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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

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

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

5. Why is food production important for inventions?
(a) It allows for a sedentary life.
(b) It allowed people to be nomadic and spread inventions.
(c) People had the energy to create.
(d) People did not get diseases which stopped inventions.

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

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

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

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

10. Which region had many of the same advantages as Eurasia?
(a) North America
(b) China
(c) Australia
(d) Chile

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

12. What gave Europeans an advantage in information about the groups they encountered?
(a) Domesticated mammals
(b) Speaking many different languages
(c) Writing
(d) Spies in other countries

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

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

15. What is the first stage in the transition of diseases to humans?
(a) Humans pick up germs and diseases from pets and domestic animals but the germs are still only passed from animal to human, not between humans.
(b) The major epidemic disease becomes confined to humans.
(c) Pathogens establish themselves in humans and the disease does not die out.
(d) Humans pick up the diseases from other humans.

Short Answer Questions

1. Which type of society uses a monopoly of force?

2. Who introduced pottery, chickens, dogs, and pigs to New Guinea?

3. If knowledge brings power, what increases the power, according to Diamond?

4. How many large mammals in Africa were suited to domestication?

5. Which of the following was not a disease that killed large number of peoples in the Americas?

(see the answer keys)

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