Passage I states that the toolmakers were responding to

Directions: Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the twin passage.

Passage – I
When it comes to Stone Age technology, it seems, Africa and Eurasia were something of a Silicon Valley, while eastern Asia, until recently, was considered more like a Rust Belt. Human ancestors in Africa and Eurasia were making relatively advanced large stone tools like axes and cleavers hundreds of thousands of years ago. But no similar tools from that time had been found in Asia, supporting a theory that the region was geographically, and thus culturally and perhaps genetically, isolated.
That theory has now taken a pounding, after the announcement, in the current issue of the journal Science, of the discovery of large stone tools in Southern China. The tools, cobbles and large stone flakes that had been extensively chipped into cutting shapes, were dated to about 800,000 years ago. So it appears that the hominids of eastern Asia were as technologically advanced as their counterparts in Africa and Eurasia.
Still, advanced tools have now been found from only one date in eastern Asia, while in Africa and Eurasia they range over about a million years. The authors of the Science paper suggest why this might be: the hominids of the Chinese site might have been taking advantage of a change in their local environment.
Found among the sediments at the site were tektites, glassy objects that can result from a catastrophic event like a meteorite impact, as well as much charcoal. The researchers suggest that the event that created the tektites would have caused wide burning and destruction of forests, exposing cobble outcroppings. The early humans then eventually came to make use of the available stone.

Passage - II
Chinese art goes back many centuries. Early themes were developed from religious and supernatural beliefs or from the natural environment and landscape. One of the oldest and most basic forms of Chinese art is calligraphy, the painting of the Chinese characters with a brush. Calligraphy has developed as a pure art form with its own standards of excellence. Building on the tradition of calligraphy, Chinese painting developed a distinctive style that differs greatly from Western painting. It is more efficient in terms of brushstrokes and appears more abstract. Landscapes have always been a popular theme, and sometimes these appear bizarre to the Western eye. To the Chinese painter, they may represent a figurative view painted with a few swift strokes of the artist's brush. With their stress on simplicity and economy, Chinese calligraphy, painting, and poetry are closely related. In all of them, the artist seeks to express both inner harmony and harmony with the natural surroundings. Chinese poets and painters often have sought inspiration by withdrawing to isolated, mountainous areas, and these landscapes have become conventional themes of Chinese art. Similarly, Chinese architecture has traditionally aimed to convey harmony with society and nature. The magnificent life-size terra-cotta statues of men and horses, discovered in the early 1970s in the tomb of an emperor who died in 210 BC, provide some indication of the long history of Chinese sculpture. After the introduction of Buddhism into China, Buddhist subjects became dominant themes of the sculptor's art. Perhaps best known (and most copied) in the West, however, are the works of Chinese decorative artists, such as pottery, bronzes, lacquer ware, and exquisitely detailed jade and ivory carvings.