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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. Who invented things like firearms and steel equipment?
(a) Africans
(b) Australians
(c) Eurasians
(d) Americans

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

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

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

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

7. The main killers in Africa and the Americas came from where?
(a) Polynesia
(b) Eurasia
(c) Greenland
(d) Australia

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

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

10. Africa is home to how many major human groups?
(a) 2
(b) 10
(c) 25
(d) 5

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

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

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

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

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) The domestication of large mammals
(d) More intelligent people

Short Answer Questions

1. What was early writing used for primarily?

2. What is an discussion that has arisen since Diamond's work was first published?

3. Chiefdoms disappeared in which century?

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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