Reading comp PrepTest 146 · Section 4 · Question 19

Passage SummaryTopic: Social Science

Paragraph 1

• Paragraph note
  • Two phenomenon and a paradox are noted, and they're linked by an archaeologist
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Phenomenon 1/Paradox - 3000 BC: abstract writing seemingly popped up out of nowhere in Uruk
  • Phenomenon 2 - 4000 BC: Thousands of clay tokens were made
  • Archaeologists - Clay tokens ignored, or amulets, or game pieces
  • Denise Schmandt-Besserat (DSB) - Clay tokens are precursors to written word

Paragraph 2.1 (Lines 20-28)

• Paragraph note
  • More on the phenomenon
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • The tokens were found in tablet envelopes, some of which had impressions of the tokens inside

Paragraph 2.2 (Lines 28-37)

• Paragraph note
  • DSB's explanation
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Inscriptions equate to later farm inscriptions
  • Explanation - Envelopes tracked villagers' farm contributions
  • After 4000 BC: Hundreds of new tokens = specialization of villagers

Paragraph 3

• Paragraph note
  • A progression of developments is explained
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • 3100 BC - Tokens develop into marks on clay
  • Few hundred years - Marks use numerals
  • DSB - Over time, marks and numerals turn into writing
  • DSB evidence/example - 2 jars of oil (development from 2 tokens to 2 marks to 3 signs)

Main Point:
Denise Schmandt-Besserat argues that tokens discovered in the Jordan river region represent an early predecessor of writing, eventually developing into an abstract system of marks and numerals before becoming signs for words.

Key Lines:
Lines 9-11 - A central paradox/phenomenon is introduced
Lines 11-15 - Another phenomenon is introduced
Lines 17-19 - A scientist's (DSB) explanation for the phenomena/paradox is introduced
Lines 28-33 - DSB's theory is restated/explored
Lines 38-45 - The progression that serves as DSB's core thesis is outlined
Line 45 - DSB's key example is introduced

Meta-Structure:
Phenomenon/Explanation - The passage introduces two different phenomena that the Author ends up showing how one scientist brought them together to form an explanation. The first phenomenon is the "seemingly sudden" development of abstract writing in Uruk (Lines 9-11). The second is the thousands of clay tokens found in the area around 1000 years before the abstract writing (Lines 11-15). Denise Schmant-Besserat ends up tracing the abstract language to these clay tokens, thus showing that abstract writing wasn't a seemingly sudden development but rather something that developed over 1000 years. And, in general, the Author's explanation for a central phenomenon (or two!) serves as the main point of the passage.

Paradox/Resolution - One of the phenomena to be described was a paradox—something "long puzzled" researchers (Lines 9-11). There's nothing additional to be said here other than that some answers might reflect the paradoxical nature of the question being explored. That said, the resolution of a paradox also tends to serve as the main point for a passage. Since the same theory both explains the phenomena and resolves the paradox, it's almost certainly the main point of the passage.

Progression/Development - DSB's theory is that clay tokens developed into language, suggesting that there were intervening steps. Paragraph 3 spends some time walking through those steps, using one specific example to highlight how it worked. We should expect some questions about this progression, and how the different "steps" relate to each other.

Timeline - The passage brings up several specific years and time periods (3000 BC, 3100 BC, 4000 BC; "few centuries"), so we want to have a clear idea of the progression here, as we noted in the last paragraph (Progression/Development). It's also important to note that higher numbers BC are farther back in time (i.e., 4000 BC is before 3100 BC is before 3000 BC).

Last Thoughts:
Note that we split up Paragraph 2 into two parts. This is because there are two "functions" of the paragraph with a nice transition. It wouldn't have been weird for a new paragraph to start with, "Noting that these," and since there were only 3 paragraphs to begin with, changing that up to have four "chunks" won't make it unmanageable while allowing us to better find information as needed. Specifically, the first half of this paragraph is where we'd go to look for information about the earliest tokens and clay envelopes, and the second half is where we'd look for anything about DSB's theory based on them.

Also, this passage seems like there are a lot of little details and differences between concepts that are going to be key (e.g., tokens and marks and numerals and abstract writing, nouns and signs and symbols). We need to be careful as we analyze the answer choices that we're not glossing over this terminology, as some answers might be wrong just because they use the wrong word.