Deck 12: 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) southern Mesopotamia
B) northern Mesopotamia
C) the Levant
D) Çatal Hüyük
E) central Iran

Answer 1

southern Mesopotamia

Question 2

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

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

Answer 2

state

Question 3

All of the following provide archaeological evidence of social ranking EXCEPT

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

Answer 3

walls to protect against raids.

Question 4

What do proponents of the hydraulic theory for the origin of the state argue?

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) Irrigation systems favored democracy.
D) In Europe, irrigation provided the advantage that allowed anatomically modern humans to displace Neandertals.
E) Mesolithic states developed so that they could build irrigation systems.

Question 5

Thor Heyerdahl proposed that Egyptians could have navigated to the New World and influenced the emergence of civilization in the Americas. Erich von Daniken 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 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.
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 reflect the popular media's negative effect on the quality of high school and college education.

Question 6

What were the precursors to primary states?

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

Question 7

What kinds of societies are divided into social classes?

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

Question 8

Which of the following statements about Çatal Hüyük is NOT true?

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

Question 9

An egalitarian society

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

Question 10

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

Question 11

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

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

Question 12

Metallurgy and the wider and rapid distribution of metals evident after 5000 B.P. would not have developed without the crucial discovery of

A) copper hammering.
B) the technique of heating copper at low temperatures.
C) richer veins of copper.
D) smelting.
E) mining.

Question 13

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

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

Question 14

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

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

Question 15

Which of the following statements about Jericho is NOT true?

A) It is the earliest known town.
B) Its rise proves Carneiro's theory of state formation.
C) The Natufians first settled it.
D) After 9000 B.P., the inhabitants buried their dead below their house floors.
E) It has a large tower and a city wall.

Question 16

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

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

Question 17

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

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

Question 18

Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of states?

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

Question 19

Which of the following statements about ranked societies is NOT true?

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

Question 20

When did pottery become widespread in the Middle East?

A) 50,000 B.P.
B) 30,000 B.P.
C) 15,000 B.P.
D) 7000 B.P.
E) 2000 B.P.

Question 21

What is the name of the first Chinese state that developed in the wheat-producing regions of the north?

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

Question 22

Which of the following attributes distinguishes states from chiefdoms?

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

Question 23

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 24

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 25

Evidence for the co-occurrence of Monte Albán's conquest strategy with the emerging Zapotec state offers strong support for the

A) theory that argues that all chiefdoms become states.
B) warfare model of primary state formation.
C) imperial model of state collapse.
D) multivariate model of state formation.
E) expansionist model of primary state formation.

Question 26

Which of the following statements about the Olmec is NOT true?

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

Question 27

What is the name of the first state in Pakistan and western India?

A) Shang
B) Zapotec
C) Uruk
D) Moche
E) Indus

Question 28

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 29

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

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

Question 30

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

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

Question 31

Archaeologists previously believed that the supremacy of any one chiefdom spurred the period of rapid social change in Mexico between 3200 and 3000 B.P. However, they now believe that the cause of this rapid change was

A) dramatic changes in climate that affected rainfall.
B) that the quality of trade routes among chiefdoms frustrated travelers and led to riots.
C) the intensity of competitive interaction.
D) a massive drought that required chiefdoms to cooperate to save the population from starvation.
E) the chiefly centers' lack of separation and autonomy.

Question 32

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

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

Question 33

The term ________ was used by V. Gordon Childe (1950) to describe the major transformation of human life and social institutions, including food production and state formation, that occurred during prehistory.

A) Neolithic Revolution
B) French Revolution
C) Industrial Revolution
D) Information Revolution
E) Urban Revolution

Question 34

States mark their environments by building long-lasting monumental architecture. Which of the following monuments is NOT one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World?

A) Great Pyramid of Giza
B) Hanging Gardens of Babylon
C) Temple of Artemis
D) Serpent Mound of Ohio
E) Lighthouse of Alexandria

Question 35

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

A) burned buildings
B) terra-cotta soldiers
C) hieroglyphic texts
D) projectile points
E) fortifications

Question 36

Early states had productive farming economies.

Question 37

What kind of society were the Olmec?

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

Question 38

Which of the following events played an important role in the abandonment of the fields in Mesopotamia?

A) external conquest
B) a landslide caused by heavy mountain rains
C) erosion
D) destruction of the fields by mineral salts
E) an earthquake

Question 39

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

A) the skill of using natural fibers to create an astonishing system of suspension bridges across deep mountain gorges.
B) the ability to achieve similar metallurgical results without ever discovering smelting, the high-temperature process by which pure metal is produced from ore.
C) writing, which originated in this part of the world and not in Sumer, as was previously believed.
D) trigonometry and advanced astronomy.
E) corpse embalming.

Question 40

Early states lacked social classes.

Question 41

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

Question 42

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

Question 43

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

Question 44

Environmental degradation often contributes to the collapse of states.

Question 45

How did the first states come to be formed? What kinds of societies evolved into states? What factors played important roles in the rise of the first states?

Question 46

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

Question 47

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

Question 48

Early states arose from competition among rival tribes.

Question 49

In an egalitarian society, everybody has the same status.

Question 50

The earliest states emerged in Mesopotamia.

Question 51

Chiefdoms were the precursors to tribes.

Question 52

According to the expansionist model of primary state formation, a key difference between chiefdoms and states is that the latter has the bureaucracy, resources, and commitment to expand and incorporate more territory.

Question 53

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

Question 54

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

Question 55

Summarize the evidence for and against the following theories of state formation: hydraulic systems, long-distance trade routes, and population circumscription.

Question 56

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

Question 57

Ranked societies lack social differences.

Question 58

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

Question 59

Social ranking and stratification are both forms of hereditary inequality.

Question 60

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 61

Why do states collapse? How have the models archaeologists use to understand the process of collapse changed over time? Use the Maya decline as an example.

Question 62

Consider how your life is different from that of our Paleolithic ancestors or those of the most recent foragers. How many of those differences have to do with the fact that you live in a state-organized society?

Question 63

How are chiefdoms different from states? How do archaeologists distinguish between the two?

Question 64

Summarize Carneiro's multivariate approach to state formation. What are the three important variables that are involved? Describe how these factors work together in the process of state formation.