Question

"Knowing how to use fire may have helped the early humans who left Africa 50,000 to 60,000 years ago to cope with colder conditions in Europe. It may also have given them a big advantage over the resident Neanderthals they encountered. By 35,000 years ago the Neanderthals, a sub-species of human whose own origins were in Africa, were mostly extinct." From The Telegraph, Article on Stone Age humans (2009). Which of the following claims about hominids would this passage provide evidence for?

Answer 1

Let us go over every choice:
D) D is incorrect; Neanderthals were a hominid species and a relatively advanced one since they lived very closely in time to homo sapiens (modern man). Neanderthals used to live in Europe and had been living there before modern man came from Africa.
C) This is not precise. While it could have been used as a weapon, nowhere in the passage can we see a hint for that. It might have helped modern humans in other ways, making them more reliably survive cold periods and thus displacing the resident Neanderthals.
B) This is also not precise. While the passage implies that fire might have been an important factor for the migration, quite possibly there could be other important aspects of migration to learn. Also, the passage says "may have helped", it is not too definitive.
A) THIS IS THE CORRECT CHOICE. The only concrete fact of the passage is the fact that Neandertals went extinct after the arrival of the modern man. The passage in whole is arguing that since fire is so important in Europe and the Neanderthals did not have access to it, we could attribute their extinction to the modern humans having fire as a competitive advantage.