Today anthropologists realize that there is great diversity among hunt

SuperCat:- Any analysis on this question? I would love to read your explanation

I agree with (C), exactly as MBAMantra posted,

Today anthropologists realize
that there is great diversity among hunter-gatherer societies, and
that those persisting into this century had long before been altered by their contacts with agricultural peoples.

Moreover, the sentences using choices (A) and (B) do not make sense, although that may not be blatantly obvious. But read the sentence and think about what it's telling you. You should have a reason for connecting two independent clauses to form one compound sentence.

The clauses are:
1) Anthropologists realize that there is great diversity among H-G societies
2) Those persisting [or that have persisted] into this century had long before been altered.

Those two messages are not immediatley related to each other. (If you think they are, you are assuming too much.) It's not enough that both are facts about hunter-gatherers. If I said "My car has leather seats, and I had to fix a flat tire last week," that is a weird-sounding sentence, because I'm combining two unrelated facts about my car into one sentence, for no good reason.

Choices (A) and (B) just ram these two unrelated clauses together into one sentence, and it causes a bit of cognitive dissonance. These should not be together in one sentence without some element to explain why they are related.

(C) is different. The placement of THAT changes the overall message substantially. Everything is related. This says that Anthropologists realize X and Y, where Y = "hunter-gatherer societies persisting into this century had long before been altered by their contacts with agricultural peoples."

Now, X and Y are related in that they are both realizations made by anthropologists. Now we have a sensible sentence listing two realizations of anthroplogists.

This is testing diction and introductory //ism
Step 1. This is not a comparison between just two tribes. So the use of ‘between’ is ruled out. This to define something prevalent within (obviously more than two) the many tribes. So ‘among’ is the correct diction
Step 2. Anthropologists realize two things and if we introduce the first one with a ‘that’, then, the second
also should be introduced similarly for the sake of //ism. C is the one doing that properly.

Today anthropologists realize that there is great diversity among hunter-gatherer societies, and those that have persisted into this century had long before been altered by their contacts with agricultural peoples.

a. among hunter-gatherer societies, and those that have persisted
anthropilogists realize that ..... and those that ... this is not parallel
b. among hunter-gatherer societies, and those persisting
anthropilogists realize that ..... and those that ... this is not parallel
c. among hunter-gatherer societies, and that those persisting
anthropilogists realize that ..... and that those ... this is parallel
d. between hunter-gatherer societies, and those that have persisted
Between should not be used as we do not know if there are two or more than two societies
e. between hunter-gatherer societies, and that those persisting
Between should not be used as we do not know if there are two or more than two societies


Does it help?

Interesting question.

D and E are out because we are talking about an number of societies. Between can only be used to talk about two things/people.

Pay attention to the structure: "realize (verb) that......, and realize(which is an implied verb...and must be followed with THAT) to maintain the correct structure. B is out for the lack of 'that', and A misplaces 'that'. A also wrongly uses the past perfect where as we need the participle form to indicate the continuation (into present) of the society.

a. among hunter-gatherer societies, and those that have persisted - Parallelism error. The anthropologists realise 2 things, viz. There is great diversity among hunter gatherer societies and The societies persisting had been altered by their contacts with agricultural peoples. This is not addressed in the original sentence.
b. among hunter-gatherer societies, and those persisting - Parallelism error. "that" must be used for both the things to be parallel.
c. among hunter-gatherer societies, and that those persisting. Correct. Parallelism is checked and tense is correct too.
d. between hunter-gatherer societies, and those that have persisted. "Among" is idiomatically better than "between". Diversity is among people, it's not between people.
e. between hunter-gatherer societies, and that those persisting. Same error as D.

Answer: C.

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