Maritime Origins | Science Tech RC

When did humans first take to the water—and how can we even know for sure? The GMAT and GRE passages explore the scientific debate surrounding maritime technology’s origins, challenging you to navigate competing evidence, methodological disputes, and the interpretive gaps that arise when physical artifacts tell one story while indirect evidence suggests another entirely.

Read these hard to read RC passage(s) in Science Technology and Environment and answer the question(s) that follows. You can choose the GMAT style Reading Passage and the question or the GRE RC variant and answer the GRE-style question. Even better, you could solve both.

GMAT Reading Practice | Hard | ~220 words

The theory that early boat use required advanced planning, tool-making, and navigational skills positions maritime technology as a crucial evolutionary threshold. Physical evidence provides only partial answers: the oldest confirmed watercraft, discovered in the Netherlands and dated between 8250 and 7550 B.C.E., represents a relatively recent technological achievement. Substantial indirect evidence suggests far earlier maritime activity; archaeological findings on Crete include stone tools dated to approximately 130,000 years ago, while similar implements discovered on Indonesian islands have been attributed to periods exceeding 800,000 years. These locations’ island geography necessitates waterborne transit, yet the absence of preserved boats from these eras creates interpretive challenges.

Competing methodologies intensify the debate. Recent DNA analysis of population divergence patterns indicates that modern humans likely crossed from Southeast Asia to northern Australia between 50,000 and 65,000 years ago, requiring open-ocean navigation across significant distances. Some researchers propose dramatically earlier timelines, suggesting that ancestral hominins possessed sufficient cognitive capacity for basic watercraft construction over one million years ago. However, archaeologists contend that current evidence remains inconclusive, noting that tools discovered on islands could have arrived through natural geological processes rather than deliberate human transport. The methodological difficulty of definitively dating maritime origins underscores broader challenges in reconstructing technological development from fragmentary archaeological records, particularly when organic materials like wood rarely survive extended preservation.

Question Type: Role of Sentence | Question Difficulty: High

The passage mentions stone implements discovered on Indonesian islands in order to:

1. Provide the most extreme example of the timeline discrepancy between physical and indirect evidence
2. Illustrate a geographic region where natural processes likely transported tools without human agency
3. Support archaeologists’ contention that island-based evidence remains methodologically unreliable
4. Demonstrate that ancestral hominins possessed maritime capabilities over one million years ago
5. Establish that island geography provides the strongest proof of early waterborne human transit

GRE RC Practice | Medium – Hard | ~130 words

The chronological question of maritime technology’s emergence has produced sharply divergent interpretations among researchers, with maximalists and minimalists occupying opposing methodological positions. Maximalist scholars advocate for antiquity extending beyond one million years, citing tool assemblages on remote Indonesian archipelagos as compelling, if circumstantial, evidence of deliberate oceanic crossings by ancestral hominins. This interpretation presumes that cognitive prerequisites for rudimentary watercraft construction existed far earlier than conventional models suggest. Conversely, minimalist researchers argue that such conclusions conflate correlation with causation, noting that stone implements could have reached island locations through tsunamis, floating vegetation mats, or tectonic land bridge submersion rather than intentional human transport. The most conservative position maintains that definitive maritime capability cannot be established before approximately 50,000 years ago, when genetic evidence corroborates human migration to Australia.

Question Type: Inference | Question Difficulty: Medium-High

Which of the following can most reasonably be inferred from the passage?

1. Genetic evidence provides more reliable dating methods than archaeological tool analysis
2. Maximalist scholars acknowledge limitations in the evidentiary basis for their position
3. Natural phenomena could account for tool presence on islands without human agency
4. Conventional models of cognitive development have been empirically discredited
5. The Australian migration represents the earliest confirmed instance of maritime capability