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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. The basic writing strategy employed by most people today is which of the following?
(a) Alphabet
(b) Logograms
(c) Determinatives
(d) Phonetic signs

2. Why do pockets of the three language families other than Sino-Tibetan exist in China?
(a) The areas that they are in are frequented by Indonesian traders.
(b) They conquered the Sino-Tibetan speakers from 2000 B.C. to 1500 A.D.
(c) Scholars kept the language families alive in the monasteries.
(d) Sino-Tibetan speakers replaced or absorbed the other language areas.

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

4. What was the source of power in New Guinea when food production arose?
(a) Humans
(b) Horses
(c) Electricity
(d) Cows

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

6. What does Diamond attribute the differences in development to?
(a) Culture
(b) Genetics
(c) Intelligence
(d) The environment

7. The Miao-Yao family of language is spoken where?
(a) Only in China's large cities
(b) In Mongolia
(c) Small enclaves from South China to Thailand
(d) In large cities from Thailand to Myanmar

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

9. Africa has what type of axis?
(a) East-West
(b) Perpendicular
(c) North-South
(d) Horizontal

10. What is an discussion that has arisen since Diamond's work was first published?
(a) Why the Americas were conquered
(b) Why the differences are best explained by intelligence
(c) Why Europe didn't expand and conquer
(d) Why China didn't expand and conquer

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

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

13. According to Diamond, why are the societies of Asia and the Pacific important?
(a) These societies provide many examples of how culture inhibited the spread of technology
(b) These societies invented more items than other societies
(c) These societies provide examples of how societies resisted epidemics
(d) These societies provide so many examples of how environment influences and shapes history

14. What foods did people in the Americas depend on?
(a) Protein-poor corn
(b) Protein-rich cows
(c) Protein-rich rice
(d) Protein-poor wheat

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

Short Answer Questions

1. When was Diamond's work first published?

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

3. Diamond argues that a science of what should be developed?

4. In what types of societies did writing first emerge?

5. There has been some discussion of how Diamond's work might apply where?

(see the answer keys)

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