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Difficulty: HardEvaluating Relevance for Adding or Deleting Content

[1] For decades, scholars believed that Mayan hieroglyphs recorded only astronomical data and calendar dates, reflecting a peaceful society obsessed with time. [2] In the 1950s, however, art historian Tatiana Proskouriakoff began analyzing stelae—carved stone slabs—at the ancient city of Piedras Negras. [3] She noticed that the dates on a series of stelae fell within the span of a normal human lifetime. [4] Proskouriakoff hypothesized that the glyphs actually recorded the historical lives of Mayan rulers, including their births, accessions to the throne, and military victories. [5] Mayan architecture also featured steep limestone pyramids that served as temples and tombs. [6] Her breakthrough revolutionized Mayan studies, shifting the academic consensus from viewing the Maya as abstract mystics to recognizing them as historical record-keepers.

The writer is considering deleting Sentence 5 from the paragraph. Should the sentence be kept or deleted?

  1. A
    Kept, because it establishes the physical setting where the stelae analyzed by Proskouriakoff were originally erected.
  2. B
    Kept, because it provides essential context about Mayan culture that explains why the glyphs were carved on stone slabs.
  3. Deleted, because it deviates from the paragraph’s focus on the shift in scholarly understanding of Mayan hieroglyphs.Answer
  4. D
    Deleted, because it contradicts the paragraph's claim that scholars previously viewed the Maya as abstract mystics.

Answer

Deleted, because it deviates from the paragraph’s focus on the shift in scholarly understanding of Mayan hieroglyphs.
The correct answer is the option stating that the sentence should be deleted because it deviates from the paragraph’s focus on the shift in scholarly understanding of Mayan hieroglyphs. The paragraph outlines a specific shift in historical scholarship—moving from the belief that Mayan glyphs were purely astronomical to understanding them as records of historical lives. Mentioning pyramids and temples introduces a tangential topic about architecture, which disrupts the development of this single, coherent idea.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the primary topic and focus of the paragraph.
The paragraph focuses on how scholars traditionally viewed Mayan hieroglyphs and how Tatiana Proskouriakoff's discovery changed that view by demonstrating that glyphs recorded historical human lives.
Understanding the paragraph's primary focus is essential for determining whether a sentence is relevant or tangential.
2
Analyze Sentence 5 to determine its content and purpose.
Sentence 5 provides information about Mayan architecture, specifically the steep limestone pyramids that served as temples and tombs.
This step evaluates how the content of the target sentence aligns with the primary focus identified in Step 1.
3
Evaluate the relevance of Sentence 5 to the paragraph as a whole.
Although the sentence is about the Maya, its focus on architecture and temples is tangential to the paragraph's narrow focus on hieroglyphic translation and the historical records of Mayan rulers. Therefore, the sentence should be deleted.
Determining that the sentence is irrelevant leads to the decision to delete it.
4
Select the option that provides the correct decision and logical justification.
The correct option states that the sentence should be deleted because it deviates from the paragraph's focus on the shift in scholarly understanding of Mayan hieroglyphs.
This matches the logical analysis and provides the only correct combination of decision and reason.

Key Concept

Evaluating Relevance for Adding or Deleting Content
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Evaluating Relevance for Adding or Deleting Content

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