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DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of three questions. Choose the best answer to each question.There is no better illustration to the life cycle of a civilization than The Course of Empire, a series of paintings by Thomas Cole that hang in the gallery of the New York Historical Society. Cole beautifully captured a theory to which most people remain in thrall to this day: the theory of cycles of civilization.Each of the five imagined scenes depicts the mouth of a great river beneath a rocky outcrop. In the first, The Savage State, a lush wilderness is populated by a handful of hunter-gatherers eking out a primitive existence at the break of a stormy dawn. Imagine history from Columbus’ discovery of America in 1492 on through four more centuries as they savagely expanded across the continent. The second picture, ‘The Arcadian or Pastoral State,’ is of an agrarian idyll: the inhabitants have cleared the trees, planted fields, and built an elegant Greek temple.The third and largest of the paintings is ‘The Consummation of Empire.’ Now, the landscape is covered by a magnificent marble entrepôt, and the contented farmer-philosophers of the previous tableau have been replaced by a throng of opulently clad merchants, proconsuls and citizen-consumers. It is midday in the life cycle.Then comes ‘The Destruction of Empire,’ the fourth stage in Ferguson’s grand drama about the life-cycle of all empires. In ‘Destruction’ the city is ablaze, its citizens fleeing an invading horde that rapes and pillages beneath a brooding evening sky. Finally, the moon rises over the fifth painting, ‘Desolation,’ says Ferguson. There is not a living soul to be seen, only a few decaying columns and colonnades overgrown by briars and ivy.Conceived in the mid-1830s, Cole’s pentaptych, a five-piece work of art, has a clear message: all civilizations, no matter how magnificent, are condemned to decline and fall. The implicit suggestion was that the young American republic of Cole’s age would do better to stick to its bucolic first principles and resist the temptations of commerce, conquest and colonization. For centuries, historians, political theorists, anthropologists and the public at large have tended to think about the rise and fall of civilizations in such cyclical and gradual terms…More recently, it is the anthropologist Jared Diamond who has captured the public imagination with a grand theory of rise and fall. His book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, is cyclical history for the Green Age: tales of societies, from 17th century Easter Island to 21st century China, that risked, or now risk, destroying themselves by abusing their natural environments. Diamond quotes John Lloyd Stevens, the American explorer and amateur archaeologist who discovered the eerily dead Mayan cities of Mexico: ‘Here were the remains of a cultivated, polished, and peculiar people, who had passed through all the stages incident to the rise and fall of nations, reached their golden age, and perished.’ According to Diamond, the Maya fell into a classic Malthusian trap as their population grew larger than their fragile and inefficient agricultural system could support. More people meant more cultivation, but that means deforestation, erosion, drought and soil exhaustion. The result was civil war over dwindling resources and, finally, collapse.Q. The Mayans were mentioned in the last para of the passage to signify thata)more people translates to more cultivation and subsequent deforestation.b)increasing population and limited resources always results in a civil war.c)societies must resist the temptations of commerce, conquest and colonization.d)societies follow the cyclical pattern of rise and fall, the latter caused by abusing their environments.Correct answer is option 'D'. Can you explain this answer? for CAT 2025 is part of CAT preparation. The Question and answers have been prepared according to the CAT exam syllabus. Information about DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of three questions. Choose the best answer to each question.There is no better illustration to the life cycle of a civilization than The Course of Empire, a series of paintings by Thomas Cole that hang in the gallery of the New York Historical Society. Cole beautifully captured a theory to which most people remain in thrall to this day: the theory of cycles of civilization.Each of the five imagined scenes depicts the mouth of a great river beneath a rocky outcrop. In the first, The Savage State, a lush wilderness is populated by a handful of hunter-gatherers eking out a primitive existence at the break of a stormy dawn. Imagine history from Columbus’ discovery of America in 1492 on through four more centuries as they savagely expanded across the continent. The second picture, ‘The Arcadian or Pastoral State,’ is of an agrarian idyll: the inhabitants have cleared the trees, planted fields, and built an elegant Greek temple.The third and largest of the paintings is ‘The Consummation of Empire.’ Now, the landscape is covered by a magnificent marble entrepôt, and the contented farmer-philosophers of the previous tableau have been replaced by a throng of opulently clad merchants, proconsuls and citizen-consumers. It is midday in the life cycle.Then comes ‘The Destruction of Empire,’ the fourth stage in Ferguson’s grand drama about the life-cycle of all empires. In ‘Destruction’ the city is ablaze, its citizens fleeing an invading horde that rapes and pillages beneath a brooding evening sky. Finally, the moon rises over the fifth painting, ‘Desolation,’ says Ferguson. There is not a living soul to be seen, only a few decaying columns and colonnades overgrown by briars and ivy.Conceived in the mid-1830s, Cole’s pentaptych, a five-piece work of art, has a clear message: all civilizations, no matter how magnificent, are condemned to decline and fall. The implicit suggestion was that the young American republic of Cole’s age would do better to stick to its bucolic first principles and resist the temptations of commerce, conquest and colonization. For centuries, historians, political theorists, anthropologists and the public at large have tended to think about the rise and fall of civilizations in such cyclical and gradual terms…More recently, it is the anthropologist Jared Diamond who has captured the public imagination with a grand theory of rise and fall. His book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, is cyclical history for the Green Age: tales of societies, from 17th century Easter Island to 21st century China, that risked, or now risk, destroying themselves by abusing their natural environments. Diamond quotes John Lloyd Stevens, the American explorer and amateur archaeologist who discovered the eerily dead Mayan cities of Mexico: ‘Here were the remains of a cultivated, polished, and peculiar people, who had passed through all the stages incident to the rise and fall of nations, reached their golden age, and perished.’ According to Diamond, the Maya fell into a classic Malthusian trap as their population grew larger than their fragile and inefficient agricultural system could support. More people meant more cultivation, but that means deforestation, erosion, drought and soil exhaustion. The result was civil war over dwindling resources and, finally, collapse.Q. The Mayans were mentioned in the last para of the passage to signify thata)more people translates to more cultivation and subsequent deforestation.b)increasing population and limited resources always results in a civil war.c)societies must resist the temptations of commerce, conquest and colonization.d)societies follow the cyclical pattern of rise and fall, the latter caused by abusing their environments.Correct answer is option 'D'. Can you explain this answer? covers all topics & solutions for CAT 2025 Exam. Find important definitions, questions, meanings, examples, exercises and tests below for DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of three questions. Choose the best answer to each question.There is no better illustration to the life cycle of a civilization than The Course of Empire, a series of paintings by Thomas Cole that hang in the gallery of the New York Historical Society. Cole beautifully captured a theory to which most people remain in thrall to this day: the theory of cycles of civilization.Each of the five imagined scenes depicts the mouth of a great river beneath a rocky outcrop. In the first, The Savage State, a lush wilderness is populated by a handful of hunter-gatherers eking out a primitive existence at the break of a stormy dawn. Imagine history from Columbus’ discovery of America in 1492 on through four more centuries as they savagely expanded across the continent. The second picture, ‘The Arcadian or Pastoral State,’ is of an agrarian idyll: the inhabitants have cleared the trees, planted fields, and built an elegant Greek temple.The third and largest of the paintings is ‘The Consummation of Empire.’ Now, the landscape is covered by a magnificent marble entrepôt, and the contented farmer-philosophers of the previous tableau have been replaced by a throng of opulently clad merchants, proconsuls and citizen-consumers. It is midday in the life cycle.Then comes ‘The Destruction of Empire,’ the fourth stage in Ferguson’s grand drama about the life-cycle of all empires. In ‘Destruction’ the city is ablaze, its citizens fleeing an invading horde that rapes and pillages beneath a brooding evening sky. Finally, the moon rises over the fifth painting, ‘Desolation,’ says Ferguson. There is not a living soul to be seen, only a few decaying columns and colonnades overgrown by briars and ivy.Conceived in the mid-1830s, Cole’s pentaptych, a five-piece work of art, has a clear message: all civilizations, no matter how magnificent, are condemned to decline and fall. The implicit suggestion was that the young American republic of Cole’s age would do better to stick to its bucolic first principles and resist the temptations of commerce, conquest