Text 1: Anthropologist Park argues that the agricultural revolution of around 10,000 BCE was a great advance for humanity. Settled farming made possible larger populations, the accumulation of surplus, and the cultural elaboration — writing, cities, religion — that we now associate with civilization.
Text 2: Anthropologist Singh accepts the link between farming and civilization but rejects "advance" as a moral verdict. Skeletal evidence shows that early farmers were shorter, sicker, and more overworked than the foragers they replaced; agriculture made civilization possible, but it also made the lives of most individual humans, for thousands of years, demonstrably worse. Whether that is "advance" depends on whose welfare is counted.
Based on the texts, how would Singh (Text 2) most likely respond to Park's claim?
- Acheck_circle
He would accept the link to civilization while arguing that advance obscures the welfare costs to individuals.
- B
He would say foragers practiced agriculture.
- C
He would propose that civilization is uniformly bad.
- D
He would deny that agriculture led to civilization.
Explanation
Singh accepts the historical link but disputes the "advance" framing on welfare grounds. B captures this. A, C, and D contradict him.