12.Practice.Tests.for.the.SAT_2015-2016_1128p

Section 3 /
Practice Test Nine
771
Questions 13-24 are based on the following passage.
The following passage was excerpted from an essay in an
academic journal on the origins of art.
Most of human prehistory has left behind no
convincing trace of art at all. Perhaps our remote
ancestors painted their bodies, but if that was
the first art, it wouldn't have survived for us to
(5) know about. The first preserved art developed
more or less simultaneously in Europe, Africa, and
Australia, with some further recent discoveries of
old art in Asia and the Americas as well. Early art
itself assumed many forms, ranging from wood-
( JO) and bone-carving, engraving, bas relief, and threedimensional
sculpture to painting and music. Best
known to modern Europeans are the cave paintings
of so-called Cro-Magnon people in Frane .
and Spain, living in the era termed the PaleohthIC
(15) (from about 40,000 to 10,000 years ago). Those
cave paintings rivet our attention not only because
they include great art by any standard, but also
because of the obvious questions that flash out.
What sort of people were those painters? What
(20) motivated them to paint, and why did they do it
in caves?
Upon entering the larger caves in France, the
answer seems obvious. The long, high, silent corridors
of Gargas and Rouffignac fill the viewer
(25) with awe, while the riot of colored stalactites and
stalagmites in Cougnac stuns us with its beauty.
Probably Cro-Magnon spelunkers* explored for
the same reasons. In that respect, as in so many
others, they were like modern humans, whereas
(30) their predecessors, the Neanderthals-like modern
apes-rarely penetrated the caves beyond the
zone of sunlight. We think of cave art as made by
"cavemen," a term that immediately evokes images
of hairy brutes, partly draped in animal furs.
(35) In fact, the Cro-Magnons lived far from caves, as
well as within them; we think of them as cavemen
only because the garbage they left in caves is more
likely to have been preserved than other artifacts.
From their garbage, burials, and art, we know that
( 40) they had needles, buttons, sewn clothing, and
parkas and were probably as warmly dressed as
modern Eskimos. They marked their caves with
trail signs termed claviforms, which warned Cro­
Magnon tourists to stay on the right-hand side of
( 45) wide passages, to look for art in concealed niches,
and to avoid bumping their heads in places with
low ceilings. Their footprints are still on the cave
floor, their handprints and marks of their scaffolding
still on the cave walls. Visiting some of the
(50) sites, you get the vivid sense that the artists walked
off the job only yesterday.
Like modern art, Cro-Magnon art varies widely
in quality, even within the same cave chamber.
Some of it impresses us as great, some as amateur-
(55) ish. Professional artists visiting the caves often
point out the sophisticated techniques by which
some Cro-Magnon artists succeeded in conveying
a sense of scale, motion, and perspective. Exquisite
pieces such as the clay bison and the carved wres-
( 60) tling ibex from Tue d' Audoubert achieve their
expressiveness with an economy of line and shape.
Especially notable is the obviously intentional
exploitation of irregular cave surfaces to transform
some cave paintings into three-dimensional
( 65) compositions. Most of the larger cave paintings
depict animals rather than people. Archeologists
used to believe that the paintings were of the animal
species most often hunted. We now realize
that although the most frequently painted animals
(70) -horses and bison-were indeed hunted, they
account for a much higher proportion of painted
animals than of the hunter's bag. Today's art provides
the answer to this puzzle; the animals we
prefer to depict aren't the ones that we most often
(75) eat, use, or encounter.
But why did the Cro-Magnons create cave art in
the first place? Archeologists used to debate various
functional interpretations: that the paintings
represented mindless copies of nature by savage
(80) people, or magical rites to ensure success at huting,
or depictions of myths, and so on. Such umtary
theories fell into disfavor as anthropologists
began to ask contemporary aboriginal Australians
and bushmen why they create their own rock art.
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