hard · SAT Reading & Writing

At a 3,000-year-old settlement high in the Andes, archaeologists uncovered storehouses filled with maize, a crop that cannot grow at the settlement's elevation. Chemical analysis showed that the maize carried isotopic signatures characteristic of plants grown in warm lowland valleys hundreds of kilometers away. The excavators also found no terraces, irrigation channels, or other evidence that maize had ever been cultivated at the site. Together these findings most strongly indicate that the settlement's inhabitants ___

1. acquired their maize from distant lowland regions rather than growing it themselves.
2. grew their maize locally from seed that had been carried up from the lowland valleys.
3. prized maize more highly than any crop that could be grown near the settlement.
4. could not have sustained themselves without a constant supply of maize.

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