June 2007, Passage 4, Question 26
Transcript
Question 26. Question 26 is another detailed question which we know because again it asked what the passage indicates, not what you can infer from the passage not what the passage suggests, but what it says. So the passage indicates that prior to the use of pollen analysis in the study of the history of the Irish landscape, at least some historians believed which one of the following?
Now, the historians, what they believed prior to pollen analysis, that's probably gonna come from third and the fourth paragraphs because that's where they discussed specific cases were they use the pollen. So looking at the answer choices, answer choice A says that the Irish landscape had experienced significant flooding. And flooding isn't mentioned anywhere in the passage.
So its not answer choice A. Answer choice B, is tempting but wrong. So B says that cereal grain was not cultivated anywhere in Ireland. Remember, this passage is specifically about evidence from the county down. I don't know where the county down is, but it's not all of Ireland. So I don't know what historians believed about all of Ireland.
I only know what they believed about the county down. So answer choice C, the history of the Irish landscape during the 16th and 17th centuries was well documented. This is the exact opposite of what the passage says. In the first paragraph, they tell us that there aren't very many documents from before that period and that the ones from that period are limited to only a couple of different topic areas.
Answer choice D, Madder was not used as a dye until after the 18th century. Well actually, I don't know anything about when they use madder. Madder was an example from that last paragraph where they said you won't be able to use pollen analysis to study madder because it's too similar to the wild version of the plant. So I don't know what historians believed about madder, they don't present it to me in the passage, which means the answer has to be answer choice E.
So the beginning of flax cultivation in County Down, which was the place that we're talking about, may well have occurred before the 18th century. Yeah, this is the thing that people thought that then got disproven by the pollen analysis. They thought that it was used before, but paragraph four showed us it wasn't. So answer choice E is our answer.
Read full transcriptNow, the historians, what they believed prior to pollen analysis, that's probably gonna come from third and the fourth paragraphs because that's where they discussed specific cases were they use the pollen. So looking at the answer choices, answer choice A says that the Irish landscape had experienced significant flooding. And flooding isn't mentioned anywhere in the passage.
So its not answer choice A. Answer choice B, is tempting but wrong. So B says that cereal grain was not cultivated anywhere in Ireland. Remember, this passage is specifically about evidence from the county down. I don't know where the county down is, but it's not all of Ireland. So I don't know what historians believed about all of Ireland.
I only know what they believed about the county down. So answer choice C, the history of the Irish landscape during the 16th and 17th centuries was well documented. This is the exact opposite of what the passage says. In the first paragraph, they tell us that there aren't very many documents from before that period and that the ones from that period are limited to only a couple of different topic areas.
Answer choice D, Madder was not used as a dye until after the 18th century. Well actually, I don't know anything about when they use madder. Madder was an example from that last paragraph where they said you won't be able to use pollen analysis to study madder because it's too similar to the wild version of the plant. So I don't know what historians believed about madder, they don't present it to me in the passage, which means the answer has to be answer choice E.
So the beginning of flax cultivation in County Down, which was the place that we're talking about, may well have occurred before the 18th century. Yeah, this is the thing that people thought that then got disproven by the pollen analysis. They thought that it was used before, but paragraph four showed us it wasn't. So answer choice E is our answer.
