Trees Age : Strengthen

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Trees Age : Strengthen

by saranshpuri » Fri Apr 11, 2014 12:42 am
A tree's age can be determined by counting the annual growth rings in its trunk. Each ring represents one year, and the ring's thickness reveals the relative amount of rainfall that year. Archaeologists successfully used annual rings to determine the relative ages of ancient tombs at Pazyryk. Each tomb was constructed from freshly cut logs, and the tombs builders were constrained by tradition to use only logs from trees growing in the sacred Pazyryk Valley.
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Which one of the following, if true, contributes most to an explanation of the archaeologists' success in using annual rings to establish the relative ages of the tombs at the Pazyryk site?
(A) The Pazyryk tombs were all robbed during ancient times, but breakage of the tombs seals allowed the seepage of water, which soon froze permanently, thereby preserving the tombs' remaining artefacts.
(B) The Pazyryk Valley, surrounded by extremely high mountains, has a distinctive yearly pattern of rainfall, and so trees growing in the Pazyryk Valley have annual rings that are quite distinct from trees growing in nearby valleys.
(C) Each log in the Pazyryk tombs has among its rings a distinctive sequence of twelve annual rings representing six drought years followed by three rainy years and three more drought years.
(D) The archaeologists determined that the youngest tree used in any of the tombs was 90 years old and that the oldest tree was 450 years old.
(E) All of the Pazyryk tombs contained cultural artefacts that can be dated to roughly 2300 years ago.

OA : After Discussion

Please provide the answer with explaination

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by sinsofgmat » Sat Apr 12, 2014 5:48 am
Lets clarify the objective - need to find relative ages of tombs by finding relative ages of logs

How would you find it - through rings

How would you count - find an option that gives us starting point to count.

I would go for C

(A) The Pazyryk tombs were all robbed during ancient times, but breakage of the tombs seals allowed the seepage of water, which soon froze permanently, thereby preserving the tombs' remaining artefacts. - out of scope

(B) The Pazyryk Valley, surrounded by extremely high mountains, has a distinctive yearly pattern of rainfall, and so trees growing in the Pazyryk Valley have annual rings that are quite distinct from trees growing in nearby valleys. - doesn't matter as only logs for valley trees were used

(C) Each log in the Pazyryk tombs has among its rings a distinctive sequence of twelve annual rings representing six drought years followed by three rainy years and three more drought years. -

As the objective is to find out the relative ages of the tombs by examining the rings of the logs, we must have a baseline to start counting for. If all logs have one same pattern then it would become baseline to begin the count.

(D) The archaeologists determined that the youngest tree used in any of the tombs was 90 years old and that the oldest tree was 450 years old.- how would it help to find relative age of logs and so the tombs

(E) All of the Pazyryk tombs contained cultural artefacts that can be dated to roughly 2300 years ago. - Out of scope