Evidence suggests that the people who crossed the Bering Strait

hi vayshk please correct me if i am missing something

as the sentence is talking about past event so it should be in past so c,d,E eliminated .
also in C which means should be followed by that so wrong
in D the word Egalitarian is a noun and the word obtains is a verb so incorrect
in E same as D and also it is ambiguous
so left with A and B , in A , they is ambiguous and also Egalitarian society is not a place so usages of where is incorrect .

hence option B wins

thanks

OE: Creating a filter: when reading the prompt, we can pause at the word "where." A society is not a place, so "where" is incorrect. Choice (A) is out.

Applying the filter: We scan for the same error below and don't find it, so we must go back to (B) and look for new errors.

Finding objective defects: choice (B) might be correct. (C) uses "which means" incorrectly. Hunter-gatherers are included in the sentence as the people, not a term; the verb needs to be plural; if "hunter-gatherers" is to be included as a term to be defined, it needs to be in quotation marks and the preceding part of the sentence would have to be different. (C) and (D) are out. Choice (E) introduces a bogus pronoun "it," moves on to a new independent clause without a comma before "and," and uses the present tense where the past tense is required. The correct answer is (B).

I would like to understand the difference between A and B in detail.

A) nomads living in an egalitarian society where they obtained their sustenance almost entirely from

B) nomads living in an egalitarian society that obtained its sustenance almost entirely from


egalitarian society --> a society where everyone is treated equally. This will act as a collective noun and will be singular and hence its sounds correct. B seems more refined than A?

But with the explanation that --> society can't refer to place and hence usage of where is incorrect - I have seen usage of where in some articles - e.g. We need a society where women can live safely.

In GMAT, 'where' can only refer to physical places. So it cannot refer to nouns such as society. "We need a society in which women can live safely" sounds more apt in GMAT.

Answers narrow down to 2 options:

A) nomads living in an egalitarian society where they obtained their sustenance almost entirely from
Incorrect as per GMAT.

B) nomads living in an egalitarian society that obtained its sustenance almost entirely from
Correct

Official Explanation

Creating a filter: when reading the prompt, we can pause at the word "where." A society is not a place, so "where" is incorrect. Choice (A) is out.

Applying the filter: We scan for the same error below and don't find it, so we must go back to (B) and look for new errors.

Finding objective defects: choice (B) might be correct. (C) uses "which means" incorrectly. Hunter-gatherers are included in the sentence as the people, not a term; the verb needs to be plural; if "hunter-gatherers" is to be included as a term to be defined, it needs to be in quotation marks and the preceding part of the sentence would have to be different. (C) and (D) are out. Choice (E) introduces a bogus pronoun "it," moves on to a new independent clause without a comma before "and," and uses the present tense where the past tense is required.

The correct answer is (B).