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CR question from OG 13, help needed......

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CR question from OG 13, help needed......

by Win_the_gmat » Sat Dec 29, 2012 6:36 pm
The spacing of the four holes on a fragment of a bone flute excavated at a Neanderthal campsite is just what is required to play the third through sixth notes of the diatonic scale - the seven - note musical scale used in much of Western music since the Renaissance. Musicologists therefore hypothesize that the diatonic musical scale was developed and used thousands of years before it was adopted by Western musicians.

Which of the following, if true, most strongly supports the hypothesis?

(A) Bone flutes were probably the only musical instrument made by Neanderthals.
(B) No musical instrument that is known to have used a diatonic scale is of an earlier date than the flute found at the Neanderthal campsite.
(C) The flute was made from a cave - bear bone and the campsite at which the flute fragment was excavated was in a cave that also contained skeletal remains of cave bears.
(D) Flutes are the simplest wind instrument that can be constructed to allow playing a diatonic scale.
(E) The cave-bear leg bone used to make the Neanderthal flute would have been long enough to make a flute capable of playing a complte diatonic scale.

I'm confused between C and E but more inclined towards C.Please can somebody help to explain the correct answer.Thanks.
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by ktlee1981 » Sat Dec 29, 2012 7:41 pm
This one should be approached by considering what we know:

Facts: The fragment shows what might be the third through sixth notes of the diatonic scale.

Conclusion: The complete flute contains the holes to play the remaining notes of the diatonic scale.

We're missing a step here, which is what we should be looking at: Does the remainder of the flute have the remaining notes of the diatonic scale?

Based on that, the answer should be E. We can do this by eliminating answer choices that don't fit what we're looking for to connect fact to conclusion.

A: Not relevant. It doesn't tell us that this instrument is using the diatonic scale.

B: Again, we don't have any reason to believe, without more, that the remainder of the flute has all the remaining notes of the diatonic scale, so this information is irrelevant.

C: Not relevant. We don't care about the cave bears, we care about whether the remainder of the flute has all the remaining notes of the diatonic scale.

D: Not relevant.

E: It would have been long enough to make a flute capable of playing the complete diatonic scale. This is what we need. With this, it becomes more likely that the flute did play this scale.
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