and colonization. For centuries, historians, political theorists, anthropologists and the public at large have tended to think about the rise and fall of civilizations in such cyclical and gradual terms…More recently, it is the anthropologist Jared Diamond who has captured the public imagination with a grand theory of rise and fall. His book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, is cyclical history for the Green Age: tales of societies, from 17th century Easter Island to 21st century China, that risked, or now risk, destroying themselves by abusing their natural environments. Diamond quotes John Lloyd Stevens, the American explorer and amateur archaeologist who discovered the eerily dead Mayan cities of Mexico: ‘Here were the remains of a cultivated, polished, and peculiar people, who had passed through all the stages incident to the rise and fall of nations, reached their golden age, and perished.’ According to Diamond, the Maya fell into a classic Malthusian trap as their population grew larger than their fragile and inefficient agricultural system could support. More people meant more cultivation, but that means deforestation, erosion, drought and soil exhaustion. The result was civil war over dwindling resources and, finally, collapse.Q. The Mayans were mentioned in the last para of the passage to signify thata)more people translates to more cultivation and subsequent deforestation.b)increasing population and limited resources always results in a civil war.c)societies must resist the temptations of commerce, conquest and colonization.d)societies follow the cyclical pattern of rise and fall, the latter caused by abusing their environments.Correct answer is option 'D'. Can you explain this answer?.

Solutions for DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of three questions. Choose the best answer to each question.There is no better illustration to the life cycle of a civilization than The Course of Empire, a series of paintings by Thomas Cole that hang in the gallery of the New York Historical Society. Cole beautifully captured a theory to which most people remain in thrall to this day: the theory of cycles of civilization.Each of the five imagined scenes depicts the mouth of a great river beneath a rocky outcrop. In the first, The Savage State, a lush wilderness is populated by a handful of hunter-gatherers eking out a primitive existence at the break of a stormy dawn. Imagine history from Columbus’ discovery of America in 1492 on through four more centuries as they savagely expanded across the continent. The second picture, ‘The Arcadian or Pastoral State,’ is of an agrarian idyll: the inhabitants have cleared the trees, planted fields, and built an elegant Greek temple.The third and largest of the paintings is ‘The Consummation of Empire.’ Now, the landscape is covered by a magnificent marble entrepôt, and the contented farmer-philosophers of the previous tableau have been replaced by a throng of opulently clad merchants, proconsuls and citizen-consumers. It is midday in the life cycle.Then comes ‘The Destruction of Empire,’ the fourth stage in Ferguson’s grand drama about the life-cycle of all empires. In ‘Destruction’ the city is ablaze, its citizens fleeing an invading horde that rapes and pillages beneath a brooding evening sky. Finally, the moon rises over the fifth painting, ‘Desolation,’ says Ferguson. There is not a living soul to be seen, only a few decaying columns and colonnades overgrown by briars and ivy.Conceived in the mid-1830s, Cole’s pentaptych, a five-piece work of art, has a clear message: all civilizations, no matter how magnificent, are condemned to decline and fall. The implicit suggestion was that the young American republic of Cole’s age would do better to stick to its bucolic first principles and resist the temptations of commerce, conquest and colonization. For centuries, historians, political theorists, anthropologists and the public at large have tended to think about the rise and fall of civilizations in such cyclical and gradual terms…More recently, it is the anthropologist Jared Diamond who has captured the public imagination with a grand theory of rise and fall. His book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, is cyclical history for the Green Age: tales of societies, from 17th century Easter Island to 21st century China, that risked, or now risk, destroying themselves by abusing their natural environments. Diamond quotes John Lloyd Stevens, the American explorer and amateur archaeologist who discovered the eerily dead Mayan cities of Mexico: ‘Here were the remains of a cultivated, polished, and peculiar people, who had passed through all the stages incident to the rise and fall of nations, reached their golden age, and perished.’ According to Diamond, the Maya fell into a classic Malthusian trap as their population grew larger than their fragile and inefficient agricultural system could support. More people meant more cultivation, but that means deforestation, erosion, drought and soil exhaustion. The result was civil war over dwindling resources and, finally, collapse.Q. The Mayans were mentioned in the last para of the passage to signify thata)more people translates to more cultivation and subsequent deforestation.b)increasing population and limited resources always results in a civil war.c)societies must resist the temptations of commerce, conquest and colonization.d)societies follow the cyclical pattern of rise and fall, the latter caused by abusing their environments.Correct answer is option 'D'. Can you explain this answer? in English & in Hindi are available as part of our courses for CAT. Download more important topics, notes, lectures and mock test series for CAT Exam by signing up for free.

