June 2007 RC Q25 Forum

[yzero1]

This question has bothered me quite a bit. I chose (D) on my initial run-through but I changed it to (E) because of lines 19-20. It says there that the pollen grain analysis can CORRECT the documentary record.

Can someone help me figure out how "correction" of the documentary record is possible, when it's just a combination of government/commercial records of events and conditions? According to the passage, it seems more like the pollen analysis corrects the interpretations by historians of the records rather than the records themselves (see paragraph 3 and 4). Does the question imply that some of the records/maps/documents mentioned in answer choices (D) incorrectly depicted conditions/events incorrectly?