October 1996 LSAT Section 2 Question 24

Which one of the following is most closely analogous to the assumption Lowe makes about the relationship between monu...

kens on July 24, 2020

October 1996 LSAT RC #24

Can someone please check if I understood this part correctly? So is the author suggesting that when Maya people ceased to build new monuments, regardless of whether other monuments still exist, that site is considered abandoned? If so, I don't quite understand the analogy here--please help! Thanks in advance!

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shunhe on July 24, 2020

Hi @kenken,

Thanks for the question! So your idea of what the author is suggesting is definitely right, and that comes straight out of lines 9-10: Lowell assumes that once the Mayans stopped building new monuments, it meant that the site had been abandoned. So now we need an analogy that parallels this relationship. In other words, once we stop contributing to something, it’s just been abandoned or given up on or gotten rid of entirely.

Now take a look at (E), which tells us that a person assumes a friend sold her stamp collection because the friend stopped purchasing new stamps. Here, again, the friend stopped contributing to her stamp collection (by not purchasing new stamps), and so the person assumed that the friend sold (got rid of, or abandoned) the stamp collection! Because of this parallel with the original assumption as we talked about above, (E) is the correct answer here. None of the answer choices really match up to this analogy.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.