Graduate Management Admission Test Changed GMAT Questions

The following is based on an article published in 2012.

Most linguists believe proto-Indo-European, the ancestor of all Indo-European

languages, was the language of chariot-driving pastoralists who spread through

Eurasia from steppes north of the Black Sea about 4,000 years ago. But a

competing theory is that proto-Indo-European was spoken by farmers in Anatolia

(Asia Minor) about 9,000 years ago, and spread from there along with agriculture.

To evaluate these hypotheses, researchers statistically compared IndoEuropean languages’ vocabularies. Languages with more similar vocabularies are

probably more closely related, sharing more recent common ancestors.

Combining the vocabulary statistics with the known dates when certain languages

split, and with their known geographical ranges, a computer calculated the most

likely relationships among all Indo-European languages and concluded that protoIndo-European probably originated in Anatolia 9,000 years ago.

Disputing this conclusion, skeptics argue that most Indo-European languages

are similar in their words pertaining to chariots and wagons, suggesting protoIndo-European split into daughter languages only after chariots and wagons were

invented. No archaeological evidence indicates that chariots and wagons existed

before 5,500 years ago. Furthermore, proto-Indo-European had words for "horse"

and "bee" and lent many words to proto-Uralic, the mother language of Finnish

and Hungarian. The steppes north of the Black Sea were far closer than Anatolia

to areas where proto-Uralic was spoken, and had more abundant wild horses and

bees.

Soil salinization—the process by which soil acquires excess soluble salt, adversely affecting pasture or crop growth—is regarded as Australia's most serious environmental problem. Cope, whose 1958 investigation is considered the earliest survey of salt-affected areas in Victoria, hypothesized that surplus rainwater mobilized soluble salt stored in the permeable layer of soil, causing it to accumulate above an impermeable layer and then discharge downslope or onto a valley floor. In the late 1970s, however, Jenkin identified saline water underground as the main and immediate (though not ultimate) source of the salt, and hypothesized that the spread of salinity resulted from a rise in that groundwater. He attributed the rise to a decrease in coverage by water-absorbing trees and other vegetation at some ill-defined point in Australia's post-settlement history.

However, more-recent research suggests there was no rise in post-settlement groundwater levels. Furthermore, soil salinity probably antedated European settlement: early cartographic evidence indicates that some streams were saline when Europeans arrived. Dahlhaus suggests that salt accumulation resulted from marine incursions several million years ago, when parts of Victoria may have been submerged—as well as from transport of salt from the sea by wind and rain. Dahlhaus also notes that various minerals dissolved in groundwater by weathering may have produced salt.