In Pre-Incan Andean Communities, Ultimate Control Over all Productive

Reading Passage Question

In pre-Incan Andean communities, ultimate control over all productive resources was vested in the community. Membership in the community, based on kinship, provided constituents, both men and women, with access to these resources. The community apportioned land on the basis of household size, and the right to use various lands was passed by inheritance from one generation to the next. Although women relinquished their portion of land when they married, marriage enabled them to acquire other land and goods essential to establishing a new household. In addition, in certain pre-Incan communities, there existed a higher rank of people known as curacas, who were entitled to make a greater claim on the community's resources. Records indicate that in some instances women served as curacas, participating in governing councils that made decisions affecting the community as a whole.

Scholars have suggested that with the conquest of these communities by Incas, women were relegated to a lesser status. It is true that, as the Incan empire expanded, the state needed to ensure the loyalty of a growing bureaucracy, professional class, and military, and thus it began to award these groups various grants of land. Since the activities that earned grants of land from the state were defined by Incan culture as almost exclusively masculine, the result, scholars argue, should have been a corresponding diminishment of the authority and autonomy of women.

Evidence indicates that, in Incan society, women’s tasks could have afforded them considerable status. For instance, one of women’s main functions in Incan society was that of weaving cloth. The distribution and exchange of cloth were essential to the empire’s economic structure and more important, designs woven into belts, ponchos, and shawls constituted a form of symbolic communication. Primarily by decoding designs found in modem weavings, designs also found in pre-Columbian Incan material, Gertrude Solari has shown that through these textiles women recorded not only incidents of household life but also the political status of villagers, accounts of critical events, and in some instances even the entire history of a community.

“In pre-Incan Andean communities, ultimate control over all productive” - is a GMAT reading comprehension passage with answers. Candidates need a strong knowledge of English GMAT reading comprehension.
This GMAT Reading Comprehension consists of 5 comprehension questions. The GMAT Reading Comprehension questions are designed for the purpose of testing candidates’ abilities in understanding, analyzing, and applying information or concepts. Candidates can actively prepare with the help of GMAT Reading Comprehension Practice Questions.

Solution and Explanation

1. The primary purpose of the passage is to

(A) compare scholarly views of the status of women in pre-Incan Andean communities with scholarly views of the status of women in the Incan empire
(B) analyse the implications of recently discovered evidence concerning the role of women in the Incan society
(C) question the accuracy of a view of the effects of the Incan conquest on the status of women in the conquered communities
(D) question the reliability of descriptions of the Inca society by Spanish clerics and conquistadores
(E) present evidence of the significance of women’s work in the Incan empire

2. It can be inferred from the passage that land distribution in the Incan empire differed from that in pre-Incan Andean communities in that the Incas

(A) based the distribution of land on the productivity of individual families
(B) used grants of and to ensure loyalty to the state
(C) afforded women more access to community-owned land
(D) forbade the curacas from owning more than their share of land
(E) suspended the requirement that women relinquish their inherited lands when they married

3. Which of the following statements concerning the status of women in Incan society can be inferred from the passage

(A) Women were largely excluded from membership in the bureaucratic and professional classes.
(B) On marrying, women could acquire land and goods essential to establishing a new household.
(C) Women were given equal access to productive resources.
(D) In some instances women served as curacas.
(E) Women had access to little information about political events in their communities.

4. It can be inferred from the passage that Gertrude Solari assumes which of the following in her discussion of the symbolic designs woven into Incan textiles

(A) The designs have meanings similar to those found in modern weavings.
(B) The designs are similar to those found in weavings done by women in other pre-Columbian cultures.
(C) The designs were meant to be decipherable only to members of the Incan bureaucracy.
(D) The designs provided Spanish clerics and conquistadores with much of their information about Incan culture and society.
(E) The women who manufactured the textiles were considered by the Incans to be the official historians of their empire.

5. The passage suggests that recent scholarship describing the effect on women of the Incan conquest is

(A) inaccurate in its interpretation of the impact that new methods of distributing community resources had on women’s access to land
(B) inaccurate in its interpretation of the significance of women’s participation in the political life of pre-Incan Andean communities.
(C) accurate in its interpretation of the basis on which land in pre-Incan Andean communities was apportioned
(D) accurate because it correctly interprets the significance of women’s work in Incan society
(E) accurate because it is based on the firsthand accounts of Spanish observers

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