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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Governments that distribute wealth from commoners to the upper classes are known as what?
(a) Kleptocracies
(b) Oligarchies
(c) Democracies
(d) Monarchies

2. What are the smallest societies known as?
(a) States
(b) Tribes
(c) Chiefdoms
(d) Bands

3. What was early writing used for primarily?
(a) Communicating with other societies
(b) Writing human history
(c) Accountings of things like sheep and wool
(d) Journaling

4. Diamond looks at what type of conflict in China?
(a) Intra-continent
(b) Extra-continent
(c) Inter-continent
(d) Neo-continent

5. When was Diamond's work first published?
(a) 1980
(b) 1997
(c) 1956
(d) 1987

6. Diseases that become epidemics infect which group?
(a) Plants
(b) Invertebrates
(c) Fish
(d) Humans

7. If knowledge brings power, what increases the power, according to Diamond?
(a) Writing
(b) Weapons
(c) Germs
(d) Love

8. Where does Diamond believe that more research needs to be done?
(a) How intelligence differences influence development
(b) How racial differences influence development
(c) How biological differences influence development
(d) How cultural differences influence development

9. Cultural and individual idiosyncrasies throw what into the course of history?
(a) The knowledge that these aspects don't matter in history
(b) Certainty
(c) Wild cards
(d) The ability to predict outcomes

10. What invention sped up the spread of plants and technologies in Polynesia?
(a) Wheels
(b) "Outrigger" canoes
(c) Wagons
(d) Yachts

11. There has been some discussion of how Diamond's work might apply where?
(a) Preschool education
(b) The corporate world
(c) The economic system
(d) The retail industry

12. Australia was once joined together what what other land mass?
(a) Cuba
(b) Greenland
(c) England
(d) New Guinea

13. How do inventions spread?
(a) Through gift-giving practices
(b) Societies are forced to use an invention.
(c) Societies see an invention and adopt it.
(d) Inventions don't typically spread.

14. Recent research shows that crops from Mexico spread into eastern North America via an indirect route through where?
(a) The southwest
(b) Canada
(c) Peru
(d) Australia

15. Diamond argues that China is which of the following?
(a) More diverse than we tend to think
(b) Less populous than Australia
(c) Very homogeneous
(d) Racially inferior to Europeans

Short Answer Questions

1. Africa is home to how many major human groups?

2. Diamond argues that European conquest of Africa had nothing to do with what?

3. What does Diamond attribute the differences in development to?

4. Which region had many of the same advantages as Eurasia?

5. Why did Australians not develop writing, more complex technologies, or more complex societies?

(see the answer keys)

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