All India CAT Group

Ankit Singh asked a question

Despite their fierce reputation, Vikings may not have always been the plunderers and pillagers popular culture imagines them to be. In fact, they got their start trading in northern European markets, researchers suggest.
Combs carved from animal antlers, as well as comb manufacturing waste and raw antler material has turned up at three archaeological sites in Denmark, including a medieval marketplace in the city of Ribe. A team of researchers from Denmark and the U.K. hoped to identify the species of animal to which the antlers once belonged by analysing collagen proteins in the samples and comparing them across the animal kingdom,
Laura Geggel reports for Live Science. Somewhat surprisingly, molecular analysis of the artifacts revealed that some combs and other material had been carved from reindeer antlers.... Given that reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) don't live in Denmark, the researchers posit that it arrived on Viking ships from Norway. Antler craftsmanship, in the form of decorative combs, was part of Viking culture. Such combs served as symbols of good health, Geggel writes. The fact that the animals shed their antlers also made them easy to collect from the large herds that inhabited Norway.
Since the artifacts were found in marketplace areas at each site it's more likely that the Norsemen came to trade rather than pillage. Most of the artifacts also date to the 780s, but some are as old as 725. That predates the beginning of Viking raids on Great Britain by about 70 years. [Traditionally, the so-called "Viking Age" began with these raids in 793 and ended with the Norman conquest of Great Britain in 1066.) Archaeologists had suspected that the Vikings had experience with long maritime voyages [that] might have preceded their raiding days. Beyond Norway, these combs would have been a popular industry in Scandinavia as well. It's possible that the antler combs represent a larger trade network, where the Norsemen supplied raw material to craftsmen in Denmark and elsewhere.
Q.
The primary purpose of the passage is:
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Abu Asrafi asked a question

The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Stories concerning the Undead have always been with us. From out of the primal darkness of Mankind’s earliest years, come whispers of eerie creatures, not quite alive (or alive in a way which we can understand), yet not quite dead either. These may have been ancient and primitive deities who dwelt deep in the surrounding forests and in remote places, or simply those deceased who refused to remain in their tombs and who wandered about the countryside, physically tormenting and frightening those who were still alive. Mostly they were ill-defined—strange sounds in the night beyond the comforting glow of the fire, or a shape, half-glimpsed in the twilight along the edge of an encampment. They were vague and indistinct, but they were always there with the power to terrify and disturb. They had the power to touch the minds of our early ancestors and to fill them with dread. Such fear formed the basis of the earliest tales although the source and exact nature of such terrors still remained very vague.
And as Mankind became more sophisticated, leaving the gloom of their caves and forming themselves into recognizable communities—towns, cities, whole cultures—so the Undead travelled with them, inhabiting their folklore just as they had in former times. Now they began to take on more definite shapes. They became walking cadavers; the physical embodiment of former deities and things which had existed alongside Man since the Creation. Some still remained vague and ill-defined but, as Mankind strove to explain the horror which it felt towards them, such creatures emerged more readily into the light. In order to confirm their abnormal status, many of the Undead were often accorded attributes, which defied the natural order of things—the power to transform themselves into other shapes, the ability to sustain themselves by drinking human blood, and the ability to influence human minds across a distance. Such powers—described as supernatural—only [lent] an added dimension to the terror that humans felt regarding them.
And it was only natural, too, that the Undead should become connected with the practice of magic. From very early times, Shamans and witchdoctors had claimed at least some power and control over the spirits of departed ancestors, and this has continued down into more “civilized” times. Formerly, the invisible spirits and forces that thronged around men’s earliest encampments, had spoken “through” the tribal Shamans but now, as entities in their own right, they were subject to magical control and could be physically summoned by a competent sorcerer. However, the relationship between the magician and an Undead creature was often a very tenuous and uncertain one. Some sorcerers might have even become Undead entities once they died, but they might also have been susceptible to the powers of other magicians when they did.
From the Middle Ages and into the Age of Enlightenment, theories of the Undead continued to grow and develop. Their names became more familiar—werewolf, vampire, ghoul—each one certain to strike fear into the hearts of ordinary humans.
Q. All of the following statements, if false, could be seen as being in accordance with the passage, EXCEPT:
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Abu Asrafi asked a question


Given above is the schematic map of the metro lines in a city with rectangles denoting terminal stations (e.g. A), diamonds denoting junction stations (e.g. R) and small filled-up circles denoting other stations. Each train runs either in east-west or north-south direction, but not both. All trains stop for 2 minutes at each of the junction stations on the way and for 1 minute at each of the other stations. It takes 2 minutes to reach the next station for trains going in east-west direction and 3 minutes to reach the next station for trains going in north-south direction. From each terminal station, the first train starts at 6 am; the last trains leave the terminal stations at midnight. Otherwise, during the service hours, there are metro service every 15 minutes in the north-south lines and every 10 minutes in the east-west lines. A train must rest for at least 15 minutes after completing a trip at the terminal station, before it can undertake the next trip in the reverse direction. (All questions are related to this metro service only. Assume that if someone reaches a station exactly at the time a train is supposed to leave, (s)he can catch that train.)
Q. Haripriya is expected to reach station S late. What is the latest time by which she must be ready to board at station S if she must reach station B before 1 am via station R?
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