Explanation
Correct answer: A.
Choice A is the best answer because it most logically completes the text’s discussion of the origin of iron metallurgy in Africa. The text explains that the single origin hypothesis suggests that iron metallurgy originated in Anatolia in West Asia circa 2200–2000 BCE and then spread to other parts of the world, with some advocates of this hypothesis arguing that the technology reached sub-Saharan Africa through the North African site of Carthage, where evidence of ironworking dates as far back as approximately 800–600 BCE. However, according to the text, researchers uncovered evidence of iron workshops at one Central African site, Gbabari, dating to circa 900–750 BCE—slightly before ironworking in Carthage—and at two other sites in Central Africa, Ôboui and Gbatoro, dating to as early as 2300–1900 BCE—significantly before ironworking spread to Carthage and roughly contemporaneous with its emergence in Anatolia. If iron metallurgy’s presence in Central Africa preceded its presence in North Africa, then this technology likely didn’t diffuse from Carthage to Central Africa. Moreover, this technology’s presence in Central Africa at roughly the same period when it originated in Anatolia would require its virtually immediate diffusion across the vast distances between the two regions—a development that would have been unlikely in the ancient world. Therefore, the researchers’ findings suggest that iron production may have developed independently and relatively simultaneously in Anatolia and parts of Central Africa.
Why the other choices are wrong
Choice B
Choice B is incorrect. The findings presented in the text indicate that iron metallurgy may have been occurring in Ôboui and Gbatoro as early as 2300 BCE, which is earlier than it is thought to have emerged in Anatolia, and may have been occurring in Gbabari as early as 900 BCE, which is earlier than it is thought to have arrived in Carthage as it began diffusing into Africa. These earlier instances suggest that instead of diffusing from Anatolia to Central Africa, this technology independently emerged in Central Africa instead, spreading from the earlier iron production sites in the region to the later site. Moreover, the text doesn’t indicate any differences in the iron technologies used at the two earlier sites in Central Africa and the technology used at the later site that might suggest separate origins for iron metallurgy within the region.
Choice C
Choice C is incorrect because the text discusses findings that iron metallurgy may have been occurring in Central Africa at nearly the same time as or even slightly before it emerged in Anatolia, without time for it to have spread there from Anatolia—suggesting that the technology may have independently developed in parts of Central Africa. Thus, instead of suggesting an alternate route for the diffusion of iron production into Central Africa, the findings suggest that the technology didn’t arrive there by diffusion through an intermediate geographical region at all.
Choice D
Choice D is incorrect because, as the text explains, researchers found that iron metallurgy may have been practiced at a Central African site as early as 2300–1900 BCE—a chronological range that not only predates the technology’s spread from Anatolia to Carthage in North Africa circa 800–600 BCE but also overlaps with, and slightly precedes, the range assigned to its invention in Anatolia, 2200–2000 BCE. This finding suggests that instead of diffusing from Anatolia to Central Africa over a vast distance and a great expanse of time, this technology may have been independently invented by Central African civilizations at the same time as it was invented in Anatolia, if not slightly before then. Nothing in the text necessarily suggests that technology arose “much earlier” in Anatolia than the evidence there currently indicates.