Q9

[PhoebeL747]

I don't understand why the answer is C at all.. where can I find the line support for this answer? I found the last paragraph very confusing. Can someone please help explain the final paragraph in more straightforward language please? Thanks in advance!

[ohthatpatrick]

The overall topic here involves these precious artifacts found in Mali, called terra-cotta sculptures, which I'm just gonna call TCS's from now on.

Mali passed a law that said, "People are not allowed to dig up TCS's from Mali and export them to other countries".

Unfortunately, they couldn't enforce the law, and so a lot of the sites were looted (people dug up TCS's and shipped / stole them away to other countries).

(If you're wondering why the Mali govt. didn't just dig up all the TCS's itself, the author says that the govt doesn't have the $$ to fund so many archaeological digs).

----------------------------------

People are mad at the looters. There's even an international body called UNESCO that regulates this sort of stuff. UNESCO would say that TCS's belong to Mali. A lot of countries have laws similar to Mali's that say "you can't dig up our precious artifacts and take them elsewhere".

-----------------------------------

Unfortunately, these policies create a problem: since a bunch of TCS's have already been looted and taken to other countries, the people who bought these TCS's will be scared to tell anyone that they have them. If I'm a rich guy and I bought a stolen TCS, I don't want to let anyone know, or else the UNESCO laws and Mali laws will mean that they can come grab the TCS from me and return it home to Mali.

Since I'm going to hide my TCS, Mali doesn't have any way to keep track of it. They can't "preserve information" about the TCS I have, so some of the historical / archaeological value of the TCS is lost.

This is ironic --- the UNESCO laws are designed to help countries control their precious artifacts and thus to better understand their cultural history. Meanwhile, the UNESCO law in this case is making it harder for Mali to learn about its precious artifacts (because rich guys in London who have already bought TCS's on the black market won't be sharing any information about the TCS they possess).

--------------------

So when the last paragraph rolls around, the author has just established that the well-intentioned laws set out by Mali and by UNESCO kinda backfired and made the situation even worse.

In reaction to this problematic situation, the author, in the last paragraph, is trying to describe a "solution" ... i.e. he's trying to describe what Mali should have done instead.

He's saying, "Rather than making it illegal to dig up these TCS's, it would have worked out better if Mali had just worked with the would-be looters. If Mali had issued digging licenses to some of these outsiders who wanted to get their hands on a TCS, then Mali would have gotten some tax revenue and would have gotten thorough information on each TCS before it left the country."

In the final two sentences, he's just saying, "Sure this isn't a perfect solution --- the people who got a digging license still aren't as good at preserving the history as a proper archaeological dig would have been, but this solution still would have had better outcomes than what actually happened."

-------------------

For Q9, we're doing a "serves to / in order to / primarily to" question.
Those are asking about the PURPOSE of saying something, so you really ask yourself "What big idea was happening right before this sentence / what's the overall purpose of this paragraph?"

Since the last paragraph involves the author saying, "Here's what they SHOULD'VE done", the purpose of asking the reader to suppose that Mali had imposed a tax is to convince the reader that the author's suggested approach would have been better than the actual approach Mali took.

(A) The author isn't trying to get us to think more about museums.
(B) The author isn't praising Mali; he's criticizing, if anything, since he's offering an alternative.
(C) Sure, this is accurate. In this last paragraph, the author is arguing for a different approach from the one Mali used. It's fair to say the author's approach is more pragmatic, because even though IDEALLY Mali and actual archaeologists would have control over all the TCS digging, the author thinks that IN REALITY (practically / pragmatically) it would have worked out better had Mali just condoned and regulated the outsiders' digging.
(D) The TAX wouldn't give diggers any incentive to keep careful records. The fact that the Malian govt would be authorizing each dig was going to allow THE GOVT to keep better records, in the author's plan.
(E) The author isn't highlighting a flaw in the UNESCO doctrine. The author is proposing an alternative to Mali's flawed approach.

Hope this helps.

[PhoebeL747]

Wow thanks for the great explanation! Now I finally got it.