The following is based on an article published in 2012.
Most linguists believe proto-Indo-European, the ancestor of all Indo-European languages, was the language of chariot-driving pastoralists who spread through Eurasia from steppes north of the Black Sea about 4,000 years ago. But a competing theory is that proto-Indo-European was spoken by farmers in Anatolia (Asia Minor) about 9,000 years ago, and spread from there along with agriculture.
To evaluate these hypotheses, researchers statistically compared IndoEuropean languages’ vocabularies. Languages with more similar vocabularies are probably more closely related, sharing more recent common ancestors.
Combining the vocabulary statistics with the known dates when certain languages split, and with their known geographical ranges, a computer calculated the most likely relationships among all Indo-European languages and concluded that protoIndo-European probably originated in Anatolia 9,000 years ago.
Disputing this conclusion, skeptics argue that most Indo-European languages are similar in their words pertaining to chariots and wagons, suggesting protoIndo-European split into daughter languages only after chariots and wagons were invented. No archaeological evidence indicates that chariots and wagons existed before 5,500 years ago. Furthermore, proto-Indo-European had words for "horse" and "bee" and lent many words to proto-Uralic, the mother language of Finnish and Hungarian. The steppes north of the Black Sea were far closer than Anatolia to areas where proto-Uralic was spoken, and had more abundant wild horses and bees.
The passage most clearly implies that the skeptics mentioned in the third paragraph assume that
A . chariots and wagons were invented north of the Black Sea
B . there would be evidence that chariots existed earlier than 5,500 years ago if
C . they existed about 9,000 years ago
D . many languages with similar vocabularies do not share recent common ancestors pastoralist speakers of proto-Indo-European did not spread into Anatolia
E . the computer mentioned in the second paragraph based its calculations on inaccurate data
Answer: B
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