Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete th… | Verbal SAT Question

Persistence of Settlements and Compound Average Annual Population Growth Rate in the Yautepec Valley

Period	Total number of preexisting and newly established settlements	Backward continuity	Forward continuity	Compound average annual population growth rate
Terminal Formative (100 BCE–200 CE)	145	37.9%	94.5%	0.32%
Early Classic (200 CE–300 CE)	222	61.7%	91.0%	−0.07%
Middle Classic (300 CE–450 CE)	210	96.2%	55.7%	−0.94%
Late Classic (450 CE–600 CE)	128	91.4%	31.3%	0.26%

The percent of cities and towns in a given period that persist from a prior period (backward continuity) and the percent that persist into a later period (forward continuity) are known to correlate positively with economic and political stability in a region. Researchers studying demographic trends in the Indigenous societies of ancient Mexico determined both continuity measures for the Yautepec Valley, which lay within the macroregional hegemony of the city-state of Teotihuacan from roughly 100 BCE until roughly 450 CE, at which point Teotihuacan declined. The team concluded that __________

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete the text?

although the forward continuity data suggest that the decline of Teotihuacan occasioned economic and political instability in the Yautepec Valley, these developments were nonetheless associated with a net increase in the valley’s population.

values for both backward and forward continuity in the Yautepec Valley were consistently higher during the centuries of Teotihuacan’s hegemony than they were in the period following the collapse of the hegemony.

Teotihuacan’s hegemony imposed stability on the Yautepec Valley, mitigating the decrease in the compound average annual growth rate of the valley’s population as well as the decrease in the number of cities and towns there in the Early Classic and Middle Classic.

the population of the Yautepec Valley remained essentially unchanged across the Early, Middle, and Late Classic periods, despite fluctuations in the forward continuity of its settlements.