#5 - Global Reference, Must Be True, Author's Perspective

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[medialaw111516]

Hi there!

I picked A for this one, thinking that "seismically volatile" was the same as "prone to earthquakes, and as such was the correct answer. Is the problem with A the phrase "most likely?" I know there were multiple theories given for what could have caused the demise, but I felt the likely made answer choice A not too strong to be correct, but I think I looked at this like an assumption question and not a MBT.

[Adam Tyson]

You've hit on it in your analysis, medialaw111516 - answer A is too strong, because earthquakes are given as just one possible explanation for the demise of the Indus Valley civilization. Drought is also considered as a possible cause. An Author Agreement question is a form of Must Be True, and our answer has to be based on the text of the passage. Does the author ever suggest that the earthquake explanation is more likely to be correct than the drought explanation? Nope! That makes answer A a loser. It might be true, but the passage gives us no reason to believe it.

[brooklynchick]

Hello!

I still don't understand why the correct answer is C, I picked E. I crossed C out because I thought it was too specific, and was dismissing the possibility of a drought. E sounded like it was general enough to be applied to either point of a drought or earthquake, that the other 4 choices were too specific for the author to agree with because in the passage he/she just mentions all the possibilities, the author does not lean towards any one of them more than the other.

Can someone explain further for me?

Thanks

[KelseyWoods]

Hi brooklynchick!

Remember that in a Must Be True question, we need an answer choice that we can prove with what was stated in the passage. Answer choice (E) states that the demise of the Indus Valley civilization was most likely caused by the catastrophic alteration of the courses of its major rivers. But the passage does not support this statement. The last sentence says that a massive earthquake may have changed the course of rivers and disrupted many cities. But there is nothing to say that this is the most likely cause of the demise of the civilization, because it could also be the drought. The passage does not state that a drought would also change the course of rivers (instead, the drought would have made the land unfarmable so there was not enough grain to feed urban populations).

Answer choice (C) states that archeologists' understanding of the decline of the Indus Valley civilization would benefit from a search for signs of earthquake damage in its major cities. This is supported by the passage because the passage tells us that, currently, we do not know whether it was a sever drought or an earthquake that caused the fall of the civilization. So looking for signs of an earthquake could potentially confirm or rule out that specific possibility. Thus, it would help archeologists understand why the civilization declined.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[jrschultz14]

Hello! In my review of this question, I became more attracted to AC B. I understand that it is wrong, but could you please explain to me why? The AC stating that a disaster "as catastrophic as an earthquake" would have destroyed the civilization seems like a compelling answer.

My attraction stems from the author outlining the "catastrophic environmental reasons" hypothesis for the Indus Valley collapse, and that the AC's wording for a disaster "as catastrophic as an earthquake" would generally include all environmental disasters of equal or greater magnitude. Can we not conclude that this AC creates an umbrella for both the earthquake and drought sub-theories that the author outlines in the passage?

My guess is that this answer is truly wrong because its force is too strong? That it creates a scope that "only" environmental disaster could cause the collapse. If this is the reason, would changing the answer to "a disaster as catastrophic as an earthquake likely lead to the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization" be correct? Or would even that still be wrong? Thanks for the help!

[Robert Carroll]

jrschultz,

I don't know how to rank the catastrophic intensity of different catastrophes. The passage provides no basis for that. So, while an earthquake "may" (line 58) have been responsible for the decline of the Indus River civilization, there is no way to know whether any disaster causing that decline would have to be that intense. Further, note that answer choice (B) isn't limited to the Indus River civilization either: "a civilization as sophisticated as the Indus Valley civilization" covers every civilization that sophisticated, which is a far broader claim than can be made. I'm also not sure from the last paragraph that the civilization had a "demise" at all - didn't it just relocate? At best, we might be able to call it a "decline" as in line 35.

Robert Carroll