#18 - Global Reference, Must Be True

[Dancingbambarina]

Hi jk,

A couple of things:

1. It's true that the Confederacy spurred usages of wampum for primarily political purposes (during the period after the Confederacy began). But what about the usages of wampum prior to the Confederacy (which were also prior to contact with Europeans) that are described in the second paragraph? Those usages don't look "primarily political." Rather, the first paragraph describes those usages as involving "objects with religious significance."

2. A second problem with answer choice D is that it's not clear to me from paragraph 3 that we can support the statement that wampum was used specifically to "promulgate official edicts and policies." Rather, it was used to "encode the provisions of the ... constitution." The constitution and its provisions are different from official edicts and policies.

Let us know if that clears up your confusion!

Jeremy

Would the word PRIOR also not make AC D right because if wampum was used to help the confederacy for hundreds of years until the Eropeans came, the primary usage may have changed to something diferent by then? Here, I have taken prior to not mean , as Jeremy says, WHENEVER prior to the Europeans coming. I was just wandeirng if taking PRIOR to mean the aforementioned too would also be correct in evaluating AC D?


Thank you

[Jeremy Press]

Hi jk,

A couple of things:

1. It's true that the Confederacy spurred usages of wampum for primarily political purposes (during the period after the Confederacy began). But what about the usages of wampum prior to the Confederacy (which were also prior to contact with Europeans) that are described in the second paragraph? Those usages don't look "primarily political." Rather, the first paragraph describes those usages as involving "objects with religious significance."

2. A second problem with answer choice D is that it's not clear to me from paragraph 3 that we can support the statement that wampum was used specifically to "promulgate official edicts and policies." Rather, it was used to "encode the provisions of the ... constitution." The constitution and its provisions are different from official edicts and policies.

Let us know if that clears up your confusion!

Jeremy

Would the word PRIOR also not make AC D right because if wampum was used to help the confederacy for hundreds of years until the Eropeans came, the primary usage may have changed to something diferent by then? Here, I have taken prior to not mean , as Jeremy says, WHENEVER prior to the Europeans coming. I was just wandeirng if taking PRIOR to mean the aforementioned too would also be correct in evaluating AC D?


Thank you

I'd probably change what I wrote just a little bit to focus on the second point I made. It's pretty clear that the test writers are just writing a shell game answer with answer choice D. They're calling back to the first sentence of the passage, which says, "Before contact with Europeans, the Haudenosaune, a group of nations in northeastern North America also known as the Iroquois, had been developing a form of communication, primarily for political purposes, that used wampum, a bead carved from seashell." Answer choice D is actually pretty close to that, except it changes "political purposes" (a broad, general idea whose details we aren't precisely sure about) to "promulgating official edicts and policies," a very specific form of political activity that we can't be sure about from the passage because it isn't mentioned anywhere. Keep it that simple.