Reading comp PrepTest 114 · Section 3 · Question 4

Topic: Social Sciences

Paragraph 1

• Paragraph note
  • Some scholars' view (Western Hemisphere was largely untamed by native populations before European settlers)
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Myth/some scholars' view:
    • The native populations did not alter or only minimally altered the Western Hemisphere before European settlers arrived in 1492 (first, fourth, and last sentences)
  • Author's view:
    • Evidence that forests were changed, especially through burning, before the arrival of the Europeans (second and third sentences)
  • Author's attitude: "myth" (first sentence); "scholarship shows" (second sentence).

Paragraph 2

• Paragraph note
  • Author's rebuttal (extensive evidence of controlled burning) and support (charcoal, meadows, mosaic quality, herbaceous undergrowth)
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Author's view:
    • There's a lot of evidence that native populations engaged in controlled burning (first sentence)
  • List of evidence of controlled burning by native populations, according to the author:
    • The largest charcoal accumulations are located near the largest native settlements (second sentence)
    • Controlled fires had different effects than natural fires, including creating grassy openings (meadows/glades), forests in different stages of maturity, and herbaceous undergrowth (third through last sentences)
  • Author's attitude: "large body of evidence" (first sentence); "shows that" (third sentence); "markedly different effects" (third sentence); "created" (third sentence); "promoted" (fifth sentence); "another result" (last sentence)

Paragraph 3

• Paragraph note
  • Author's support (fire-tolerant plants, homogenous pine forests, pine forests in tropical regions like Nicaragua)
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • List of evidence of controlled burning by native populations, according to the author (continued from last paragraph):
    • Created conditions favorable to fire-tolerant and sun-loving foods like berries (first sentence)
    • Converted mixed forests to homogenous forests, including longleaf, slash pine, and scrub oak forests
    • Modified forest composition in tropical environments, like the pine forests in Nicaragua (fourth through last sentences)
  • Author's attitude: "do account for some" (third sentence); "clearly extended and maintained it" (third sentence); "also influenced" (fourth sentence); "likely to have occurred" (seventh sentence); "also evident elsewhere" (last sentence).

Main Point: Some researchers' belief that native populations did not significantly impact the environment is wrong because a large body of evidence shows that such populations engaged in extensive controlled forest burning.

Criticizing a Viewpoint: This passage utilizes a Criticizing the Viewpoint Meta-Structure.* In this case, the author is criticizing the view maintained by some researchers that native populations made, at most, minor alterations to Western Hemisphere forests before the arrival of Europeans. The author provides a firm and matter-of-fact correction to this "myth" throughout the passage, showing how the geographical record provides ample evidence that the native populations' use of controlled burning made major changes to these forests. While it may not appear like the author is being overtly critical of these researchers’ position, the extent of the author’s evidence against the researchers’ view strongly suggests that the author is no fan of their view and wants to refute it.

When a passage utilizes a Criticizing a Viewpoint Meta-Structure, the main point is often the author's criticism. The author summarizes this position in the first sentence of the second paragraph, but we added some detail to our anticipated main point.

*Of course, when a passage utilizes a Meta-Structure from the Critical family, there are generally a few valid options for that passage's major Meta-Structure. You could easily call this passage a Correcting the Record or Rebutting Critics passage and reach the same conclusions about the passage's organization and main point that we did. If you see the first paragraph as establishing a debate between "scholarship" and "myth/some researchers," you could even think of this as a Resolving a Debate passage.

List: The author lists item after item of evidence that native populations engaged in the controlled burning of forests in the Western Hemisphere. So, the passage's most prominent minor Meta-Structure is the list. Some of these items are characterized as examples, and many are clearly causal or comparative in nature. But since the author moves from one item to another in the second and third paragraphs, it's best to think of all of these pieces of evidence as a long list. We should highlight each item of the list because several questions will be asked about these lists.

Each item on this passage's extensive list is fair game for the questions, but if you had to guess, which item is going to be tested most extensively? The Nicaraguan pine forest, right? We agree. That example takes up the most real estate, accounting for over half of the third paragraph. Moreover, that evidence seems the most persuasive, as we have present-day evidence to corroborate the "succession" from mixed-hardwood forests to pine-dominant forests that we think occurred after native populations burned these forests (P3, S6). So, it's important to understand this example, so let's distill it into a few bullet points below:

• Nicaragua has some pine-dominant forests in places we should find mixed forests.
• Today, we find these pine-dominant forests after the forests are burned.
• We think the native populations did that in the past since Europeans found these pine-dominant forests in places where native populations lived.
• In the past, when the native populations left, the forests would return to mixed forests.
• This also happened in the Caribbean and Mexico.