In Egypt in the late Paleolithic period, the climate changed, pastures

In Egypt in the late Paleolithic period, the climate changed, pastures became deserts, and the inhabitants were forced to withdraw to the land bordering the Nile from their hunting grounds.

(A) inhabitants were forced to withdraw to the land bordering the Nile from their hunting grounds - Incorrect Idiom
(B) inhabitants had been forced to withdraw from their hunting grounds to the land that bordered the Nile. - Incorrect, had been is Past Perfect Continuous (Past continuous action), whereas in statement B) the action ended.
(C) inhabitants were forced to withdraw from their hunting grounds to the land bordering the Nile. Correct Idiom usage and Tense (were).
(D) inhabitants having been forced to, withdrew from their hunting grounds to the land that bordered the Nile. Incorrect -Having been would mean the action is still going.
(E) inhabitants withdrew, because they were forced to, from their hunting grounds to the land bordering the Nile. Awkward Wording

in C "and the inhabitants were forced" because of "were" in C, i thoght this is not parallel with "climate changed, pastures became deserts" and i crossed out C and went for E. what's wrong with m reasoning???

In Egypt in the late Paleolithic period, the climate changed, pastures became deserts, and the inhabitants were forced to withdraw to the land bordering the Nile from their hunting grounds.

(A) inhabitants were forced to withdraw to the land bordering the Nile from their hunting grounds The correct idiomatic usage would be "withdraw from .... to .....". As such, we can hold on to this option for the time being till we examine all the other options, since this is not a very serious error.

(B) inhabitants had been forced to withdraw from their hunting grounds to the land that bordered the Nile "inhabitants had been", past perfect tense, breaks parallelism with "climate changed" and "pastures became deserts", both in the simple past. Eliminate.

(C) inhabitants were forced to withdraw from their hunting grounds to the land bordering the Nile Correct answer. We can eliminate option (A) based on this option having the correct idiomatic usage and no new errors being introduced.

(D) inhabitants having been forced to, withdrew from their hunting grounds to the land that bordered the Nile "having been" is quite unnecessary and breaks parallelism with "climate changed" and "pastures became deserts" which are in the simple past. Eliminate.

(E) inhabitants withdrew, because they were forced to, from their hunting grounds to the land bordering the Nile While there is no obvious grammatical error in this option, it is more wordy than option (C), which too does not have any errors. Hence, based on conciseness, we can eliminate this option.

Hope this helps.

In choice (C), we have a parallel list of clauses. The verbs in the first two clauses are active, and the verb in the third clause is passive. But there's no rule saying that active and passive verbs -- or clauses with active and passive verbs -- can't be parallel. For example:

"The workers are overwhelmed by the job and complain constantly."

The first verb ("are overwhelmed") is passive and the second verb ("complain") is active. This is not a problem.

Similarly, the mix of active and passive verbs does not affect the parallelism in (C). Another example of this can be found here.

I hope that helps!

why choice A is wrong? is this from gmatprep?

Take another look at (A):


The placement of the modifier "from their hunting grounds" is problematic. At first glance, it seems to be describing "The Nile," as though there might be one Nile from their hunting grounds and some other Nile from a different location. If you read it again, sure, you can figure out that "from their hunting grounds" is actually giving information about the verb "withdraw," but the construction is confusing, at best. That said, I might hang on to it until I've had a chance to examine the other options.

Now take a look at (C):


In this case, it's crystal clear that "from their hunting grounds" is actually modifying the verb "withdraw." Because the meaning in (C) is clearer and more logical, it's a better option than (A).

I hope that helps!

Here's the official explanation provided by the GMAC for this question:

The sentence mentions a group of people who left one area and moved to another. The original version says that they were forced to withdraw to one area from the other. In the absence of any overriding reason to mention the destination first, it is more standard and direct to mention the people’s earlier location before their later location: they went from point A to point B. In this sentence there is no plausible reason to mention the environmental changes except to indicate that they caused the relocation, so the verb forms and sentence structure should make this causal connection clear.

Option A: Saying that the people were forced to withdraw to one location from another location is less clear, direct, and idiomatically standard than mentioning the from location before the to location.

Option B: The verb form had been forced seems to indicate that when the environmental changes took place, the people had already relocated and that the cause of their relocation was some unspecified earlier event. That makes the author’s purpose in mentioning the environmental changes unclear and their relationship to the relocation puzzling.

Option C: Correct. This wording is clear, concise, and direct, and the verb forms clearly express a coherent causal sequence of events.

Option D: This is awkward and indirect. The verb form having been forced and the comma before withdrew suggest that the people had already been forced before the environmental changes took place. They also make it unclear whether the people were forced by the environmental changes or by some unmentioned factor. With no comma after inhabitants to bracket the phrase having been forced to, there is no grammatical subject for withdrew.

Option E: This is awkward, verbose, and indirect. Setting off the phrase because they were forced to parenthetically between commas makes it unclear whether the people were forced to withdraw by the environmental changes by or some unmentioned factor.

The correct answer is C.

Please note that I'm not the author of this explanation. I'm just posting it here since I believe it can help the community.

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