Self-study
Early urban societies could not have been maintained without large-scale farming nearby. ████ ██ ███████ █████ ███████ ██ ████ ████████████ ████ ██ █████████ ██████ ███████ ███████████ ██ █████ ██ █████ █████ ███████████ ███████ ████████ ███████████ █████ ████████ ██████████ ██ █████ ███ ████ ██████ ██ █████ █████ ████ ██████ ██████
Summary
The stimulus presents several conditional statements that can be connected.
early urban society → large-scale farming
large-scale-farming → irrigation
irrigation → not far from rivers/lakes
Note that the second sentence of the stimulus tells us that other ways of acquiring food besides large-scale-farming can’t support an urban population. But this just repeats the relationship expressed in the first sentence, so it’s not important.
Strongly Supported Conclusions
The three conditionals can be connected to produce the following inference:
early urban society → not far from rivers/lakes
In other words, early urban societies must not have been far from rivers/lakes.
14.
Which one of the following ██ ████ ████████ █████████ ██ ███ ███████████ ██████
a
Most peoples who █████ ██ █████ █████ █████ ██ █████ ████ ██████ ██ ██████
Unsupported. Even though early urban societies couldn’t be far from rivers/lakes, most people could have lived in rural, non-urban societies far from rivers/lakes.
b
Only if farming ██ ████████ ██ ███ ███████ ██ ██████████ ███ █████████ ██ ██████████ ██ █████ ███ ████ ██████ ██ ██████
Unsupported. The stimulus only tells us about requirements for large-scale farming, not farming generally. Perhaps small-scale farming is possible through irrigation far from water. And we only know about what’s required for early urban societies, not for modern urban societies.
c
In early times ██ ███ ███ ████████ ██ ████████ █████ █████████ ██ █████ ███ ████ ██████ ██ ██████
Strongly supported. This is the inference we could anticipate from connecting the conditionals in the stimulus. In diagram form it means “far from rivers/lakes → /early urban societies.” This is the contrapositive of the inference described in the summary above.
d
Urban societies with █████ ████ ██████ ██ █████ ██ ███ ████ ██ ████ ████ ██████████ ██ ████ █████ ███████ ██████
Unsupported. We can infer early urban societies had to have large-scale farming, which required irrigation. This doesn’t tell us what kind of society doesn’t require irrigation.
e
Early rural societies ██████ ████ ██ ████████ ████ ██ ███████████ ███ █████
Unsupported. We know early urban societies required large-scale farming. But early rural societies may have had small-scale farming and may have relied on it more than foraging. The stimulus doesn’t tell us anything about early rural societies.