Question

The last guagga was probably killed in the late 1870s (почему сдесь passive )

Answer 1

Потому что действие совершалось над guagga, т.е её убили.

Активный залог был бы, если бы guagga сама кого-то убила

Answer 2

In the given sentence, the passive voice is used to emphasize the action and not the doer of the action. Let's break down the sentence to understand it better:

Original sentence: "The last quagga was probably killed in the late 1870s."

Here, the subject is "The last quagga," which is the animal that the sentence is talking about. The verb is "was killed," and "probably" is an adverb that adds a degree of uncertainty to the statement.

If we were to convert the sentence into the active voice, it would be:

"Somebody probably killed the last quagga in the late 1870s."

By using the passive voice, the focus is on the quagga itself and the fact that it was killed, without explicitly stating who killed it. It allows the speaker to highlight the event rather than the doer of the action, which might not be known or is not the main point of discussion. The passive voice is commonly used in historical or scientific contexts to maintain objectivity and shift the emphasis to the subject or event being described.