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 socalled 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.
While it may be true that Palean people not were the only people who made the woven baskets with a unique pattern, the author’s argument does not make cogent evidences for that. It is easy to understand why the author concluded Palean baskets were not uniquely made by Palean people, but this argument is rife with holes and assumptions, and thus, not strong enough to lead to that conclusion.
Mentioning the discovery of Palean basket in Lithos but no evidence of Palean boats, the author reports that Lithos people also made Palean woven baskets for themselves. But it is possible that Lithos people could have possessed their boats to buy and load the Palean woven baskets from Palean people. In other words, the author additionally needs the evidence of no boats within two different tribes to support the argument. Now the argument has a great loophole because the author just mentioned the absence of evidence in Palean boats, without the consideration of Lithos boats.
And even without crossing the Brim river, we can think of indirect path of distribution through the third merchants of another tribes. Even though it was not probable that Paleans and Lithos people can exchange their artisans and products due to the Brin River, there could be some merchants who visit the two villages regularly to buy the Palean woven baskets and sell them to Lithos people. In that case, the third merchants could have played an important role in conveying Palean baskets into the Lithos culture.
Besides, the geographical changes around Brim River can be considered as another factor. The Brim River is now very deep and broad according to the author. We don’t know how exactly the river was in the prehistoric era. The river could not have been existed long time ago, so that Palean people are adjacent enough to Lithos people to sell the woven baskets to make profits. And there could be some geographical changes to make the river deep and broad. In that case, the evidence of boats is not needed and the discovery of woven baskets in Lithos is fully plausible.
The woven baskets with a special pattern can be one of the significant artifacts for the study of archaeologists. For this reason, identifying the origin and the distribution path is very important. The author’s argument, however, is not persuasive in some points because he didn’t figure out all the possibilities and other factors in that the Palean woven baskets could be sent by Lithos boats or the third merchants, and that there is no need to cross the Brim River in the past.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 437 350
No. of Characters: 2072 1500
No. of Different Words: 188 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.572 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.741 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.412 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 147 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 91 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 58 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 36 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.278 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.898 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.556 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.364 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.583 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.16 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, besides, but, however, if, may, so, third, thus, while, in other words
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 18.0 11.1786427146 161% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 24.0 28.8173652695 83% => OK
Preposition: 51.0 55.5748502994 92% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2145.0 2260.96107784 95% => OK
No of words: 435.0 441.139720559 99% => OK
Chars per words: 4.93103448276 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.56690854021 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.55385020676 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 191.0 204.123752495 94% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.43908045977 0.468620217663 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 656.1 705.55239521 93% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 6.0 1.67365269461 358% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 61.5496387048 57.8364921388 106% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.166666667 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.1666666667 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.22222222222 5.70786347227 74% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.190405282139 0.218282227539 87% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0650035068767 0.0743258471296 87% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0601125790172 0.0701772020484 86% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.115761561884 0.128457276422 90% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0332289856057 0.0628817314937 53% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.9 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 55.58 48.3550499002 115% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.61 12.5979740519 92% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.84 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 83.0 98.500998004 84% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => 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.