#11 - There is evidence that a certain ancient society burned large areas of land.

[Hanin Abu Amara]

Hi!

Ok so if we distill the argument down to its core we realize that the author is arguing that because there was no evidence of cultivation ---> we can conclude that society was a hunter gatherer.

While we do discuss fire, we discuss it knowing that the goal of the fire was to clear land.

Answer choice is attempting to connects seeds with the fire. Now it is wrong for a few reasons:

1. we don't know that the trees and plants that release when subjected to fire were available back then/ could have been planted back then

2. There is no evidence of any cultivation. So even if there were seeds that release upon fire, this doesn't help us strengthen the fact that they didn't cultivate anything.

We wanna prove that they didn't cultivate anything and that they didn't transition into an agricultural society. While answer choice C uses a lot of the right words, it doesn't end up having an impact on the argument.

Even if answer choice C was true and some seeds release after being subjected to fire. This would imply that we should've found seed cultivation which did not occur.

Remember that in strengthen questions we don't disagree with the premises given to us. Despite the fact that we can introduce new ideas.

[jackieb]

I was not sure whether we were strengthening that they were hunter-gatherer or that they were not agricultural. I see another gap besides the jump to hunter-gatherer: no evidence of cultivation = was not agricultural. Or is this implicit conclusion that they were not agricultural something we have to accept as a premise?

I get why AC D is a better answer because the conclusion is more explicit re hunter-gatherer. But even if we agreed not to strengthen the fact they were not agricultural (as I mentioned above) AC E, wouldn’t by weakening the possibility it was for agriculture, strengthen the chance it was hunter-gatherer (eliminating alternate explanation)?

[Dana D]

Hey Jackieb,

With strengthening questions like this one, it's important to identify the author's conclusion so you know what you are trying to strengthen. Here, the conclusion is that the ancient society was still a hunter-gatherer society (the last sentence of the stimulus).

Next, we have to use the logic the author presents - here, the author's premise (support) for their conclusion that the society was hunter-gatherer is that even though there was a lot of land burned that would have been cleared for agriculture, there was no cultivation post-burn.

So, if we want to strengthen the author's argument using their own logic, we want an answer choice that ties this burning to hunter gatherer societies instead of agricultural societies. That is what answer choice (D) does. When the LSAT speaks in generalities like this ("hunter-gatherer societies are known..") you can assume they are referring to all hunter-gatherer societies, because there is no limitation on this statement.

Answer choice (E) is tempting, but it isn't the one that most strengthens the stimulus, because it is limited by the word "few". Perhaps "few" societies understood that burning would be good for agriculture, but we're only talking about one specific society here, and we don't know whether they were part of this "few". It's possible that they did know the burning was good for agriculture, in which case the author's conculsion that they were hunter-gatherers is weakened.

Hope that helps!