nakib77
Agricultural societies cannot exist without staple crops. Several food plants, such as kola and okra, are known to have been domesticated in western Africa, but they are all supplemental, not staple, foods. All the recorded staple crops grown in western Africa were introduced from elsewhere, beginning, at some unknown date, with rice and yams. Therefore, discovering when rice and yams were introduced into western Africa would establish the earliest date at which agricultural societies could have arisen there.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
(A) People in western Africa did not develop staple crops that they stopped cultivating once rice and yams were introduced.
(B) There are no plants native to western Africa that, if domesticated, could serve as staple food crops.
(C) Rice and yams were grown as staple crops by the earliest agricultural societies outside of western Africa.
(D) Kola and okra are better suited to growing conditions in western Africa than domesticated rice and yams are.
(E) Kola and okra were domesticated in western Africa before rice and yams were introduced there.
Premises:Agricultural societies cannot exist without staple crops.
Several food plants, such as kola and okra, are known to have been domesticated in western Africa, but they are all supplemental, not staple, foods.
All the recorded staple crops grown in western Africa were introduced from elsewhere, beginning, at some unknown date, with rice and yams.
Conclusion:Discovering when rice and yams were introduced into western Africa would establish the earliest date at which agricultural societies could have arisen there.
We are given that agricultural societies cannot exist without staple crops and that rice and yams were the first ‘recorded’ staple crops in Western Africa. So discovering when they were introduced would establish the earliest date at which agricultural societies could have risen in Western Africa. The issue here is the rice and yams are the first recorded staple crops. That doesn’t mean that they were the first staple crops.
Let’s go to the options to find the assumption.
(A) People in western Africa did not develop staple crops that they stopped cultivating once rice and yams were introduced.We are assuming that people in western Africa did not develop staple crops that they stopped cultivating when rice and yams were introduced (hence there would be no record of them). Let’s negate it:
Negated: People in western Africa developed staple crops that they stopped cultivating once rice and yams were introduced.
Well then the agricultural society could have risen much before rice and yams were introduced. This breaks our conclusion.
Correct.
(B) There are no plants native to western Africa that, if domesticated, could serve as staple food crops.We don’t need to assume that no native staple crops existed. There could have been or there may not have been. We are assuming that they were not cultivated.
(C) Rice and yams were grown as staple crops by the earliest agricultural societies outside of western Africa.What happened outside of western Africa is irrelevant.
(D) Kola and okra are better suited to growing conditions in western Africa than domesticated rice and yams are.We don’t need to assume that Kola and okra are better suited.
(E) Kola and okra were domesticated in western Africa before rice and yams were introduced there.All we know is that kola and okra are supplemental crops. We don’t need to assume anything about their timeline.
Answer (A)Think what would have happened had you missed the word “recorded” here. The argument would have been airtight to begin with which means it would have had no assumptions. Hence, every word is important.
Discussion on Assumption Questions:
https://youtu.be/O0ROJfljRLUA pair of difficult assumption questions:
https://youtu.be/ZQnhC4d5ODU
25 Jun 2024, 05:46 
