from clay but, as you noted, that doesn't mean that clay was the only thing they could have made tokens from. Answer choice (E) sets up a specific relationship between the clay and the tokens that is not supported by the passage.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[lounalola]

I understand that answer choice D is backed up by the final paragraph, however I am not sure where it indicates that the clay tokens became redundant?

[Amber Thomas]

Hi Lounalola!

We have evidence that the clay tokens became redundant in Lines 38-40 (the first sentence of the last paragraph): " The token system, essentially a system of three-dimensional nouns, was replaced in about 3100 B.C. by a system of marks on clay tablets." The paragraph then describes how the token-marking system eventually evolved into a tablet-marking system. The tablet system at first integrated the token-marking, but then later phased that out as it became unnecessary/redundant. We can see this process occurring in Lines 46-53:

"At first it took two ovoid tokens to record two jars of oil. A little later, it took two markings on a clay tablet
to achieve this—one mark, using the outline of the old token, to record the customary unit measure for oil, the jarful, and a second mark to convey the numeral: two oil jars. Eventually, it took three signs on the tablet, one for the numeral 2, one for the standard jarful, and a new symbol that denoted oil itself."

The use of the tokens as a marking system evolved into the abstract/flexible writing system, rendering it eventually unnecessary.

I hope this helps!