Atlantis, the legendary island first mentioned in Plato's

Question

Atlantis, the legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues,  was a naval power that conquered Africa 9000 years before the laws of Athens had been developed.

A) was a naval power that conquered Africa 9000 years before the laws of Athens had been developed.

B) was a naval power that conquered Africa 9000 years before the laws of Athens were developed.

C) have been naval powers that conquered Africa 9000 years before the laws of Athens was developed.

D) has been a naval power that was conquering Africa 9000 years before the laws of Athens were developed

E) were naval powers that conquered Africa 9000 years before the laws of Athens were developed.

seabhi · Answer

Atlantis, the legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues, was a naval power that conquered Africa 9000 years before the laws of Athens had been developed.

A) was a naval power that conquered Africa 9000 years before the laws of Athens had been developed. -  Hold it

B) was a naval power that conquered Africa 9000 years before the laws of Athens were developed. --  Hold it

C) have been naval powers that conquered Africa 9000 years before the laws of Athens was developed. --  have -- incorrect

D) has been a naval power that was conquering Africa 9000 years before the laws of Athens were developed -  conquering -- incorrect

E) were naval powers that conquered Africa 9000 years before the laws of Athens were developed.-  were -- incorrect

Out of A and B. Had been is not required.. because "before" is already trying to tell that it happened in the past.

RMD007 · Answer

Since Atlantis is mentioned as a "legendary island", it is singular. Hence C and E are out. 
D has tense problems and grammatical mistakes.

In A and B, the sequence of actions are
1. Atlantis was a naval power (because it is mentioned as 9K years back)
2. Laws were developed.

A is out because it is using past perfect tense for later action.

LevanKhukhunashvili · Answer

I dont understand why we are using simple past tense in both cases, these both cases dont happen in the same time period, Atlantis conquered Africa and many years later Greeks developed laws.

In my opinion such sentence is correct:

"Atlantis had conquered Africa 9000 years before the laws of Athens were developed"

Please someone light up the torch of truth

ExpertsGlobal5 · Answer

Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-

Choice A:  This answer choice incorrectly uses the past perfect tense to refer to the development of the laws of Athens, the later of two events that occurred in the past. Thus, this answer choice is incorrect.

Choice B:  This answer choice maintains proper tense use and subject-verb agreement throughout the sentence. Thus, this answer choice is correct.

Choice C:  This answer choice features a subject-verb disagreement between "Atlantis" and "have been" and between "laws" and "was". This answer choice also uses the present perfect tense to refer to an event that concluded in the past and does not affect the present. The simple past tense is the appropriate tense to use here. Thus, this answer choice is incorrect.

Choice D:  This answer choice repeats the tense related error seen in Option C. Thus, this answer choice is incorrect.

Choice E:  This answer choice features a subject-verb disagreement between "Atlantis" and "were". Thus, this answer choice is incorrect.

Hence, B is the best answer choice.

To understand the concept of "Simple Tenses on GMAT", you may want to watch the following video (~1 minute):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZj-SubJwsM

To understand the concept of "Present Perfect Tense on GMAT", you may want to watch the following video (~1 minute):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeqkwGHWoQQ

All the best!
Experts' Global Team

chrtpmdr · Answer

Can one of the experts shed light on this question?  GMATNinja ,  daagh 
I have been reading a lot of highly qualitative journalism lately and thereby recognized that the past perfect is heavily overused, even when there is no clear "two event-timeline".
However, in this case we have a clear "two event-timeline". Why is the usage of the past perfect then ruled out for this problem? While it is understandable that a) uses the PP-tense wrongly, it is not understandable that the usage of the PP-tense is omitted completely in the correct answer choice.

Thank you, and anyone else, for helping me out on this one!

daagh · Answer

There is an optional convention that, if any timeline marker such as before or after is used, then it is permissible to use the simple past for both the events, even though they may have occurred at two different times. Probably the correct answer B is relying on that convention. 
Honestly, I wouldn't fault A because of that. The real problems will be two possibly contentious answers for the same question.

souvik19 · Answer

Atlantis, the legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues, was a naval power that conquered Africa 9000 years before the laws of Athens had been developed.

A) was a naval power that conquered Africa 9000 years before the laws of Athens had been developed.

B) was a naval power that conquered Africa 9000 years before the laws of Athens were developed.

C) have been naval powers that conquered Africa 9000 years before the laws of Athens was developed.

D) has been a naval power that was conquering Africa 9000 years before the laws of Athens were developed

E) were naval powers that conquered Africa 9000 years before the laws of Athens were developed.

Option B.

Atlantis is singular so option C & E are incorrect. As the tense is sentence is past tense ,we can eliminate option D.
In between option A & B ,there past perfect tense has been used incorrectly.
So Option B is the correct answer

Although option B is correct but lets analyze the  use of past perfect tense and "before".
 
  Please note that Past perfect tense is used to present the earlier of the two past events. For example if event X and event Y both occurred in past, we need to use past perfect with event X and simple past with event Y.  
 
Next thing to note is, use of "before" is this sentence is a place marker of two events telling event X occurred before event Y.

Now, can we use a both, a place marker and past perfect tense, in a sentence? Absolutely!

Then why is Option A incorrect?
It is because the sequence of events presented by the use of "before" (place marker) and "past perfect tense" are contradicting. 
Since we are presenting the development of the law with past perfect, that would imply the laws were developed Atlantis conquered Africa. However, we know by the use of "before" first Atlantis conquered Africa and than the laws were developed.

It is very important to know that, had the original sentence used past perfect tense for the conquering event together with "before", the sentence would have been absolutely CORRECT. What I mean is, another correct way to present this sentence is : was a naval power that  had  conquered Africa 9000 years  before  the laws of Athens were developed.

Atlantis, the legendary island first mentioned in Plato's

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GMAT Sentence Correction (SC - EA only) Questions

Atlantis, the legendary island first mentioned in Plato's

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615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

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