Bunuel
By 1492,
when Christopher Columbus “discovered” the New World, North America was visited by the Vikings from Northern Europe and, it is believed by many, the Polynesians from the South Pacific.
(A) when Christopher Columbus “discovered” the New World, North America was visited by the Vikings from Northern Europe and,
(B) Christopher Columbus “discovered” the New World and North America was visited by the Vikings from Northern Europe along with,
(C) the year during which Christopher Columbus “discovered” the New World, North America was visited by the Vikings from Northern Europe along with,
(D) during the year when Christopher Columbus “discovered” the New World, North America was visited by the Vikings from Northern Europe along with,
(E) when Christopher Columbus “discovered” the New World, North America had been visited by the Vikings from Northern Europe and,
VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:
The non-underlined modifier "By 1492" at the beginning of the sentence is an important phrase for controlling the timeline of the situation. Not only does this set the action in the past tense, it also puts emphasis on the fact that this threshold date is a dividing line along the timeline - the sentence needs to highlight that something occurred before that time.
For that reason, the verb "was visited" in the original sentence (choice A) is incorrect. It does not set the visits of the Vikings and Polynesians earlier in time from the "discovery" of Columbus. Notice that the correct answer, E, uses the past perfect tense "had been visited" to indicate that time shift and highlight the fact that those visits predated the "discovery."
Another decision point on this problem involves the connectors "and" vs. "along with." Note that "along with" connotes a meaning that the two events occurred together, whereas "and" simply connotes that they both happened. Because of the locations - Northern Europe and the South Pacific are nowhere near each other - it is illogical to think that the two groups came together, so the "along with" answer choices are incorrect.
Choice E makes use of the past perfect tense to satisfy the necessary timeline and uses the proper connector "and," so
choice E is correct.