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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Plants like olives, figs and dates were domesticated around what time?
(a) 10,000 B.C.
(b) 4,000 B.C.
(c) 8,000 B.C.
(d) 1,000 B.C.

2. One argument that people have made is that what stimulated development in Western Europe?
(a) The amount of sunlight
(b) The cold climate
(c) The absence of germs
(d) The availability of metals

3. People often assume that there are what type of differences between people living on different continents?
(a) Historical
(b) Imaginative
(c) Monetary
(d) Biological

4. All people were once what?
(a) Immune to diseases
(b) Wheat producers
(c) Hunters and gatherers
(d) Fiefdoms

5. Diamond argues that examining Polynesia helps the reader see what?
(a) How environments shape societies
(b) How shared culture is important
(c) How war can end if groups decide to stop
(d) How the loss of large mammals gave societies an advantage

Short Answer Questions

1. Domesticated animals need to have what type of disposition?

2. What was the importance of a written language?

3. Why were the Europeans not affected by the infectious diseases that they brought to places like the Americas and Australia?

4. Australia was joined together with which other area at the time that humans arrived?

5. Germs from what produced epidemics in Native American and Australian societies?

Short Essay Questions

1. What was the greater Polynesian area like in terms of the environments available?

2. How do historical sciences differ from non-historical sciences?

3. How did humans choose which plants to begin domesticating?

4. Why does Diamond object to many of the traditional views on the uneven distribution of wealth and power?

5. Why did Eurasia have an advantage in the domestication of animals?

6. Why does Diamond think inventions occur?

7. Infectious diseases that become epidemics tend to share what characteristics?

8. The expansion of humans had what effect on the natural world?

9. Why did the developments happen later in the Americas than in Eurasia?

10. What is one new piece of information that has come to light since Diamond's work was first published?

(see the answer keys)

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