Q14 - early urban societies could not

[ohthatpatrick]

What does the Question Stem tell us?
Inference (Most Strongly Supported)

Break down the Stimulus:
Read for Conditional, Causal, Quantitative, or Contrast language.
1st sentence is conditional: If NO large scale farming -> then NO early urban societies.
2nd sentence is causal/contrast: Foraging can't support as big a population as large scale farming can.
3rd sentence is conditional: If NO irrigation -> then NO large scale farming.
Last idea is a fact (although you could make it conditional if you really wanted): Areas far from rivers or lakes didn't have feasible irrigation until recently.

Any prephrase?
When given multiple conditionals, we should always see if they chain together. These do.
If NO irrigation -> then NO large scale farming -> then NO early urban societies.

We also have a fact that can trigger that chain: until recently, areas far from rivers or lakes couldn't pull of irrigation.

Thus, early urban societies, which require large scale farming, which requires irrigation, would have had to be near rivers or lakes.

Correct answer:
C

Answer choice analysis:
A) Red flag: "Most". This is close to our prediction, but can we say "most peoples"? We know that early urban societies lived near rivers/lakes. Does that qualify as "most peoples"? Probably.

B) Red flag: "only if". This says "if societies can happen far from lakes/rivers, then we don't need irrigation for the sake of farming." This is close. If you're far from a lake/river, we know you didn't have feasible irrigation until recently. But it sounds like nowadays it IS feasible to have irrigation in those far away areas. So it's possible that farming still requires irrigation, even though we're now able to have societies far from rivers/lakes. We might have just improved our irrigation game. (Another red flag for this answer is that it talks about irrigation being required for "farming", as opposed to "large-scale farming", which is what we actually discussed)

C) Red flag: "not possible". Ah, this feels safer than (A). This is an Inference we anticipated.

D) Large-scale farming requires irrigation, WHEREVER it happens. So if these urban societies with farms have LARGE-SCALE farms, then this answer would contradict the provided info.

E) Red flag: "relied more". This is very likely in our real world knowledge, but there is no information at all about early rural societies.

Takeaway/Pattern: Ultimately, this was just testing
A -> B, B -> C,
X is A, so X is C.

We had to look out for and recognize Conditional language: "could not have done X without Y" and "Y requires Z".

We had to ask ourselves if those chained together. X -> Y -> Z.

And then we had to see that the final fact was a trigger for this chain.

#officialexplanation

[jbjbrezak]

Yeah i really need some help with this one i guessed C, but i am not sure why B is not a possible contender.

[rickytucker]

First, early urban societies (EUS) not possible without large scale farming (LSF), in other words EUS requires LSF:

EUS --> LSF

Next, foraging (F) cannot support urban populations (EUS), in other words: if F then EUS not possible and if EUS then F not possible:

~F <-- EUS --> LSF

Next, LSF requires irrigation (I):

~F <-- EUS --> LSF --> I

Next, I is not possible far from rivers or lakes, in other words if not near rivers or lakes (~NRL) then there's no I and if I then NRL:

~F <-- EUS --> LSF --> I --> NRL

The last bit about recent times just adds a separate overarching rule that says NRL is not needed if it's recent times, so we simply remove NRL if the situation occurs in recent times:

~F <-- [E]US --> LSF --> I

We can glance back and forth between our diagram and our options as we work through the answers.

(A) would be correct if it said most people in EUS lived NRL since EUS --> NRL.
(B) recent times is the only thing that would allow societies to exist without being NRL.
(C) correct: since EUS --> NRL.
(D) farming always requires irrigation.
(E) we can't conclude ~EUS --> F.

[maryadkins]

Awesome explanation! Thanks for that. Just two points of clarification on (D) and (E).

On (D) in the explanation below, I just want to add that by "farming" you mean large-scale farming. Just to be clear, that's what requires irrigation, not all farming. But since we're told that early urban societies needed large-scale farming (and we don't know anything about modern-day urban societies except that they can irrigate far from rivers), we can't infer this statement.

And on a basic level, (E) is wrong because we don't know anything about early RURAL societies. We're talking about early urban societies.

[T.J.]

I often find myself overanalyzing a question when time allows, which is why I am at a disadvantage under real testing condition because I cannot perform this habit facing the time constraint. The goal is not to just answer a question right but also fast.

In this question, the logic chain starts from EARLY urban societies, LARGE-scale farming, irrigation, to distance to rivers or lakes. One is connected to another by being the necessary condition. Moreover, this question really trades on the details (what I put in the upper-case)

A. The distribution of population is never brought up. If you think urban societies beat other societies in population, then think again.

B. farming...where is the adjective "EARLY"? societies...where is "EARLY URBAN"?

C has the details we need. It is a keeper.

D. Again, we need early urban society, not just urban society. We know about LARGE-scale farms, not farm in general. This choice might be true, but is not most strongly supported.

E. no comparison is given between foraging and agriculture.