getgyan wrote:
I got confused between D and E. Although "E" link the tools found with the bones to early hominids, it does not explain the two inherent drawbacks:
1) Early hominids does not exactly mean those who lived a million years ago
2) How is tool related to fire
Compared to E, D is more suitable but the OA does not agree.
Dear
getgyan,
I am responding to your pm
I agree this is not the best question --- in particular, it seems to requires some understanding of when "early hominids" lived or what constitutes "early hominids." It believe it's no coincidence that GMAC decided to drop this question in the move from OG12 to OG13. Nevertheless, the question has a clear answer.
Here are the facts of the argument:
We find these 1 million year old charred bone fragments. We
don't know
how they were charred.
The argument tells us -- simple campfires
could have done the charring. OK, that's good --- that means, the charring is at least
consistent with the possibility of early hominids using fire, but it's certainly
not ironclad proof the the charring
was done by early hominids.
By the end of the argument, we still don't know: how were the bone charred? Were they "cooked" by early hominids? Or were all those animals simply caught in a forest fire around the same time? We don't know what charred the bones, and we don't know whether humans were involved.
Now, the question: "
Which of the following, if true, would, together with the information above, provide the best basis for the claim that the charred bone fragments are evidence of the use of fire by early hominids?" In other words, what would help us link the involvement of early human to the charring of the bones. Let's say for simplicity we have two possible hypotheses for how the bones were charred:
(a) forest fire
(b) use of fire by early hominids
What further piece of evidence supports choosing (b) over (a)?
Choices (A), (B), and (C) are ridiculous. Choice (D) is tempting --- if early hominids controlled fire 500,000 year ago, then at least it weakly suggests that maybe they could have controlled it 1M ya.
Maybe. Evidence that early hominids had adopted any technology at Time #1 is strong evidence that they knew about this technology
after Time #1, but it's very hard to make the argument that they definitely know about it
long before Time #1. There's half a million years between 1M ya and 500K ya, and if mastery of fire were introduced any time in that half-million year span, that would mean that we couldn't deduce use of fire 1M ya from use of fire 500K ya. Choice (D) is, at best, weak, ambiguous, wishy-washy support for the argument.
Choice (E) --- where we found the charred bone, we also found hominid tools --- aha! That is compelling evidence that the animals weren't just running wild and happened to be killed in a forest fire. It's compelling evidence that they were intentionally killed and cut up by early hominids, and therefore the charring of the bones happened when the animal remains were in the possession of the early hominids, presumably in some kind of cooking process. That strongly suggests the early hominids were able to use control and use fire. This is powerful support for interpretation (b) over interpretation (a). That's why (E) is a clear choice for the answer.
Does all this make sense?
Mike