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Difficulty: HardWeaken

Excavations at the late Bronze Age settlement of Kalos revealed that bronze farming implements abruptly replaced stone tools around 1200 BCE, coinciding with a documented forty percent drop in local agricultural output over the subsequent decade. Archaeologists argue that the newly introduced bronze implements were poorly suited to the region's dense, clay-rich soil, thereby directly causing the agricultural decline.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the archaeologists' argument?

  1. A
    Laboratory stress tests demonstrate that early bronze plowshares warped and dulled much more rapidly in dense clay soil than did traditional stone implements.
  2. B
    Pollen records from the settlement show that the total acreage of land cultivated by farmers remained constant before and after 1200 BCE.
  3. Tree-ring analyses from the region indicate that a severe, decade-long drought began in 1200 BCE, causing identical agricultural declines in nearby settlements that continued using stone tools.Answer
  4. D
    Radiocarbon dating of organic residues indicates that stone implements were never actually phased out and remained the primary farming tool at Kalos after 1200 BCE.
  5. E
    Agrarian communities in the region never adopt metal implements unless those implements have already been proven to increase crop yields under identical soil conditions.

Answer

Tree-ring analyses from the region indicate that a severe, decade-long drought began in 1200 BCE, causing identical agricultural declines in nearby settlements that continued using stone tools.
The argument concludes that the adoption of bronze tools caused the drop in agricultural output simply because the two events occurred at the same time. The correct answer undermines this causal link in two ways: it introduces an alternative explanation (a severe drought) and presents a control group showing that neighboring communities that did not adopt bronze tools experienced the exact same decline.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the argument's core premises and conclusion
Premise: Bronze tools replaced stone tools in 1200 BCE, coinciding with a 40% agricultural decline. Conclusion: The bronze tools were poorly suited to clay soil and directly caused the decline.
Clarifying the structure isolates the causal leap made from correlation to causation.
2
Expose the underlying vulnerability and unstated assumption
The author assumes that the tool change was the sole or primary cause of the decline and that other independent environmental or societal factors were not responsible.
Weaken questions require identifying alternative explanations that break the proposed causal link.
3
Evaluate the answer choices against the identified gap
The finding regarding regional drought introduces an external environmental cause and provides a control group showing that settlements still using stone tools suffered the exact same loss.
Demonstrating that the effect occurs even in the absence of the proposed cause invalidates the causal attribution.

Key Concept

Alternative Causal Explanations and Control Comparisons
Estimated Time:1m 30s
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