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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Recent research shows that modern Japanese people resulted from an agricultural expansion from where?
(a) Taiwan
(b) India
(c) Australia
(d) Korea

2. How many "little" languages does China have?
(a) 200
(b) 130
(c) 100
(d) 70

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

4. What is not a cause in the uneven distribution of wealth and power, according to Diamond?
(a) The relative isolation of people
(b) The intelligence of groups
(c) The orientation of a continent on a particular axis
(d) Differences in wild plant distribution

5. What is a benefit that institutionalized religion provides?
(a) Organizing societies by biological race
(b) The ability to rid a society of evil spirits
(c) A way to redistribute money from the wealthy to the poor
(d) Frameworks for unrelated individuals to live together without killing each other

6. Why didn't Australians develop food production in ancient times?
(a) Fertile soils
(b) Too many plants that could be domesticated
(c) The dry conditions on the continent
(d) Too much rainfall to support domesticated plants

7. Diamond argues that a science of what should be developed?
(a) Emotions
(b) Conquest
(c) Human history
(d) Intelligence

8. How are historical sciences different from non-historical sciences?
(a) Historical sciences have fewer
(b) Historical sciences are less complicated with prediction
(c) Historical sicences have an easier time with finding cause and effect
(d) Historical sciences more concerned with proximate and ultimate causes

9. Diamond suggests that inventions occur because of what?
(a) Greater creativity
(b) Peoples' curiosity and tinkering
(c) Superior intelligence
(d) Perceived need

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

11. The language that did most of the conquering or "engulfing" in Africa was which of the following?
(a) Niger-Congo
(b) Bantu
(c) Nilo-Saharan
(d) Khoisan

12. What is human's slowest defense against germs?
(a) Natural selection
(b) Sanitation
(c) Antibiotics
(d) Vaccines

13. China has how many "big" languages?
(a) 2
(b) 5
(c) 8
(d) 12

14. Which of the following is not a major infectious disease?
(a) Malaria
(b) Smallpox
(c) Cancer
(d) Influenza

15. What was the biggest difference between the histories of Old World Europe and the New World Americas?
(a) Denser populations
(b) Sparser populations
(c) More intelligent people
(d) The domestication of large mammals

Short Answer Questions

1. When was Diamond's work first published?

2. Recent research shows that crops from Mexico spread into eastern North America via an indirect route through where?

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

4. Which societies were the most advantaged in Polynesia?

5. The main killers in Africa and the Americas came from where?

(see the answer keys)

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