Read the Following Scenario and Answer the Question Below

question 36

Multiple Choice

Read the following scenario and answer the question below.
Northeast of Australia and northwest of Fiji lies the isolated tropical island of Tikopia. Less than two miles in length, it supports 1200 people and has been continuously occupied for nearly 3000 years, with the population holding steady for much of that time. It has a two-month dry season every year and lies in the Pacificʹs cyclone belt, which destroys homes and gardens on an unpredictable but regular basis. Tikopia is too far away from other islands to have any regular contact; the islanders must be self-sufficient.
-Archaeological evidence shows that, in a manner similar to Easter Island, the first settlers cleared forests by burning them and feasted on the birds, fish, turtles, and bats. The archaeological middens (trash piles) show that they extirpated numerous species of plants, birds, and bats; that the fish and shellfish numbers declined dramatically; and that the average sizes of these organisms was drastically reduced. By the end of the first thousand years of residency, the initial food resources were gone and Tikopians began to raise pigs as a major protein source. Suddenly, about 500 years later, the people killed every pig on the island. This is most likely because ______________

• A) they had a serious problem, such as a prolonged drought, and sacrificed the pigs to their gods
• B) they were having a huge celebration of some event, such as a victory over an enemy
• C) they were tired of pork
• D) their chiefs made it taboo to eat pork
• E) they realized they were better off eating vegetables than feeding vegetables to pigs and eating pigs

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