Woven baskets characterized by a particular distinctive pattern have previously been found only in the immediate vicinity of the prehistoric village of Palea and therefore were believed to have been made only by the Palean people. Recently, however, archaeologists discovered such a "Palean" basket in Lithos, an ancient village across the Brim River from Palea. The Brim River is very deep and broad, and so the ancient Paleans could have crossed it only by boat, and no Palean boats have been found. Thus it follows that the so-called Palean baskets were not uniquely Palean.
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
A Palean basket was found in a region outside its common habitat. And while such discovery could very well lead to the conclusion that the basket was not unique to Palea, however, the argument lacks sufficient evidence to arrive at such a conclusion.
For starters the basket found could have been made in Palea and just have drifted off by natural factors to Lithos. Previously such baskets were found only around Palea, Lithos is not far off from Palea. As the author states a river is all that stands between Lithos and Palea so the basket could easily have been washed off from Palea to Lithos by the river, with the assistance of natural factors such as floods, earthquakes or even it could even have been carried off by fish or birds. The author did not provide sufficient evidence to discount these possibilities.
The author states that the Brim river is deep and broad however, the author is talking about the current time. I am sure we can all name a few rivers that do not exist anymore while at the same time name a few that surfaced in the past century. So perhaps this river did not exist at the time of the Paleans and people could have simply walked to Lithos. Or perhaps the river did exist but was shallow and narrow and people did not have the requirement of complicated technology to cross such river. So the author needs to provide ironclad Geographical and meteorological proof of the existence of river Brim at the time of the Palean village.
If we assume that the river Brim did exist at the time of our concern, can we really conclude that the Paleans had no means to cross it due to lack of existence of Palean boats? Or what makes us conclude that there were no Palean boats, to begin with? They may have existed but their evidence could have been wiped out due to the above stated natural factors. Or maybe the Paleans had another means of crossing the river that is unknown to us. The point is we cannot conclusively say that the Paleans could not have had any means to cross river Brim just from the argument presented by the author.
The timespan of the village of Palea and that of Lithos has not been specified. So there could be a possibility that the village of lithos grew much later than the village of Palea and by then the Palean woven baskets may have become ubiquitous around the world. Or the village of Lithos itself may have been brought about by the Paleans themselves and thus the people of Lithos inherited the woven baskets.
Perhaps Palean basket was not unique to Palea, perhaps it originated from a different place, who knows maybe even Lithos could be the birthplace of Palean basket. However, the argument provided by the author does not sufficiently prove that Palean basket was not unique to Palea.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 494 350
No. of Characters: 2224 1500
No. of Different Words: 194 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.714 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.502 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.238 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 144 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 85 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 42 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 27 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.524 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.475 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.619 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.35 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.616 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.204 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, however, if, may, really, so, then, thus, well, while, such as, talking about, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 19.0 11.1786427146 170% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 69.0 55.5748502994 124% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2278.0 2260.96107784 101% => OK
No of words: 494.0 441.139720559 112% => OK
Chars per words: 4.61133603239 5.12650576532 90% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.71445763274 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.29649246126 2.78398813304 82% => OK
Unique words: 200.0 204.123752495 98% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.404858299595 0.468620217663 86% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 718.2 705.55239521 102% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 5.0 1.67365269461 299% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 49.8535724378 57.8364921388 86% => OK
Chars per sentence: 108.476190476 119.503703932 91% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.5238095238 23.324526521 101% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.61904761905 5.70786347227 81% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 12.0 4.67664670659 257% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.258961961278 0.218282227539 119% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0950499082222 0.0743258471296 128% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0726927504559 0.0701772020484 104% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.14668582958 0.128457276422 114% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0759129168293 0.0628817314937 121% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.0 14.3799401198 83% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 56.59 48.3550499002 117% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 9.75 12.5979740519 77% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.37 8.32208582834 89% => OK
difficult_words: 81.0 98.500998004 82% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 9.0 12.3882235529 73% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.