StephanieK821 Wrote:I chose answer choice C at first because of lines 19-20 ("Herders of domesticated animals used for meat or milk typically kill off all but a few males before they are fully mature") and lines 38-42 ("If the Botai had indeed begun riding, they would likely have kept males alive to ride"). But I switched to answer choice A because I thought the passage gave stronger support for it in lines 36-39: "Thus, if the Botai had merely hunted horses, Olsen argues, the proportion of adult male bones should be lower."
Could someone explain why answer choice C is stronger? Thank you!
If you re-read paragraph two, you'll notice that the author never indicates that the Botai did target or would have targeted male pods. The author says that wild horses lived in two groups, families and male pods. The male pods scatter when attacked and the families don't, so "to maximize success in hunting horses, one would target the families."
But even if the Botai did target the male pods when hunting, we would expect the bones found by archaeologists to be those of grown males. The question asks what we could infer if the horse remains had consisted of fully grown females and young males, so that should rule out (A). The first sentence of the second paragraph, as you pointed out, indicates that with domesticated animals, the bones are normally those of females and young males, since presumably the females are used for milk and the males are culled before they are fully mature. Answer choice (C) tells us exactly this.