Deck 1: Encountering the Past

Question 1

Paleoanthropology and archaeology are subfields within the broader discipline of:

A) history
B) biology
C) anthropology
D) ethnology

Answer 1

C

Question 2

Anthropology is the study of:

A) people
B) primitive people
C) ancient people
D) pre-Biblical times

Answer 2

A

Question 3

The subfield within the discipline of anthropology that focuses on living groups of human beings is called:

A) primatology
B) ethology
C) ethnography
D) bioanthropology

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Ethnographers study:

A) primitive people
B) living groups of human beings
C) extinct people
D) tribal societies

Question 5

The study of the living apes and monkeys is called:

A) primatology
B) simianology
C) pongidology
D) monkeyology

Question 6

Paleoanthropologists have as their focus:

A) artifacts
B) the biological history of the human species
C) the material remains of human behavior
D) tribal societies

Question 7

Archaeologists have as their focus:

A) artifacts
B) the biological history of the human species
C) the material remains of human behavior
D) tribal societies

Question 8

An adaptation is:

A) a "strategy" for survival
B) a change in behavior
C) an invented pattern
D) an improvement or refinement in some biological characteristic

Question 9

Culture is viewed as:

A) outside of the realm of evolutionary theory because it is not biological
B) behavior shared by all animal species
C) behavior restricted only to humanity
D) non-biological adaptations

Question 10

The story of biological and cultural evolution is written not in words but in things such as:

A) skeletons
B) stone tools
C) remnants of pyramids
D) all of the above

Question 11

Based on their interpretation of the Old Testament of the Bible, European thinkers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries commonly believed that the world was:

A) about 6000 years old
B) close to 5 billion years old
C) infinitely old with no vestige of a "beginning"
D) of indeterminate age

Question 12

Bishop Ussher is best known for his:

A) acceptance of a uniformitarian perspective
B) support of empiricism
C) belief in an ancient and changing earth
D) determination that the world was created by God in 4004B. C.

Question 13

Bishop Ussher's determination of the age of the earth was historically significant because:

A) he was the first thinker to suggest a time for the creation of the world by God
B) it was the first determination of the age of the earth based on uniformitarian principles
C) it was the first such determination approved by the Pope
D) it was printed in the margins of published Bibles

Question 14

In the Reverend John Ray's natural philosophy:

A) the world was fixed at creation and has not changed substantially since
B) the world changed through natural processes of evolution
C) the world is stable for long periods and then changes drastically as the result of catastrophes caused directly by God
D) the world has been decaying steadily since creation

Question 15

Most European scientists in the seventeenth century believed that the world was:

A) ancient and changing
B) the result of natural evolutionary forces
C) perfect and mostly unchanged since creation
D) a and b

Question 16

Catastrophists were thinkers who believed that the Earth:

A) had been in decline since creation largely as the result of volcanic eruptions and floods
B) would be destroyed in the not too distant future
C) was formed in the Big Bang
D) was ancient

Question 17

Edmund Halley suggested that a cause of the catastrophe known in the Bible as "Noah's Flood" had been:

A) an earthquake
B) a volcanic eruption
C) a comet crashing into the earth
D) a cataclysmic explosion causing an effect like a nuclear winter

Question 18

The statement "The operations of nature are equable and steady" reflects:

A) the uniformitarian perspective
B) an anti-evolutionary perspective
C) a biblical perspective
D) a catastrophist perspective

Question 19

James Hutton was an early:

A) archaeologist
B) uniformitarianist
C) botanist
D) biblical literalist

Question 20

In the uniformitarian view, one could determine the age of the earth by:

A) means of radiometric measurement
B) the analysis of stratigraphy
C) reference to the modern rate of erosion
D) analysis of the bones of extinct animals found buried in the earth

Question 21

Uniformitarianists viewthe current appearance of the earth as the result of:

A) flooding
B) volcanic eruptions
C) the evil influence of the Devil
D) processes of erosion and weathering

Question 22

John Frere's discovery at Hoxne marks the first time that:

A) primitive-looking stone tools had been found at a great stratigraphic depth
B) the bones of extinct animals were found in Europe
C) primitive-looking stone tools had been found in the same soil level as the bones of human beings
D) the bones of extinct animals had been found together with the bones of ancient humans

Question 23

Chipped stone objects that looked as though they had been made by people were thought by some seventeenth-century scholars to be:

A) tools made by the immediate descendants of Adam and Eve
B) objects created by fairies
C) the result of lightning strikes
D) b and c

Question 24

French customs official Jacques Boucher de Perthes thought that the hundreds of flint tools he found in his excavations in the high gravel terrace overlooking the River Somme in northern France dated to:

A) more than 1 million years ago
B) the time of the pyramids
C) the Middle Ages
D) a period before Noah's Flood

Question 25

The flint implements found by Boucher de Perthes were dated on the basis of:

A) radiocarbon dating
B) potassium/argon dating
C) stratigraphy
D) seriation

Question 26

The flint tools found by Boucher de Perthes were thought to be ancient because:

A) they were found in association with the bones of extinct animals
B) the flint from which the tools were made dated to more than 100,000 years ago
C) they had an exceptionally thick rind on their surfaces, the result of a long period of burial in soil
D) all of the above

Question 27

William Smith is best known for his:

A) attempt to make Darwin palatable to religious people
B) attempt to keep the teaching of evolution out of the schools
C) analysis of stratigraphy
D) discovery of human bones

