Free Practice Question
RC · Reading Comprehension
705-805
Short Passage - Science
Reading Passage
Native American women of the Greater American Southwest understood ceramic technology long before they began manufacturing ceramic containers. Ceramic containers appeared over a millennium after the introduction of agriculture among southwestern Native American groups that had previously relied solely upon foraging, and approximately eight hundred years after the archaeological record indicates ceramic figurines first appeared in the region. To explain this lag, anthropologist James Brown proposed that the manufacture of ceramic containers began as these groups became increasingly sedentary and more reliant upon agriculture and developed greater need for storage containers. He argued further that since pottery making fit easily into women's schedules, the labor of making containers had negligible costs. Subsequent research has shown that pottery making exacerbated the scheduling problems of women, whose child-care responsibilities, foraging activities, and other contributions to subsistence were already greater than during the preceramic period. Other evidence, however, does seem to support Brown's argument that increased need for containers was important to the inception of pottery making. Pottery containers provided a means of storing and cooking food that enhanced the nutritional yield of a given crop. As southwestern populations became more reliant on agriculture for subsistence, they had to increase their crops' nutritional yield, since low population densities impeded expansion of field systems.
The author of the passage mentions the effect of ceramic containers on nutritional yields of crops most likely in order to suggest
Answer Choices
Sign in to reveal the correct answerA
a reason for changes in density among southwestern Native American populations
B
a reason for the increased reliance of southwestern Native American populations on agriculture
C
a reason for the lag in container manufacture among southwestern Native American populations
D
one incentive for container manufacture among southwestern Native American populations
E
the likelihood of scheduling problems for southwestern Native American women
Reveal the correct answer
Sign in for free to check your answer and unlock the full explanation.
Track your performance and improve
Get detailed analytics, unlock full explanations, and move up difficulty tiers as you practice.
Explanation
Unlock the full explanation
Create a free account to reveal the correct answer, see the step-by-step explanation, and start tracking your GMAT progress.
Comments
Sign in to join the discussion
No comments yet
Be the first to share your thoughts and help others understand it better.
Sign in to commentDetails
Difficulty
705-805
Type
RC
Category