Humans arrived in the Kaliko Islands about 7,000 years ago, and within 3,000 years most of the large mammal species that had lived in the forests of the Kaliko Islands had become extinct. Yet humans cannot have been a factor in the species' extinctions, because there is no evidence that the humans had any significant contact with the mammals. Further, archaeologists have discovered numerous sites where the bones of fish had been discarded, but they found no such areas containing the bones of large mammals, so the humans cannot have hunted the mammals. Therefore, some climate change or other environmental factor must have caused the species' extinctions.
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The reading passage argues that human arrival to Kaliko Islands is irrelevant to the extinctions of large mammals. Although it is supported by several reasons, it seems its stated or unstated assumptions have a possibility to make the argument unreliable.
Firstly, the author is assuming that the archaeologists have found every site of humans at that time settled down. The reading passage mentioned that due to the lack of evidence of large mammals at historical sites there is no correlation between humans’ arrival and mammal extinction. However, perhaps there are numerous undiscovered historical sites which might provide evidence of hunting of large mammals. If then, the argument that humans are unrelated to the large mammals’ extinctions will be weakened.
Secondly, the author assumes that contacting with the mammals always leaves evidence. However, it is not applicable to every situation as some kinds of contact rarely leave fossils or other evidence. Perhaps they hunted cows or sheep to obtain leathers rather than meats, so they might have not brought the whole parts of heavy mammals’ bodies but brought only necessary parts. Since leathers are hardly fossilized or preserved compared to bones, there might have remained scarce evidence. Hence, if then, despite the lack of evidence there might have been an influence of humans on mammals, as result, the argument cannot hold water.
Thirdly, the argument does not consider the indirect influence of humans on mammals. Perhaps people who arrived at the Kaliko islands fired forest intentionally to make lands for agriculture. If then, although there might be no direct contact between humans and mammals, those mammals that lived in the forest were influenced by those humans, and in this case, no evidence remains. Therefore, if there was that kind of indirect contact, the argument is weakened.
To sum up, the argument, as it stands now, is considerably flawed due to its reliance on unwarranted assumptions. If the author cannot provide proper evidence to prove the stated or unstated assumptions mentioned above are true, the argument cannot be persuasive.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 7 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 337 350
No. of Characters: 1748 1500
No. of Different Words: 171 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.285 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.187 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.607 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 144 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 108 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 65 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 33 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.824 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.721 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.706 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.344 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.344 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.091 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, firstly, hence, however, if, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, third, thirdly, kind of, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 19.0 28.8173652695 66% => OK
Preposition: 42.0 55.5748502994 76% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1812.0 2260.96107784 80% => OK
No of words: 337.0 441.139720559 76% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.37685459941 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.28457229495 4.56307096286 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.72191755156 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 175.0 204.123752495 86% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.519287833828 0.468620217663 111% => OK
syllable_count: 570.6 705.55239521 81% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 10.0 2.70958083832 369% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 31.9487045619 57.8364921388 55% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 106.588235294 119.503703932 89% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.8235294118 23.324526521 85% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.70588235294 5.70786347227 117% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 8.20758483034 24% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.192230134885 0.218282227539 88% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0670624893776 0.0743258471296 90% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0722321150452 0.0701772020484 103% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.113928334196 0.128457276422 89% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0590289384181 0.0628817314937 94% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.8 14.3799401198 96% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 48.3550499002 90% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.92 12.5979740519 110% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.61 8.32208582834 103% => OK
difficult_words: 86.0 98.500998004 87% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 54.17 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.25 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.