CAT 2017 Slot 2 — VARC Question 31
Answer the following questions based on the information given below.
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 U.K.hoped to identify the species of animal to which the antlers once belonged by analyzing collagen proteins in the samples and comparing them across the animal kingdom, Laura Geggel reports for liveScience.
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 Norman conquest of Great Britain in 1066.) Archaeologists had suspected that the Viking had experience with ling 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 comb’s represent a larger trade network, where the Norsemen supplied raw material to craftsmen in Denmark and elsewhere.
The five sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) given in this question, when properly sequenced, from a coherent paragraph. Each sentence is labelled with a number. Decide on the proper order for the sentences and key in this sequence of five numbers as your answer.
- Johnson treated English very practically, as a living language, with many different shades of meaning and adopted his definitions on the principle of English common law-according to precedent.
- Masking a profound inner torment, Johnson found solace in compiling the words of a language that was, in its coarse complexity and comprehensive genius, the precise analogue of his character.
- Samuel Johnson was a pioneer who raised common sense to heights of genius, and a man of robust popular instincts whose watchwords were clarity, precision and simplicity.
- The 18th century English reader, in the new world of global trade and global warfare, needed a dictionary with authoritative acts of definition of words of a language that was becoming seeded throughout the first British empire by vigorous and practical champion.
- The Johnson who challenged Bishop Berkeley’s solipsist theory of the nonexistence of matter by kicking a large stone (“I refute it thus”) is the same Johnson for whom language must have a daily practical use.
Answer & solution
Answer: 43512
Sentence 4 begins the set by introducing the need for a dictionary and a suitable champion of such a dictionary.
Sentence 3 follows by introducing Samuel Johnson – the champion of the English dictionary, mentioned in sentence 4. Among 1, 2, and 5, we can see that sentence 5 is the best choice to begin from where sentence 3 left off. It mentions an incident that shows that Johnson was a practical person and that he sought this functionality in language.
Sentence 5 leads to sentence 1 rather than sentence 2 because sentence1 refers to the practical attitude mentioned in sentence 5.
Sentence 2 forms the last sentence, as it refers to the kind of personality that Johnson has been established to be in the previous sentences. The sequence thus formed is 4, 3, 5, 1, 2.
Hence, the correct answer is 43512.