Salt deposits and moisture threaten to destroy the Mohenjo-Daro excava

quote="go2venkat"]Salt deposits and moisture threaten to destroy the Mohenjo-Daro excavation in Pakistan, the site of an ancient civilization that flourished at the same time as the civilizations in the Nile delta and the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates.


(A) that flourished at the same time as the civilizations

(B) that had flourished at the same time as had the civilizations

(C) that flourished at the same time those had

(D) flourishing at the same time as those did

(E) flourishing at the same time as those were

VeritasKarishma GMATNinja
I never came across a question where omitting a verb makes the comparison correct.
Please give your inputs on this question and explain OA.

I am confused b/w A/B. As simple past tense is used once so using 'had' makes it even more clear about civilizations.

Dear rajgurinder,
I'm happy to respond.

This, of course, is SC #89 in the OG13. You may find this blog helpful:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/dropping-c ... -the-gmat/
One of the hardest things about parallelism is what one can legitimately omit in the second branch, and figuring this out from sentence in which the omission has already happened.

Choice (A) gives perfectly correct parallelism. Part of what's confusing about this sentence is that the words "the site" is an appositive phrase, and the whole rest of the sentence modifies this phrase. For clarity, let's talk about the comparison directly, in its own sentence. The long way to say it would be:
The ancient Mohenjo-Daro civilization flourished at the same time that the civilizations in the Nile delta and the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates flourished.
That version is perfectly grammatically correct, but because it's long and wordy, it never would be correct on the GMAT. A shorter and perfectly correct way to say this is:
The ancient Mohenjo-Daro civilization flourished at the same time as the the civilizations in the Nile delta and the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates flourished
That is, in essence, the same structure as the OA above. Including the word "did" as you suggest would also be correct, only a little longer --- that's perfectly acceptable, but not necessary to make the sentence correct.

Think about it this way. Think about where the word "same" appears. It appears inside a prepositional phrase, "at the same time" ---- this prepositional phrase is an adverbial phrase, that is, a verb-modifier. See:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/gmat-gramm ... d-clauses/
This suggests that the comparison is not between "time" and something else, but rather, that the comparison is between two verbs, both modified in the same way by the modifying phrase. For example:
A did X at the same time that B did Y.
If the two do the same action, it's redundant to say:
A did X at the same time that B did X
and much better to say
A did X at the same time as B.
The predicate, "did X", is the same, so it is dropped, and the comparison, the "same time", refers to the time of those two identical predicates.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Is choice C completely wrong or simply the less preferred choice among the answers?
What are the reasons it is wrong/ less preferred choice?
a) Is it because it contains did- If that is the reason, what is wrong about it?

Hi ag153, choice C does not contain did (C uses had). Which option are you talking about?

AjiteshArun
sir does the usage of those in options C,D & E is correct?

AjiteshArun
sir does the usage of those in options C,D & E is correct?

aren't we comparing
the site of an ancient civilization that flourished at the same time as the site of civilizations in the Nile delta and the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates.

I rejected A because I thought the site of an ancient civilization that flourished to the site of civilizations

Where I'm Wrong??

It is very much clear that the answer should be option A(because of errors in other four options).However, just for the clarity of a concept,
shouldn't the latter part of the sentence MUST be a clause because when "as" is used for comparision, the structure is as + clause ?
(the correct sentence IMO: the ancient civilization flourished at the same time AS the civilizations in the Nile.... Euphrates DID.)

Salt deposits and moisture threaten to destroy the Mohenjo-Daro excavation in Pakistan, the site of an ancient civilization that flourished at the same time as the civilizations in the Nile delta and the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates.


(A) that flourished at the same time as the civilizations

(B) that had flourished at the same time as had the civilizations

(C) that flourished at the same time those had

(D) flourishing at the same time as those did

(E) flourishing at the same time as those were

Can someone explain how this question tests SVA?