ShmoopTube

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Here’s your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by caveman musicians.

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The real inventors of rock and roll.

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How should you change the underlined portion below, if at all?

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Evidence about how musicians played the instrument comes from ancient wall paintings.?

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We’ll jump right in here and eliminate choice (C), which doesn’t use the proper verb form--

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a crime for which the verb police have stiff penalties.

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The auxiliary verb “has” is forbidden to hang out with the verb “came”

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on pain of...well...being incomprehensible.

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“Has” is meant to be used when creating the present perfect tense.

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The correct combination here would be “has come” not “came,” thus (C) is incorrect.

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Choice (D) gives us “had come,” which is in the past perfect tense.

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This is incorrect because the past perfect is used to compare two things that have happened

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in the past.

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If it were trying to tell us that a caveman had invented rock and roll right before he’d

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invented the art of painting, then all would be good, but… that’s not what’s going on here.

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So we're left with (A) and (B). No doubt, these two are a little tough to choose between.

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The only other verb in the sentence is “played,” which is in the past tense.

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This might lead us to choose choice (B). “Came” is in the past tense like “played,” right?

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Hmm, something still seems fishy…

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Choice (A) uses “comes,” which is in the present tense. This is actually the right

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answer since the evidence here doesn't refer to a specific discovery or idea.

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When this is the case it’s best to use the present tense to convey the idea that evidence

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in general comes from this source.

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Quick tip: Evidence found in ancient wall paintings is usually not admissible in court.

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This loophole helped Grog the Caveman dodge an “assault by clubbing” rap…

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