The argument in this passage most closely relates to which of the following large-scale questions about global history?

(A) How societies shared strategically important technologies with each other (B) Why European states went on to attain military superiority over non-Western powers in the modern era (C) Why Silk Road commerce dwindled across the breadth of Eurasia after 1500 (C) E. (D) How the medieval climatic optimum affected the process of cultural diffusionExplanation: (B) Answer D can be readily dismissed as irrelevant to the text, and C, while somewhat related to the exchange of goods and ideas, is tangential. The technology transfer described in A is not unrelated to the question, but aside from the fact that China did not “share” gunpowder directly or on purpose with Europe, the text is clearly more concerned with the broader historical question addressed by (B)