#17- Archaeologists excavating a Neanderthal campsite found

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Weaken. The correct answer choice is (C).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

[ChicaRosa]

I don't understand how answer choice C weakens the conclusion? Is the conclusion saying that the Neanderthal's weren't nomadic and hunted gazelles?

Thanks!

[David Boyle]

I don't understand how answer choice C weakens the conclusion? Is the conclusion saying that the Neanderthal's weren't nomadic and hunted gazelles?

Thanks!

Hello,

"Archaeologists excavating a Neanderthal campsite found discarded gazelle teeth there whose coloration indicated that gazelles had been hunted throughout the year. The archaeologists concluded that the Neanderthals had inhabited the campsite year-round and thus were not nomadic" says the Neanderthals weren't nomadic, but it also says (or least heavily implies) they hunted gazelles, throughout the year.
Answer choice C says, "Neanderthals saved gazelle teeth for use in religious rituals and later discarded them." Thus, the Neanderthals could have been nomadic, like the Cro-Magnons who had teeth from just one season. However, the Neanderthals may have saved teeth from many seasons, and maybe from many years of nomadic travels, before discarding the teeth.

David

[mN2mmvf]

Hi David,

How does saving the teeth "for use in religious rituals and later discarding them" account for the coloration differences? I interpreted the stimulus to suggest that the gazelles' teeth color were determined by when they died (perhaps dietary changes due to food availability during the summer vs. the winter affect teeth color). I don't quite understand how saving the teeth suggests that they may have been nomadic.

Thanks!

[AthenaDalton]

Thanks for your question!

You were right to correlate tooth color to when the deer died. The tooth color is relevant because it indicates when the Neanderthals hunted deer -- during a particular season or year-round? If all of the teeth found at a particular campsite look like they came from gazelle that were killed during the fall season, a geologist could conclude that the Neanderthals lived there during the fall only.

By contrast, when the geologists found a campsite with teeth from every season, they (reasonably) thought that the Neanderthals lived and hunted there year-round.

All of this is premised on the assumption that the deer were killed, eaten, and their teeth discarded shortly after the gazelle were killed.

The reason answer choice (C) throws a wrench in this geologists' hypothesis is that if the Neanderthals kept gazelle teeth for religious purposes for a time then threw them away, we can't conclude much about the color of teeth we find at the campsite. The teeth could have come from gazelle killed 6 months ago in a completely different location -- in this scenario, the Neanderthals would have carried the teeth with them from a different site. The teeth could have come from anywhere.

This doesn't necessarily mean the tribe was nomadic, it just casts doubt on the theory that the tribe lived in the same location year-round based just on the tooth color theory.

Hope that makes sense! Good luck studying.

[mN2mmvf]

Thank you Athena! Makes sense.

[ashpine17]

What effect, if any, does E have on the argument? Doesn't E affect both groups?

[ashpine17]

So I was utterly confused after reading the first sentence. I just didn't get how they were able to use gazelle teeth to tell whether a group of humans were nomadic or not. I just don't understand how this "support" supports the conclusion that N was nomadic but C were not. Was it the color or shape of the teeth?

[ashpine17]

I mean what was it about the coloration of the teeth that would indicate what time of year the gazelles were hunted? Or is this not an important question to ask for this question?

[Robert Carroll]

ashpine

Answer choice (E) probably strengthens the argument, making it even more plausible that the Neanderthals hunted their gazelles year-round from a single site.

The premise just tells us that the archaeologists can tell from the coloration of the teeth that the gazelles were hunted throughout the year. If some answer choice addressed how the archaeologists know that, and maybe showed that they should not have been so confident in that assessment, that would be fine, but that just doesn't occur among any answer choice, so it seems irrelevant to try to attack it.

Robert Carroll