Deck 9: The First Cities and States 

Question 1

The first writing presumably developed to handle recordkeeping for a centralized economy. Where did this first happen?

A) the Levant
B) northern Mesopotamia
C) central Iran
D) southern Mesopotamia
E) Çatalhöyük

Answer 1

southern Mesopotamia

Question 2

What is the name of the cultural period during which the first chiefdoms and elites emerged in northern Syria?

A) Halafian
B) Ubaid
C) Natufian
D) Uruk
E) Jomon

Answer 2

Halafian

Question 3

Which of the following early states was located in what is now Pakistan and northwestern India?

A) Olmec
B) Indus River Valley state
C) Mwenemutapa empire
D) Mesopotamia
E) Shang dynasty

Answer 3

Indus River Valley state

Question 4

An egalitarian society

A) rarely experiences warfare and is therefore immune to the forces that inevitably lead to state formation.
B) must exist for a democratic state to emerge.
C) is a key attribute of states.
D) lacks status distinctions among its members.
E) lacks status distinctions except those based on age, gender, and individual talents or achievements.

Question 5

According to Flannery (1999), only ranked societies that have undergone a loss of village autonomy

A) should be called chiefdoms.
B) can effectively organize into productive states with law-abiding citizens.
C) suffer the consequences of extreme social stratification.
D) inevitably lead to state formation.
E) experience intervillage warfare.

Question 6

All of the following provide archaeological evidence of social ranking EXCEPT

A) fine pottery, as distinct from everyday pottery.
B) walls to protect against raids.
C) burial artifacts marking distinct rankings.
D) large pots and ovens, presumably used to cook for entertainment events among the elite.
E) seals used to mark valuable goods.

Question 7

What kinds of societies are divided into social classes?

A) egalitarian societies
B) communes
C) states
D) ranked societies
E) chiefdoms

Question 8

What is the name of the cultural period during which the first chiefdoms emerged in southern Mesopotamia?

A) Natufian
B) Uruk
C) Ubaid
D) Neolithic
E) Halafian

Question 9

Which of the following best describes the role of hydraulic systems in state formation?

A) Irrigation began in China and spread along ancient trade routes.
B) States were the by-products of the organizational requirements of large irrigation systems.
C) Mesolithic states developed so that they could build irrigation systems.
D) In Europe, irrigation provided the advantage that allowed anatomically modern humans to displace Neandertals.
E) Irrigation systems favored democracy.

Question 10

What were the precursors to primary states?

A) tribes
B) archaic states
C) chiefdoms
D) bands
E) city-states

Question 11

Thor Heyerdahl proposed that Egyptians could have navigated to the New World and influenced the emergence of civilization in the Americas. Erich von Däniken suggested that major human achievements had been borrowed from beings from outer space. What do these two views, both lacking credible scientific evidence, have in common?

A) Both suggest that evolutionary mechanisms explain both biological and cultural diversity across time and space.
B) Both reflect the popular media's negative effect on the quality of high school and college education.
C) Both take the position that major changes in ancient human lifestyles were the result of outside instruction or interference rather than the achievements of the natives of the places where the changes took place.
D) Both suggest that anthropology benefits from a broad range of views on human history, even if these views challenge the mainstream and even lack credible scientific evidence.
E) Both argue that historical events such as plant and animal domestication, the state, and city life were not brilliant discoveries, inventions, or secrets that humans needed to borrow but were, rather, long-term, gradual processes, developments with down-to-earth causes and effects.

Question 12

Which of the following does NOT describe a characteristic of states?

A) They control specific regional territories.
B) They have productive agricultural economies.
C) They have recordkeeping systems.
D) They lack hereditary inequality.
E) They are stratified into social classes.

Question 13

Which of the following statements about ranked societies is FALSE?

A) They lack social strata.
B) They are characterized by a continuum of status among their members.
C) All ranked societies are chiefdoms.
D) They have hereditary inequality.
E) All chiefdoms are ranked societies.

Question 14

Cuneiform is the term for the early writing in what part of the world?

A) Mesoamerica
B) Mesopotamia
C) Indus Valley
D) Andes
E) China

Question 15

Which of the following statements about Çatalhöyük is FALSE?

A) The ritual life there was centered on animals, danger, and death.
B) The dead were buried beneath the house floors.
C) The dwellings at the site were entered through the roof.
D) Food was stored and processed collectively, with a priestly elite managing these activities.
E) It never became a full-fledged city with centralized organization.

Question 16

Which of the following attributes distinguishes states from chiefdoms?

A) armed conflict between competing communities
B) sharp class distinctions
C) a paramount ruler
D) a subsistence economy based on domesticated species
E) large residences

Question 17

A ________ is a form of social and political organization that has a formal, central government and a division of society into classes.

A) state
B) region
C) hydraulic system
D) chiefdom
E) village-state

Question 18

Which of the following was the first Chinese state that developed in the wheat-producing regions of the north?