Here you can find the meaning of DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of three questions. Choose the best answer to each question.There is no better illustration to the life cycle of a civilization than The Course of Empire, a series of paintings by Thomas Cole that hang in the gallery of the New York Historical Society. Cole beautifully captured a theory to which most people remain in thrall to this day: the theory of cycles of civilization.Each of the five imagined scenes depicts the mouth of a great river beneath a rocky outcrop. In the first, The Savage State, a lush wilderness is populated by a handful of hunter-gatherers eking out a primitive existence at the break of a stormy dawn. Imagine history from Columbus’ discovery of America in 1492 on through four more centuries as they savagely expanded across the continent. The second picture, ‘The Arcadian or Pastoral State,’ is of an agrarian idyll: the inhabitants have cleared the trees, planted fields, and built an elegant Greek temple.The third and largest of the paintings is ‘The Consummation of Empire.’ Now, the landscape is covered by a magnificent marble entrepôt, and the contented farmer-philosophers of the previous tableau have been replaced by a throng of opulently clad merchants, proconsuls and citizen-consumers. It is midday in the life cycle.Then comes ‘The Destruction of Empire,’ the fourth stage in Ferguson’s grand drama about the life-cycle of all empires. In ‘Destruction’ the city is ablaze, its citizens fleeing an invading horde that rapes and pillages beneath a brooding evening sky. Finally, the moon rises over the fifth painting, ‘Desolation,’ says Ferguson. There is not a living soul to be seen, only a few decaying columns and colonnades overgrown by briars and ivy.Conceived in the mid-1830s, Cole’s pentaptych, a five-piece work of art, has a clear message: all civilizations, no matter how magnificent, are condemned to decline and fall. The implicit suggestion was that the young American republic of Cole’s age would do better to stick to its bucolic first principles and resist the temptations of commerce, conquest and colonization. For centuries, historians, political theorists, anthropologists and the public at large have tended to think about the rise and fall of civilizations in such cyclical and gradual terms…More recently, it is the anthropologist Jared Diamond who has captured the public imagination with a grand theory of rise and fall. His book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, is cyclical history for the Green Age: tales of societies, from 17th century Easter Island to 21st century China, that risked, or now risk, destroying themselves by abusing their natural environments. Diamond quotes John Lloyd Stevens, the American explorer and amateur archaeologist who discovered the eerily dead Mayan cities of Mexico: ‘Here were the remains of a cultivated, polished, and peculiar people, who had passed through all the stages incident to the rise and fall of nations, reached their golden age, and perished.’ According to Diamond, the Maya fell into a classic Malthusian trap as their population grew larger than their fragile and inefficient agricultural system could support. More people meant more cultivation, but that means deforestation, erosion, drought and soil exhaustion. The result was civil war over dwindling resources and, finally, collapse.Q. The Mayans were mentioned in the last para of the passage to signify thata)more people translates to more cultivation and subsequent deforestation.b)increasing population and limited resources always results in a civil war.c)societies must resist the temptations of commerce, conquest and colonization.d)societies follow the cyclical pattern of rise and fall, the latter caused by abusing their environments.Correct answer is option 'D'. Can you explain this answer? defined & explained in the simplest way possible. Besides giving the explanation of DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of three questions. Choose the best answer to each question.There is no better illustration to the life cycle of a civilization than The Course of Empire, a series of paintings by Thomas Cole that hang in the gallery of the New York Historical Society. Cole beautifully captured a theory to which most people remain in thrall to this day: the theory of cycles of civilization.Each of the five imagined scenes depicts the mouth of a great river beneath a rocky outcrop. In the first, The Savage State, a lush wilderness is populated by a handful of hunter-gatherers eking out a primitive existence at the break of a stormy dawn. Imagine history from Columbus’ discovery of America in 1492 on through four more centuries as they savagely expanded across the continent. The second picture, ‘The Arcadian or Pastoral State,’ is of an agrarian idyll: the inhabitants have cleared the trees, planted fields, and built an elegant Greek temple.The third and largest of the paintings is ‘The Consummation of Empire.’ Now, the landscape is covered by a magnificent marble entrepôt, and the contented farmer-philosophers of the previous tableau have been replaced by a throng of opulently clad merchants, proconsuls and citizen-consumers. It is midday in the life cycle.Then comes ‘The Destruction of Empire,’ the fourth stage in Ferguson’s grand drama about the life-cycle of all empires. In ‘Destruction’ the city is ablaze, its citizens fleeing an invading horde that rapes and pillages beneath a brooding evening sky. Finally, the moon rises over the fifth painting, ‘Desolation,’ says Ferguson. There is not a living soul to be seen, only a few decaying columns and colonnades overgrown by briars and ivy.Conceived in the mid-1830s, Cole’s pentaptych, a five-piece work of art, has a clear message: all civilizations, no matter how magnificent, are condemned to decline and fall. The implicit suggestion was that the young American republic of Cole’s age would do better to stick to its bucolic first principles and resist the temptations of commerce, conquest and colonization. For centuries, historians, political theorists, anthropologists and the public at large have tended to think about the rise and fall of civilizations in such cyclical and gradual terms…More recently, it is the anthropologist Jared Diamond who has captured the public imagination with a grand theory of rise and fall. His book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, is cyclical history for the Green Age: tales of societies, from 17th century Easter Island to 21st century China, that risked, or now risk, destroying themselves by abusing their natural environments. Diamond quotes John Lloyd Stevens, the American explorer and amateur archaeologist who discovered the eerily dead Mayan cities of Mexico: ‘Here were the remains of a cultivated, polished, and peculiar people, who had passed through all the stages incident to the rise and fall of nations, reached their golden age, and perished.’ According to Diamond, the Maya fell into a classic Malthusian trap as their population grew larger than their fragile and inefficient agricultural system could support. More people meant more cultivation, but that means deforestation, erosion, drought and soil exhaustion. The result was civil war over dwindling resources and, finally, collapse.Q. The Mayans were mentioned in the last para of the passage to signify thata)more people translates to more cultivation and subsequent deforestation.b)increasing population and limited resources always results in a civil war.c)societies must resist the temptations of commerce, conquest and colonization.d)societies follow the cyclical pattern of rise and fall, the latter caused by abusing their environments.Correct answer is option 'D'. Can you explain this answer?, a detailed solution for DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of three questions. Choose the best answer to each question.There is no better illustration to the life cycle of a civilization than The Course of Empire, a series of paintings by Thomas Cole that hang in the gallery of the New York Historical Society. Cole beautifully captured a theory to which most people remain in thrall to this day: the theory of cycles of civilization.Each of the five imagined scenes depicts the mouth of a great river beneath a rocky outcrop. In the first, The Savage State, a lush wilderness is populated by a handful of hunter-gatherers eking out a primitive existence at the break of a stormy dawn. Imagine history from Columbus’ discovery of America in 1492 on through four more centuries as they savagely expanded across the continent. The second picture, ‘The Arcadian or Pastoral State,’ is of an agrarian idyll: the inhabitants have cleared the trees, planted fields, and built an elegant Greek temple.The third and largest of the paintings is ‘The Consummation of Empire.’ Now, the landscape is covered by a magnificent marble entrepôt, and the contented farmer-philosophers of the previous tableau have been replaced by a throng of opulently clad merchants, proconsuls and citizen-consumers. It is midday in the life cycle.Then comes ‘The Destruction of Empire,’ the fourth stage in Ferguson’s grand drama about the life-cycle of all empires. In ‘Destruction’ the city is ablaze, its citizens fleeing an invading horde that rapes and pillages beneath a brooding evening sky. Finally, the moon rises over the fifth painting, ‘Desolation,’ says Ferguson. There is not a living soul to be seen, only a few decaying columns and colonnades overgrown by briars and ivy.Conceived in the mid-1830s, Cole’s pentaptych, a five-piece work of art, has a clear message: all civilizations, no matter how magnificent, are condemned to decline and fall. The implicit suggestion was that the young American republic of Cole’s age would do better to stick to its bucolic first principles and resist the temptations of commerce, conquest and colonization. For centuries, historians, political theorists, anthropologists and the public at large have tended to think about the rise and fall of civilizations in such cyclical and gradual terms…More recently, it is the anthropologist Jared Diamond who has captured the public imagination with a grand theory of rise and fall. His book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, is cyclical history for the Green Age: tales of societies, from 17th century Easter Island to 21st century China, that risked, or now risk, destroying themselves by abusing their natural environments. Diamond quotes John Lloyd Stevens, the American explorer and amateur archaeologist who discovered the eerily dead Mayan cities of Mexico: ‘Here were the remains of a cultivated, polished, and peculiar people, who had passed through all the stages incident to the rise and fall of nations, reached their golden age, and perished.’ According to Diamond, the Maya fell into a classic Malthusian trap as their population grew larger than their fragile and inefficient agricultural system could support. More people meant more cultivation, but that means deforestation, erosion, drought and soil exhaustion. The result was civil war over dwindling resources and, finally, collapse.Q. The Mayans were mentioned in the last para of the passage to signify thata)more people translates to more cultivation and subsequent deforestation.b)increasing population and limited resources always results in a civil war.c)societies must resist the temptations of commerce, conquest and colonization.d)societies follow the cyclical pattern of rise and fall, the latter caused by abusing their environments.Correct answer is option 'D'. Can you explain this answer? has been provided alongside types of DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of three questions. Choose the best answer to each question.There is no better illustration to the life cycle of a civilization than The Course of Empire, a series of paintings by Thomas Cole that hang in the gallery of the New York Historical Society. Cole beautifully captured a theory to which most people remain in thrall to this day: the theory of cycles of civilization.Each of the five imagined scenes depicts the mouth of a great river beneath a rocky outcrop. In the first, The Savage State, a lush wilderness is populated by a handful of hunter-gatherers eking out a primitive existence at the break of a stormy dawn. Imagine history from Columbus’ discovery of America in 1492 on through four more centuries as they savagely expanded across the continent. The second picture, ‘The Arcadian or Pastoral State,’ is of an agrarian idyll: the inhabitants have cleared the trees, planted fields, and built an elegant Greek temple.The third and largest of the paintings is ‘The Consummation of Empire.’ Now, the landscape is covered by a magnificent marble entrepôt, and the contented farmer-philosophers of the previous tableau have been replaced by a throng of opulently clad merchants, proconsuls and citizen-consumers. It is midday in the life cycle.Then comes ‘The Destruction of Empire,’ the fourth stage in Ferguson’s grand drama about the life-cycle of all empires. In ‘Destruction’ the city is ablaze, its citizens fleeing an invading horde that rapes and pillages beneath a brooding evening sky. Finally, the moon rises over the fifth painting, ‘Desolation,’ says Ferguson. There is not a living soul to be seen, only a few decaying columns and colonnades overgrown by briars and ivy.Conceived in the mid-1830s, Cole’s pentaptych, a five-piece work of art, has a clear message: all civilizations, no matter how magnificent, are condemned to decline and fall. The implicit suggestion was that the young American republic of Cole’s age would do better to stick to its bucolic first principles and resist the temptations of commerce, conquest and colonization. For centuries, historians, political theorists, anthropologists and the public at large have tended to think about the rise and fall of civilizations in such cyclical and gradual terms…More recently, it is the anthropologist Jared Diamond who has captured the public imagination with a grand theory of rise and fall. His book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, is cyclical history for the Green Age: tales of societies, from 17th century Easter Island to 21st century China, that risked, or now risk, destroying themselves by abusing their natural environments. Diamond quotes John Lloyd Stevens, the American explorer and amateur archaeologist who discovered the eerily dead Mayan cities of Mexico: ‘Here were the remains of a cultivated, polished, and peculiar people, who had passed through all the stages incident to the rise and fall of nations, reached their golden age, and perished.’ According to Diamond, the Maya fell into a classic Malthusian trap as their population grew larger than their fragile and inefficient agricultural system could support. More people meant more cultivation, but that means deforestation, erosion, drought and soil exhaustion. The result was civil war over dwindling resources and, finally, collapse.Q. The Mayans were mentioned in the last para of the passage to signify thata)more people translates to more cultivation and subsequent deforestation.b)increasing population and limited resources always results in a civil war.c)societies must resist the temptations of commerce, conquest and colonization.d)societies follow the cyclical pattern of rise and fall, the latter caused by abusing their environments.Correct answer is option 'D'. Can you explain this answer? theory, EduRev gives you an ample number of questions to practice DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of three questions. Choose the best answer to each question.There is no better illustration to the life cycle of a civilization than The Course of Empire, a series of paintings by Thomas Cole that hang in the gallery of the New York Historical Society. Cole beautifully captured a theory to which most people remain in thrall to this day: the theory of cycles of civilization.Each of the five imagined scenes depicts the mouth of a great river beneath a rocky outcrop. In the first, The Savage State, a lush wilderness is populated by a handful of hunter-gatherers eking out a primitive existence at the break of a stormy dawn. Imagine history from Columbus’ discovery of America in 1492 on through four more centuries as they savagely expanded across the continent. The second picture, ‘The Arcadian or Pastoral State,’ is of an agrarian idyll: the inhabitants have cleared the trees, planted fields, and built an elegant Greek temple.The third and largest of the paintings is ‘The Consummation of Empire.’ Now, the landscape is covered by a magnificent marble entrepôt, and the contented farmer-philosophers of the previous tableau have been replaced by a throng of opulently clad merchants, proconsuls and citizen-consumers. It is midday in the life cycle.Then comes ‘The Destruction of Empire,’ the fourth stage in Ferguson’s grand drama about the life-cycle of all empires. In ‘Destruction’ the city is ablaze, its citizens fleeing an invading horde that rapes and pillages beneath a brooding evening sky. Finally, the moon rises over the fifth painting, ‘Desolation,’ says Ferguson. There is not a living soul to be seen, only a few decaying columns and colonnades overgrown by briars and ivy.Conceived in the mid-1830s, Cole’s pentaptych, a five-piece work of art, has a clear message: all civilizations, no matter how magnificent, are condemned to decline and fall. The implicit suggestion was that the young American republic of Cole’s age would do better to stick to its bucolic first principles and resist the temptations of commerce, conquest and colonization. For centuries, historians, political theorists, anthropologists and the public at large have tended to think about the rise and fall of civilizations in such cyclical and gradual terms…More recently, it is the anthropologist Jared Diamond who has captured the public imagination with a grand theory of rise and fall. His book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, is cyclical history for the Green Age: tales of societies, from 17th century Easter Island to 21st century China, that risked, or now risk, destroying themselves by abusing their natural environments. Diamond quotes John Lloyd Stevens, the American explorer and amateur archaeologist who discovered the eerily dead Mayan cities of Mexico: ‘Here were the remains of a cultivated, polished, and peculiar people, who had passed through all the stages incident to the rise and fall of nations, reached their golden age, and perished.’ According to Diamond, the Maya fell into a classic Malthusian trap as their population grew larger than their fragile and inefficient agricultural system could support. More people meant more cultivation, but that means deforestation, erosion, drought and soil exhaustion. The result was civil war over dwindling resources and, finally, collapse.Q. The Mayans were mentioned in the last para of the passage to signify thata)more people translates to more cultivation and subsequent deforestation.b)increasing population and limited resources always results in a civil war.c)societies must resist the temptations of commerce, conquest and colonization.d)societies follow the cyclical pattern of rise and fall, the latter caused by abusing their environments.Correct answer is option 'D'. Can you explain this answer? tests, examples and also practice CAT tests.