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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Why did Australians not develop writing, more complex technologies, or more complex societies?
(a) Australia was isolated from other societies.
(b) They had a larger population than other continents.
(c) The groups in Australia were very cohesive.
(d) Australia communicated frequently with others who had these technologies.

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

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

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

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

6. What is necessary for a disease to become an epidemic?
(a) A small population
(b) A hunter-gatherer society
(c) A large, sedentary population
(d) Bad sanitation

7. In what types of societies did writing first emerge?
(a) Hunter-gatherers
(b) Places were science was a major focus
(c) Places where food production arose
(d) Capitalist societies

8. How many large mammals in Africa were suited to domestication?
(a) 2
(b) 5
(c) 0
(d) 10

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

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

11. Diamond argues that European conquest of Africa had nothing to do with what?
(a) Superior weapons
(b) Accidents of geography
(c) Racial superiority
(d) Biogeography

12. What is the first stage in the transition of diseases to humans?
(a) Humans pick up the diseases from other humans.
(b) 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.
(c) The major epidemic disease becomes confined to humans.
(d) Pathogens establish themselves in humans and the disease does not die out.

13. Where were the earliest known stone tools with ground edges found?
(a) Europe
(b) Africa
(c) Australia
(d) Asia

14. Who had an advantage over many of the African societies?
(a) Congolese
(b) Bantu
(c) Pygmies
(d) Khoisans

15. Which of the following was not a disease that killed large number of peoples in the Americas?
(a) Ringworm
(b) Measles
(c) Smallpox
(d) Influenza

Short Answer Questions

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

2. Once something is invented, what must happen?

3. What did not help the spread of the Austronesian culture?

4. Where did writing develop?

5. What is a stone tool or implement that an individual used to pound the fibrous bark of some trees into material that could be used for ropes, nets, and clothing?

(see the answer keys)

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