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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Ideals of beauty vary ___________________ from culture to culture.

2. How are the most rudimentary human languages termed?

3. What does this society not show?

4. In Chapter 1, to what is the species Homo sapiens compared and contrasted?

5. With what does the chapter conclude?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does the author conclude about human sexual strategies?

2. What is one of the most instructive avenues of investigation on human sexual attraction?

3. What is the author's conclusion about art?

4. When do various primates break off from the remaining higher primates?

5. How is the third criterion not uniquely human?

6. What traits are extremely highly correlated to sexual attractiveness?

7. What does the author say qualifies as art?

8. What is the conventional wisdom regarding pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer societies? Is this correct?

9. How are females nearly unique among animals in menopause?

10. What does the author say about death?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The author attempts to establish that humans and chimps are biologically and genetically closely related.

Part 1) How does he go about this? Is his research valid? Why or why not?

Part 2) Why might his research be disputed? Why might others have a difficult time accepting that humans are closely related to chimps?

Part 3) If it is universally accepted that humans and chimps are closely related, how should chimps be treated? Should they be treated as other animals or in a more "human" way? Why?

Essay Topic 2

The author recapitulates human evolutionary history from the earliest upright hominids to modern humans.

Part 1) Describe the evolution of man. Why do various changes take place? How do these many changes make humans what they are today?

Part 2) Could this evolutionary history be disputed? Why or why not?

Part 3) Will humans continue to evolve? Why or why not? Is each generation of humans evolving? Why or why not?

Essay Topic 3

Ernst Mayr's biological species concept is used as the de facto biological definition of species.

Part 1) What is Ernst Mayr's biological species concept? Why is it used as the de facto biological definition of species?

Part 2) Is the concept appropriate for defining species? Why or why not?

Part 3) What other information in this text might be viewed as incomplete or incorrect? Why? How does this affect the validity of the book as a whole?

(see the answer keys)

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