Best known for his conquest of the Aztec empire, this conquistador landed on the
Mesoamerican mainland in 1519, encountering the Maya of Yucatn.
a) Hernan Corts
b) Francisco Pizarro
c) Hernando de Soto
d) Christopher Columbus
e) Ponce de Len
By the late phase of the Dawenkou culture (c. 2900″2400 bc) there is compelling
evidence for:
a) severe overcrowding due to urbanization
b) a return to the hunter-gatherer traditions of the past
c) the adoption of maize cultivation
d) the emergence of craft specialists
e) a massive environmental disaster that caused people to move away from the region
The site of Telarmachay in Central Peru has yielded the earliest evidence for the
domestication of ___________, the only large animals to be domesticated in the
Americas.
a) alpacas and llamas
b) donkeys and horses
c) sheep and goats
d) buffalo and bison
e) pigs and hogs
The Vietnam coast was completely uninhabited until rice-growing settlers arrived there
from China.
Contrary to popular belief, no Mesoamerican group ever called themselves “Aztecs.”
The civilization that we now call the Aztec referred to themselves as the:
a) Oaxaca
b) Olmec
c) Toltec
d) Yucatn
e) Mexica
Bronze is made from a combination of tin and:
a) iron
b) copper
c) silver
d) steel
e) sand
Tens of thousands of waterlogged _____ have been recovered from Ohalo II giving us a
snapshot of the diet of the sites inhabitants.
a) bones
b) houses
c) seeds
d) burials
e) fields
Rice is a:
a) desert plant
b) mountain plant
c) marsh plant
d) forest plant
e) sub-arctic plant
Aristocratic graves and the foundations of palaces indicated Xia society was
__________ in nature.
a) egalitarian
b) disorganized
c) hierarchic
d) rural
e) nomadic
A true alphabet was first developed by the _________ before 1000 bc and was the
source of inspiration for subsequent alphabetic writing systems used by the Hebrews
and the Greeks.
a) Philistines
b) Egyptians
c) Phoenicians
d) Persians
e) Assyrians
Many factors may have operated to explain why post-glacial communities adopted
agriculture, but the two most cited by researchers are:
a) drudgery and starvation
b) a desire for leisure time and sedentism
c) religious change and the emergence of a ruling social class
d) demographic decrease and environmental stagnation
e) demographic increase and environmental change
Which of the following is a characteristic of the Halaf period:
a) the introduction of draft animals
b) a shift to a diet rich in dairy
c) the founding of new settlements where Neolithic peoples had not lived
d) all of the above
e) a and b only
Mound centers and distinctions among Late Woodland Period sites in terms of size and
layout are thought to mark the emergence of complex societies commonly referred to as
_________, which became the dominant form of society in the Mississippian period.
a) kingdoms
b) states
c) chiefdoms
d) empires
e) moieties
The Peloponnesian War was a defining event in the history of the Mediterranean. It was
fought between the rival city-states of:
a) Thebes and Rhodes
b) Athens and Macedonia
c) Sparta and Rhodes
d) Macedonia and Rhodes
e) Athens and Sparta
Two major Neolithic cultures that developed in the Yellow River Valley of central
China are:
a) the Yangshao Culture and the Dawenkou Culture
b) the Lapita Culture and the Maori Culture
c) the Jomon Culture and the Maitum Culture
d) the Ming Dynasty and the Shang Dynasty
e) the Mongol Culture and the Harappan Culture
The late Neolithic __________ culture was distributed from the central plains to
Shandong Province and appears to have been mentioned in later the writings of Shi Ji,
Ban Bio, and Ban Gu.
a) Xia
b) Shang
c) Koguryo
d) Yamato
e) Longshan
Venus figurines:
a) are present in the European Upper Paleolithic
b) are thought by some to be related to fertility and childbirth
c) form a contrast with Upper Paleolithic burials, which have been found to be mostly
of males
d) are made out of a number of materials including mammoth ivory and stone
e) all of the above
Southwest Asia possessed the world’s largest number of:
a) potential plant domesticates
b) potential animal domesticates
c) potential hunting targets and megafauna
d) all of the above
e) a and b only
In Lower Mesopotamia, _________ served to both validate administrative activity and
to identify individuals involved in economic and administrative transactions.
a) finger prints
b) cylinder seals
c) inked signatures
d) handshakes
e) rubber stamps
The ___________ people of the Jos Plateau in what is now Nigeria were an
iron-working culture who are known for their terracotta figures, some of which are life
sized.
a) Predynastic
b) Nok
c) Meroitic
d) San
e) Kerma
Most major Oldowan sites are quite small and consist mainly of stone artifacts and
fossil remains. Researchers have suggested that these sites were:
a) “home bases,” similar to those used by modern hunter/gatherers
b) “stone caches,” where hominins stored raw material
c) “favored places,” which offered some form of protection or resource
d) “scavenging sites,” where hominins brought animal body parts from carnivore kills
e) all of the above
Population size affects mutation because:
a) larger populations will display greater genetic diversity because more random
mutation will occur
b) smaller populations will result in reduced genetic variability because fewer random
mutations will occur
c) population bottlenecks force groups to rapidly mutate and evolve to survive
d) a and b only
e) b and c only
The tholos tombs of the Early Minoan period:
a) were circular
b) often contained hundreds of human remains
c) served relatively small communities
d) contained grave goods such as copper daggers
e) all of the above
Contact between the people of South America and Polynesia was
a) probably ephemeral and involving Polynesian rather than South American craft
b) the product of sea-faring South Americans, as proved by Thor Heyerdahl
c) in the form of conquest of the Ecuadorian coast by Polynesians
d) a constant two-way stream between two sea-faring cultural complexes
e) the result of a Inca desire for expansion
Sambaquis are:
a) mounds formed out of accumulated food debris and refuse that are found in the
Amazon
b) raised fields employed by the people living around lake Titicaca
c) the term for the four divisions of the Inca Empire
d) terraces cut into hillsides in the high sierra that are used to maximize farmland
e) Indigenous leaders within ancient and modern Andean communities
The Andean myth of humanity emerging from the inside of Pachamama (Mother Earth),
appears to be related to the construction of:
a) henges and other concentric ringed monuments
b) dolmens
c) peak sanctuaries
d) subterranean and semi-subterranean ritual spaces
e) sacrificial wells that objects and people were thrown into
Ohalo II, Neve David, “Uyun al-Hamman, and Kharaneh IV are all:
a) Neanderthal cave sites in Israel
b) Epipaleolithic cave sites in eastern Turkey
c) areas were no Epipaleolithic occupation has been found
d) open-air Epipaleolithic sites in the Levant
e) ceramic traditions found in what is now Pakistan
The _______ period marks the first and last time that there was a broad, continent-wide
similarity in artifact assemblages of North America.
a) Mississippian
b) Woodland
c) Andean
d) Natufian
e) Clovis
This Preclassic culture, whose modern name is derived from a 16th-century Aztec term,
is known for the production of colossal stone heads.
a) the Maya
b) the Olmec
c) the Toltec
d) the Nahua
e) the Inca
In traditional terminology, Europe entered the ___________ in the early 1st millennium
bc.
a) Iron Age
b) Copper Age (Chalcolithic)
c) Mesolithic
d) Neolithic
e) Golden Age