#21- Archaeologist: Our team discovered 5,000-year-old

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below! Thank you!

[lathlee]

hi. isn't the negation of D) hurt the conclusion of this statement than the negation of b) ? conclusion: aboriginal people in Canada built birchbark canoes 5000 years ago considering it is about building birchbark canoe not about the region existed 5000 years ago or not.

[nrpandolfo]

How is B the answer if the stimulus states that the tools are indeed 5000 years old? There is no assumption required

[Alex Bodaken]

Hey All,

Let me try to address the questions raised here on this somewhat unusual question. This is a question where the Assumption Negation Technique is going to be really important to determining our answer. Let me start with why (B) is the credited answer, and then move on to why (D) is not credited.

Answer choice (B) reads: "The archaeologist’s argument depends on the assumption that the copper tools that were found were present in the region 5,000 years ago." The logical negation of this statement would read: "The archaeologist’s argument depends on the assumption that the copper tools that were found were NOT present in the region 5,000 years ago." If this were true, it would severely weaken the argument - it would mean, basically, that although the tools are 5,000 years old and were found in this region of Canada, they weren't used in this region 5,000 years ago. Perhaps, for example, they were used elsewhere 5,000 years ago and then taken to Canada where they were subsequently found. Were this to be the case, it would certainly weaken the conclusion that the Aboriginal people in Canada built birchbark canoes 5,000 years ago, since the stated tools wouldn't have even have been present for those people at that time.

By contrast, answer choice (D) reads: "The archaeologist’s argument depends on the assumption that the copper tools that were found were the only kind of tool that would have been used for canoe making 5,000 years ago." The logical negation of (D) would therefore read: "The archaeologist’s argument depends on the assumption that the copper tools that were found were NOT the only kind of tool that would have been used for canoe making 5,000 years ago." Would this weaken the conclusion? No, because even if these copper tools were not the only kinds of tools that would have been used for toolmaking 5,000 years ago, that doesn't impact their likelihood one way or the other over whether they were used at all. In other words, copper tools could have been used whether they were the only tools used or there were others used as well - and because of that, the author doesn't need to assume that copper tools were the only type of tools for canoe making to make her argument.

Hope that helps!
Alex

[lathlee]

Alex, i am so sorry. I got this q correctly right before i went to write june 2018 lsat. I am still so tired that i forgot to update. Thx again haha

[Lsat180Please]

Can you please discuss why E is wrong? If the copper tools were used for tasks other than canoe making, wouldn't that also falsify the conclusion? since they are depending on the fact that the 5000 year old tool is currently used to make canoes to justify the fact that they made canoes 5000 years ago?

I know that B is a much stronger answer, but if B was not there, would E be a solid answer? thanks!

[Shylock237]

Can you please discuss why E is wrong? If the copper tools were used for tasks other than canoe making, wouldn't that also falsify the conclusion? since they are depending on the fact that the 5000 year old tool is currently used to make canoes to justify the fact that they made canoes 5000 years ago?

I know that B is a much stronger answer, but if B was not there, would E be a solid answer? thanks!

The negation of E would be "the copper tools that were found aren't unknown (not known) to have been used by the region's people for any task other than canoe making" which, in short, doesn't really tell us anything about anything.

[Robert Carroll]

180,

Answer choice (E) is a very strong statement. There is no need to assume that the only known use of the tools was for canoe-making - the tools could have other uses and the argument would still work. The negation of answer choice (E) would be "the tools were known to have been used for other tasks," which doesn't refute the argument, as the argument is perfectly compatible with the tools' having multiple uses. Because the negation of this answer doesn't defeat the argument, I can tell it's wrong via the Assumption Negation technique.

Further, if answer choice (B) were absent from the list of answers, answer choice (E) still couldn't be right. If it were right, it would be an assumption necessary...in which case it would be right even if answer choice (B) existed! That would mean two answers were right, an impossible situation on the test. Simply put, answer choice (E) is too strong to have to be assumed.

Robert Carroll

[sylvia11]

I know (C) is too extreme to be correct due to "only" part, but would it be correct if "only" was taken out? Or is "designed for birch..." irrelevant to the argument?

[Adam Tyson]

Good question, sylvia11! What the tools were designed for is irrelevant. It only matters what they were ultimately used for. Maybe they were designed for cooking, but then some clever Aboriginal person could have said "hey, this cooking utensil could also be used to make a canoe!" The negation of this answer does no damage to the argument. What if they were not designed exclusively for use on those materials? What if they weren't designed for use on those materials at all? Neither of these would much matter. It could still be the case that the "Aboriginal people in Canada built birchbark canoes 5,000 years ago" using those tools.