Question 28

Charles Lyell is best known for his:

A) strong arguments in favor of uniformitarianism
B) discovery of ancient stone tools in England
C) discovery of human bones
D) support of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution

Question 29

Christian Jurgensen Thomsen's three-age system was based on a perceived regular pattern of change through time in human:

A) technology
B) intelligence
C) social systems
D) religion

Question 30

Christian Jurgensen Thomsen's three-age system divided human history into which three ages:

A) Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic
B) Lower Paleolithic, Middle Paleolithic, Upper Paleolithic
C) Pliocene, Miocene, Pleistocene
D) Stone, Bronze, Iron

Question 31

Thomsen's three-age system reflected a view of cultural evolution that can best be characterized as:

A) unilineal
B) multilineal
C) cyclical
D) biblical

Question 32

Lewis Henry Morgan thought all cultures passed through the same stages of development. Those stages were:

A) Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic
B) foraging, horticultural, agricultural
C) savagery, barbarism, civilization
D) primitive communism, capitalism, socialism

Question 33

In Lewis Henry Morgan's view, the key characteristic that distinguished the first civilizations from previous forms of socio-political organization was the development of:

A) private property
B) writing
C) a formal government
D) a military elite class

Question 34

Charles Darwin:

A) invented the concept of evolution
B) invented the science of biology
C) developed a theory that allowed for the role of God in the evolution of life
D) proposed a viable mechanism for evolutionary change

Question 35

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is known as:

A) origin of the species
B) natural selection
C) artificial selection
D) survival of the fittest

Question 36

When Darwin first published his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection:

A) it was criticized because he ignored genetics
B) he was attacked for plagiarizing the work of Alfred Russell Wallace
C) it was an enormous success and quickly sold out its first printing
D) he placated the Church by adding a preface that indicated his belief that evolution was the way in which God created life

Question 37

In his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Darwin:

A) devoted the final chapter to a discussion of the evolution of human beings
B) focused on the analysis of the stone tools that John Frere had found
C) relied on the work of his uncle, Erasmus Darwin
D) barely even touched on the application of his theory to humanity

Question 38

Evolution is defined as:

A) continual improvement in plant and animal species through time
B) systematic change through time
C) the opposite of extinction
D) survival of the fittest

Question 39

In the evolution of plants and/or animals through time:

A) species become bigger, stronger, or faster
B) intelligence increases in animal species while plants become more proficient at photosynthesis
C) there is no particular direction to change
D) all of the above

Question 40

The organizing theme of the approach taken in this book to the human past is:

A) creationism
B) evolution
C) determinism
D) orthography

Question 41

The fossil record shows that under the workings of evolution, the majority of species that have ever existed:

A) are still around just exactly as they were when they first appeared
B) are still around but are drastically different from when they first appeared
C) have evolved only very recently
D) are extinct

Question 42

The view that cultures, like organisms, changed through time is called:

A) cultural evolution
B) cultural relativism
C) cultural selection
D) cultural progression

Question 43

For most European thinkers in the nineteenth century, cultural evolution was synonymous with:

A) biological evolution
B) natural selection
C) progress
D) idolatry

Question 44

What was Pilfershire? What does the Pilfershire site show us about the way in which the past endures in the present?

Question 45

Define anthropology. What do anthropologists do? What are the different subfields of anthropology?

Question 46

What are the contributions of paleoanthropology and archaeology to the field of anthropology?

Question 47

Why is primatology part of the study of the human species?

Question 48

How did catastrophists view the world?

Question 49

How did some catastrophists (like Edmund Halley after whom the most famous comet is known) explain the cause of Noah's Flood?

Question 50

What was the challenge faced by catastrophists who based their study of nature on empirical observation?

Question 51

Describe uniformitarianism. What did the uniformitarianists say about time and the age of the earth? Why was the uniformitarian view of time important to those who studied the human past?

Question 52

Explain James Hutton's argument that the uniformitarian perspective actually reflected the genius of God's creation.

Question 53

How did catastrophists explain the presence of the remains of marine organisms in the rocks on top of mountains many miles from and many feet above the ocean? How did uniformitarianists explain this same fact?

Question 54

Explain the phrase,"The present is the key to the past."

Question 55

What did John Frere discover at Hoxne, England, in 1797? What were the implications of what he found and described?

Question 56

What did Jacques Boucher de Perthes discover in his excavations along the River Somme in France in the 1840s? What were the implications of what he found and described?

Question 57

Describe the three-age system developed by Christian Jurgensen Thomsen. What assumptions are implicit in Thomsen's breakdown of human prehistory?

Question 58

What does Charles Lyell's phrase, "The slow agency of existing causes" mean? How does it reflect the uniformitarian perspective?

Question 59

Is there any evidence that catastrophic events, some the result of extraterrestrial bodies crashing into Earth, have greatly affected the history of our planet? Examples?

Question 60

What climatic conditions characterized the Younger Dryas?

Question 61

How did Darwin's role in the voyage of the Beagle serve him in his later development of a theory of evolution?

Question 62

Gibbons are excellent brachiators; they can swing through trees with great skill and precision. How might Charles Darwin have explained the evolution of this ability?

Question 63

How did the finches of the Galapagos Islands contribute to Darwin's view of evolutionary change?

Question 64

How did the work of Charles Lyell and Thomas Malthus contribute to Darwin's theory of evolutionary change in the biological world?

Question 65

Describe Darwin's mechanism for evolutionary change: natural selection.