Diagnostic Test 5 Practice Test

A recently discovered letter from the poet to a patron suggests that the final section of the epic was rewritten to shift emphasis from solitary triumph to communal recovery. According to the letter, the original ending celebrated the protagonist's individual valor; the revision, the poet writes, should portray people rebuilding together after catastrophe. The letter also hints that the closing song was meant to be sung by multiple voices, not a single bard. If that is true, we should expect the revised ending to highlight shared labor, mutual aid, and the restoration of public spaces rather than a lone hero's boast.

Which quotation from the new translation most effectively illustrates the scholar's claim?

An anthropologist argues that in early agrarian societies, recurring ritual feasts functioned as a redistribution mechanism that dampened wealth inequality. Leaders were expected to collect surplus and publicly give it away as food and goods, limiting how much wealth any household could retain. The claim predicts that communities with institutionalized redistributive feasting should exhibit lower household wealth dispersion than comparable communities without such feasts, after adjusting for agricultural productivity and trade access. Skeptics counter that feasting merely reinforces status without altering material gaps, or that other institutions—like communal land tenure—drive any observed equality.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the scholar's claim?