Q10 - A traditional view of Neanderthals is

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Necessary Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
Main Conc: Neanderthals did have the ability to think symbolically.
Intermediate Conclusion: This painting was probably done by a Neanderthal.
Evidence: This cave painting was created at least 40,800 years ago.

Answer Anticipation:
With Necessary Assumption, I'm asking myself "Do I hear any missing links? Can I think of any potential objections?"
MISSING LINKS:
Neanderthals were around 40,800 years ago in northern Spain.
Creating this painting would have required the ability to think symbolically.

Since there are two pretty glaring missing links, I would be tempted to start cruising through answers to see if that's all they're testing. Our potential objections would mainly be "what if there is some non-Neanderthal explanation for who created that cave painting? What if creating the cave painting didn't involve the ability to think symbolically?"

Correct Answer:
C

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) My issue with this is the "are known to". I don't think the author needs to assume that we already know that N's have the necessary dexterity. She only needs to assume that N's have the necessary dexterity.

(B) Too extreme. The author's sub-conclusion says that the paining was LIKELY done by N's, so she hasn't shut out totally the possibility that it could have been done by someone else. Thus, she isn't assuming that N's are the only possible hominid around at that time (not to mention she doesn't have to assume it was done by a hominid ... elephants can paint; and, fun fact, there's never been a correct answer that would involve the type of outside geographic knowledge involved in this answer that Spain is a part of a Europe)

(C) YES! If we negate this, it says "creating this painting does NOT indicate an ability to think symbolically". That crushes the argument.

(D) Too extreme. The author doesn't need to assume this is the VERY FIRST piece of evidence to suggest something. Would the argument be significantly weakened if this were the SECOND piece of evidence to suggest something? Of course not.

(E) Too extreme. As soon as I read "Any species of hominid", I'm done with this answer. The author's argument never made a claim or assumption about ALL hominid species. And again, just like (B), a correct answer wouldn't need us to know that Neanderthals are hominids.

Takeaway/Pattern: The hardest part of getting this one right is avoiding getting tunnel vision for the final sentence and thinking of THAT as the main conclusion. A classic argument template is to say "Most people say X. However, they're wrong. Here's why." That's what we're getting here with, "A traditional view is X. However, it looks like that's wrong. Here's why." If we realize the main conclusion is "N's did have the ability to think symbolically", we realize there's a glaring NEW GUY in the conclusion, and we could quickly scan the answers for which ones touch on "thinking symbolically".

#officialexplanation

[NichP73]

Thanks for that bit about the question template, it helps to identify which is the main conclusion in the question stem.