PTE Reading

Multiple Choice, Single Answer

1 questions. Answer them all, then submit once for your section score.

Pearson Test of English — TestDayTwin Practice

1 of 1Time Remaining00:06:00

Read the passage and answer the question.

Antique maps are prized by collectors not merely for their aesthetic qualities but for what their inaccuracies reveal about the limits of geographic knowledge at the time of creation. A coastline drawn with confident, sweeping lines in a region no European had yet surveyed often indicates that the cartographer relied on secondhand accounts or speculative extrapolation rather than direct observation. Historians of cartography therefore treat these errors as valuable evidence in their own right, using patterns of distortion to trace how geographic information spread, was copied, and was sometimes fabricated across successive editions of a map, long before any ship confirmed or corrected the depicted shoreline.

According to the passage, why do historians of cartography value the inaccuracies found in antique maps?

Because the inaccuracies prove that all old maps were deliberately falsifiedBecause the errors reveal how geographic information spread and was sometimes fabricated across editionsBecause inaccurate maps are always more aesthetically pleasing to collectorsBecause the errors show that European cartographers never used secondhand accounts