# PTE HCS #3: Historical Perspectives on...

Highlight Correct Summary #3 - Level 1 - Feeds Reading + Listening

> You will hear a recording. Choose the paragraph that best summarizes it.

- There are different ideas about evolution but only in Western culture. This is because the Enlightenment only happened in the West.
- There are different ideas about evolution but these really only came about in the nineteenth century.
- There are different ideas about evolution and AlexanderVon Humnboldwas a person as part of the Enlightenment who proposed some of these ideas.
- There are different ideas about evolution and this is why Artur Conan Doyle wrote a novel about a lost world.

## Answer

There are different ideas about evolution but these really only came about in the nineteenth century.

## Explanation

The correct option accurately reflects the speaker's focus on the chronological emergence of these theories.

What to watch: The speaker says you can find traces in Aristotle, "but really, it's a 19th century idea." That is the main point the correct summary keeps. The Humboldt option is tempting because he is named. But the speaker never says Humboldt proposed ideas about evolution. He only hoped to find living fossils.

## Hints

- Focus on the time period mentioned by the speaker.
- Ignore specific names or literary references that are not central to the main argument.

## Transcript

Where did this idea of evolution come from? Well, there are always ideas. You can go back to Aristotle and find elements of evolutionary thought in Aristotle. But really, it's a 19th century idea. And in order to see how it developed, let's go back to about 1790 or 1800. So at the end of the century of the Enlightenment. At that point, if you were to ask a well-educated person living in a Western culture, how old the world is, they would say, oh, thousands of years. And if you were to ask them, well, where did all these species on the planet come from? They would say they were all created just the way they look now, and they've never changed. And if you ask them, have there ever been any species that went extinct, they would say no. Everything that was created is still alive and can be found somewhere on the planet. So when Alexander von Humboldt, who was certainly a creature of the Enlightenment, sets out to explore South America, he thinks that he might encounter some of those strange fossils that the French have been turning up in the Paris Basin on top of a tepui in Venezuela. So he really thought that there was a lost world. Of course, Arthur Conan Doyle later wrote a novel about that. But, I mean, these guys actually thought, hey, I go to Venezuela or I go to the Congo, I might meet a Brontosaurus. That was what they thought of.

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