A) Taipei
B) Chin
C) Nok Nok
D) Shang
E) Longshang

Question 19

In this chapter we learn that the most complete explanation of primary state formation is

A) a set of nine ecological and social factors determining the evolution of social stratification.
B) a multivariate approach such as Carneiro's theory of state formation.
C) the development of a four-level hierarchy composed of peasant villages, subchiefdoms, chiefdoms, and capital cities.
D) a biocultural approach such as Kent Flannery's broad-spectrum theory of state formation.
E) a prime-mover explanation based on irrigation.

Question 20

Robert Carneiro (1970) put forth an influential theory that incorporates three factors working together instead of a single cause for state formation. These three factors are

A) a strong central leadership, a uniting vision as a people, and food shortages.
B) environmental circumscription or resource concentration, increasing population, and warfare.
C) regional trade networks, food scarcity, and warfare.
D) intensive food production, population pressures, and large hydraulic works.
E) warfare, environmental circumscription, and the advent of an early writing system.

Question 21

Which of the following kinds of evidence for warfare was NOT found by archaeologists while investigating the Maya collapse?

A) hieroglyphic texts
B) fortifications
C) terracotta soldiers
D) burned buildings
E) projectile points

Question 22

Early states had productive agricultural economies.

Question 23

Coastal Peru illustrates the explanatory power of Carneiro's theory of state formation caused by the interaction of environmental circumscription, warfare, and population increase.

Question 24

The Natufians were the first culture to develop a state in the Indus Valley.

Question 25

The earliest states emerged in Mesopotamia.

Question 26

Which of the following was NOT a characteristic of the Teotihuacán state?

A) a large population
B) a mature, syllabic writing system
C) complex architecture
D) large-scale irrigation
E) careful city planning

Question 27

All of the following archaeological evidence points to Monte Albán's increasing role at the center of state formation and expansion EXCEPT

A) the specialized buildings that surrounded the city's main plaza and housed the state's bureaucracy.
B) evidence of peaceful trade with its chief local rival, San Martín Tilcajete.
C) hieroglyphs on a main plaza building that record the successes of conquests that brought underlying areas under Monte Albán's control.
D) evidence of Zapotec conquest of communities more than a half-day's trip away from Monte Albán.
E) the presence of a royal palace among the specialized buildings in Monte Albán.

Question 28

Most researchers today believe that chiefdoms emerged in response to the growing administrative requirements for building, maintaining, and administering public hydraulic works.

Question 29

Which of the following statements about the Olmec is FALSE?

A) They lived along the Gulf Coast of what is now Mexico.
B) They lived between 3,200 and 2,500 years ago.
C) They carved massive stone heads.
D) They were the first Mesoamerican empire.
E) They built earthen mounds grouped around a plaza.

Question 30

Like Mesopotamia and China, many early civilizations came to rely on metallurgy. Aside from metallurgy, a skill that set the early civilizations of Peru's Andes apart was

A) corpse embalming.
B) trigonometry and advanced astronomy.
C) the ability to achieve similar metallurgical results without ever discovering smelting, the high-temperature process by which pure metal is produced from ore.
D) their pottery techniques.
E) writing, which originated in this part of the world and not in Sumer as was previously believed.

Question 31

Which of the following played a key role in the formation of Mesoamerica's earliest state, the Zapotec state?

A) trade in pottery
B) conquest warfare
C) the written word
D) egalitarianism
E) lack of competition

Question 32

What kind of society were the Olmec?

A) empire
B) tribe
C) chiefdom
D) state
E) band

Question 33

States are complex systems of sociopolitical organization that aim to control and administer everything from conflict resolution to population movements, with the overall aim of achieving egalitarianism among their members.

Question 34

An empire is a mature example of which organizational pattern?

A) a chiefdom
B) a state
C) a nation
D) a stratification
E) a polity

Question 35

Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of the first Chinese state?

A) wealthy, royal tombs
B) bronze metallurgy
C) social stratification
D) human sacrifice
E) a subsistence economy dominated by rice

Question 36

Early states lacked social classes.

Question 37

Early states arose from competition among rival tribes.

Question 38

Pseudoscientists often underestimate the capacity for human inventiveness in the ancient peoples they write about, assuming that creating major features were beyond their capabilities.

Question 39

What prestige item was crafted by inhabitants of the Valley of Oaxaca and traded with other Mesoamerican chiefdoms?

A) iron axes
B) mirrors
C) colossal heads
D) standard weights
E) stoneware bangles

Question 40

A key feature of Carneiro's model for the origin of states is metallurgy.

Question 41

Chiefdoms were the precursors to tribes.

Question 42

Writing never developed among the early states in Mesoamerica, so there is no reliable archaeological evidence of these states' histories.

Question 43

Egypt was the only region in Africa where states emerged prior to the 1500s.

Question 44

Increased warfare among competing dynasties was the major factor in the fall of the Maya state.

Question 45

Warfare and attracting followers are two key elements in state formation.

Question 46

Teotihuacán and Çatalhöyük are two of the earliest towns in the Middle East.

Question 47

Ranked societies have hereditary inequality, but they lack stratification.

Question 48

China's first state, the Shang dynasty, had bronze metallurgy and writing.

Question 49

Environmental degradation often contributes to the collapse of states.

Question 50

Jericho, the earliest known town, is located in central Turkey.

Question 51

Ranked societies lack social differences.

Question 52

In an egalitarian society, everybody has the same status.