Question 52·Easy·Command of Evidence
In ancient Mesopotamia, scribes recorded laws, trade, and stories by pressing wedge-shaped marks into clay tablets. Modern historians often rely on the tablets recovered by archaeologists to study these societies, but the amount of written material differs by site; for example, ______
Which choice most effectively uses the data in the graph to complete the example?
For command-of-evidence questions with a graph, translate the visual into a simple comparison (highest, lowest, and approximate values). Then choose the option whose claim matches those comparisons exactly, and eliminate choices that reverse the order or add a numerical relationship (like “twice”) that the graph does not support.
Hints
Compare bar heights
Look for which site has the tallest bar in the graph.
Check the other two sites
Confirm whether that site’s bar is higher than both of the other bars.
Match wording to the data
Pick the option that describes the ordering of the bars without reversing it.
Step-by-step Explanation
Locate what the graph measures
The bar chart compares the number of recovered cuneiform tablets from three sites: Nippur, Mari, and Uruk.
Read the relative sizes of the bars
Nippur’s bar is highest (about 25 thousand), Mari’s is next (about 18 thousand), and Uruk’s is lowest (about 10 thousand).
Choose the statement that matches the graph
The only choice that accurately states Nippur has more recovered tablets than both other sites is “Nippur yielded more recovered tablets than either Mari or Uruk, according to the counts shown.”