PTC.S4.Q25 - Darwin's conception of early prehistoric humans...

Saaaammmm

I do not understand why B is correct.

markymymarkymark

me neither

markymymarkymark

Hi, after some analysis, I can see why B is only only plausible answer!

We first need to understand what we are supposed to analogize:

The discovery of the fossils:

Darwin assumed that the early humans were clever and smart, why?

Because of the "accidental" discoveries:
- we found fossils of humans 100k years ago, but as the centuries progressed we found older and older human fossils (we found them in reverse order)
- The Neanderthals, the first human fossils we uncovered, were then PRESUMED to be the first humans (because they didn't know that it was reversed), so they thought "hey, these EARLY humans (100k years ago) resemble early humans so much! They must be as smart as we are then! (thus the faulty comparison the anthropologist makes between the modern hunter-gatherers and the forebears hunting practices).

So, the AC we need to find has to essentially make the same "mistake", where we presume one fossil or discovery to be the "OG/original" and think that it bears resemblance to X, when in reality it doesn't.

AC B: Art historians who know the late paintings of an artist (the hunter gatherers of today) find similar paintings (the Neanderthals) a few years before the late paintings, and conclude that the artists first paintings (the OG ones, the forebears), must have been done in the same style.

See how the historians mistakenly assume that the paintings they found were prototypes of the original oldest paintings from the artist, the same way that the anthropologists mistakenly assume that the oldest fossils were the Neanderthals, and because of their resemblance to modern humans, thought that they must have been "the same style"?

Super tricky question, but I think it's tricky precisely because that first paragraph is quite confusing to parse out.