Humans arrived in the Kaliko Islands about 7,000 years ago, and within 3,000 years most of the large mammal species that had lived in the forests of the Kaliko Islands had become extinct. Yet humans cannot have been a factor in the species' extinctions, because there is no evidence that the humans had any significant contact with the mammals. Further, archaeologists have discovered numerous sites where the bones of fish had been discarded, but they found no such areas containing the bones of large mammals, so the humans cannot have hunted the mammals. Therefore, some climate change or other environmental factor must have caused the species' extinctions.
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The argument states that human activity had played no role in the extinction of large mammal on the Kaliko Islands, and it was a result of climate change or other environmental factor. Although it seems convincing, it is established on a few assumptions that are replete with holes and flaws.
First of all, the statement assumes that no substantial amount of contact with mammals equals to no human influence on these species. However, this assumption is simply invalid. Although there was no evidence showing the human-large mammal interaction, it could not prove that this type of interaction did not exist. It is likely with better equipment and further studies on this area that this contact between humans and the mammals will be discovered. Furthermore, even if it were true that there was not direct contact, human activities might have influenced these species indirectly. For instance, human’s over-farming may have caused certain type of food resources of these mammals to reduce drastically. Therefore, this assumption is entirely false.
Secondly, the argument uses the discarded fishbone and the never-discovered mammal relics to assume that humans had never hunted these large game of animals. In order to make this connection, the argument believes that since there is no discovery of mammal bones, they were not preyed by humans. It has not taken one possibility into consideration that the reason why archaeologists could not found mammal bones in the same area is because these bones and leftovers were not preserved as properly as the fish bones. As a result, the mammal bones became stones or sands under the influence of history. What is more, even though they have not found any mammal relics, this does not mean that archaeologist has not found any bones of these species at all.
What is more, after excluding human influence on the extinction, the argument immediately supported the alternative cause: environmental factors. This assumption totally ignores any other type of potential reason of this extinction. For instance, it could be a type of epidemic disease among these mammals that had wiped them out. Before, the argument can examine these other potential factors, it is very unconvincing to conclude that environmental factors are the main culprit.
In sum, this argument is entirely built on a few very unpersuasive assumptions. In order to strengthen its credibility, many alternative explanations need to be proven impossible.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- only need 'human’s over-farming may have caused certain type of food resources of these mammals to reduce drastically.'. or human beings broke the balance of the environment.
argument 2 -- not OK. maybe the fish eaten by human beings are the food for large mammals too.
argument 3 -- better to say: maybe human beings bring epidemic diseases to those areas where large mammals live.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 394 350
No. of Characters: 2025 1500
No. of Different Words: 197 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.455 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.14 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.828 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 144 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 107 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 74 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 54 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.7 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.457 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.286 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.478 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.063 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, furthermore, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, for instance, as a result, first of all, what is more
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 43.0 28.8173652695 149% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 45.0 55.5748502994 81% => OK
Nominalization: 24.0 16.3942115768 146% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2089.0 2260.96107784 92% => OK
No of words: 394.0 441.139720559 89% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.30203045685 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.45527027702 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.94021374446 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 206.0 204.123752495 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.522842639594 0.468620217663 112% => OK
syllable_count: 668.7 705.55239521 95% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 12.0 4.96107784431 242% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 42.1868166611 57.8364921388 73% => OK
Chars per sentence: 104.45 119.503703932 87% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.7 23.324526521 84% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.5 5.70786347227 114% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.157063426891 0.218282227539 72% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.048105233104 0.0743258471296 65% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.051272662684 0.0701772020484 73% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0879324819792 0.128457276422 68% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0560238521234 0.0628817314937 89% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.4 14.3799401198 93% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 48.3550499002 90% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.46 12.5979740519 107% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.03 8.32208582834 109% => OK
difficult_words: 111.0 98.500998004 113% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.