Digital SAT Reading and Writing Practice Question #612

Text 1 Historian A argues that the rapid, catastrophic collapse of the Late Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean was primarily catalyzed by the sudden influx of the "Sea Peoples." According to this established paradigm, these maritime marauders overwhelmed the highly interconnected trade networks of the era, triggering a massive domino effect of economic ruin and urban abandonment that local agrarian disruptions could not have independently caused. Text 2 Recent paleoclimatological data reveals a multi-century megadrought in the Eastern Mediterranean precisely overlapping with the Late Bronze Age collapse. Historian B contends that this severe climatic shift decimated crop yields, plunging civilizations into famine and provoking violent internal rebellions. In this paradigm, the Sea Peoples were not conquering invaders but desperate climate refugees—merely a secondary symptom rather than the primary disease of a civilization already crumbling from within. Based on the texts, how would Historian B most likely respond to the specific claim made by Historian A regarding the "domino effect"?