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Difficulty: MediumDetermining Stated Sequence of Events

Read the passage below:

Long before conservator Kenji Sato presented the fully restored sixteenth-century Japanese screen printing to the museum board in 2018, his restoration team had undertaken a meticulous stabilization project. The delicate artifact had been discovered in an abandoned temple storehouse in 2005, although municipal records indicated that monks had relocated the screen there following a catastrophic river flood in 1972. Before any chemical cleaning could commence in 2012, Sato spent three years cataloging the pigment degradation under ultraviolet illumination. It was only after completing this detailed pigment analysis that the team applied an organic binding gel in 2015 to stabilize the flaking gold leaf, a procedure that preceded the screen's final re-housing in an airtight glass casing by exactly two years.

Based on the passage, which of the following events occurred FIRST in chronological order?

  1. The relocation of the screen printing to a temple storehouseAnswer
  2. B
    The discovery of the artifact in an abandoned storehouse
  3. C
    The initiation of the three-year pigment degradation cataloging process
  4. D
    The commencement of chemical cleaning on the screen printing

Answer

The relocation of the screen printing to a temple storehouse occurred first (1972).
The passage states that municipal records tracked the screen printing's relocation to the storehouse after a river flood in 1972. Comparing all stated dates (1972 relocation, 2005 discovery, ~2009 cataloging start, 2012 cleaning), the relocation to the storehouse happened first.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Extract all temporal markers and explicit dates from the passage.
Identified years and chronological indicators: 2018 (presentation), 2005 (discovery), 1972 (relocation after flood), 2012 (chemical cleaning), three years prior to 2012 / 2009 (pigment cataloging started), 2015 (binding gel applied), two years after 2015 / 2017 (airtight casing re-housing).
Establishing explicit dates allows accurate timeline construction regardless of narrative order.
2
Arrange the extracted events in true chronological order from earliest to latest.
1st: Relocation to storehouse (1972); 2nd: Discovery in storehouse (2005); 3rd: Cataloging pigment degradation (2009); 4th: Chemical cleaning (2012); 5th: Organic binding gel application (2015); 6th: Airtight casing re-housing (2017); 7th: Presentation to museum board (2018).
Reordering events chronologically resolves non-linear sentence structures and flashbacks.
3
Identify the event that occurred earliest on the timeline.
The relocation of the screen printing to the temple storehouse in 1972 is the earliest stated event.
Directly answers the stem's request for the first event in chronological order.

Key Concept

Determining Stated Sequence of Events
Estimated Time:1m 15s
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Determining Stated Sequence of Events

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