Deck 10: The Origin and Spread of Modern Humans

Question 1

What species is associated with the broad-spectrum revolution?

A) robust australopithecines
B) Neanderthals
C) anatomically modern humans
D) archaic Homo sapiens
E) Homo erectus

Answer 1

anatomically modern humans

Question 2

According to the mtDNA analyses, when did the first modern humans leave Africa?

A) 2 m.y.a.
B) 1 m.y.a.
C) over 735,000 years ago
D) 535,000 years ago
E) no more than 135,000 years ago

Answer 2

no more than 135,000 years ago

Question 3

All of the following characterized the changeover from the Mousterian to the Upper Paleolithic EXCEPT

A) growth in Homo's total population and geographic range.
B) an increase in the number of distinct tool types, reflecting functional specialization.
C) marked social and economic stratification among members of a society.
D) increasing local cultural diversity as people specialized in particular economic activities.
E) increasing standardization in tool manufacture.

Answer 3

marked social and economic stratification among members of a society.

Question 4

In 1997, ancient DNA was extracted from one of the Neandertal bones originally found in Germany's Neandertal Valley in 1856. This was the first time that the DNA of a premodern human has been recovered. When comparing this DNA with that of modern humans, the researchers found

A) 27 differences between the two, many more than would be expected in closely related humans, suggesting that there may have been little interbreeding between Neandertals and the direct ancestors to modern humans.
B) only 5 to 8 differences between the two, as is typical of closely related humans, placing Neandertals within modern humans' direct line of descent.
C) many more mutations in the Neandertal DNA, suggesting that the species had been around 100,000 years longer than previously estimated.
D) no differences, since Neandertals and modern humans are the same species.
E) that the two samples were not comparable, since the Neandertal DNA was molecularly different from the DNA of the reference sample.

Question 5

Compared to Neandertal skulls, anatomically modern specimens found at the Skhūl and Qafzeh sites in Israel have a modern shape. Their brain cases are

A) higher, shorter, and rounder, with a more filled-out forehead region and a marked chin.
B) larger and longer, with marked brows.
C) thicker, the result of an adaptation to increased interspecies violence.
D) rounder and heavier, with a less marked chin.
E) the largest of all hominins, even beyond modern dimensions.

Question 6

In 1987, a group of molecular geneticists at the University of California at Berkeley offered support for the idea that modern humans (AMHs) arose fairly recently in Africa, then spread out and colonized the world. The geneticists analyzed genetic markers in placentas donated by 147 women whose ancestors came from Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, New Guinea, and Australia. By estimating the number of mutations that had taken place in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of each of these samples, the researchers concluded that

A) everyone alive today has mtDNA that descends from a woman (dubbed Eve) who lived in sub-Saharan Africa around 200,000 years ago and that her descendants left Africa no more than 135,000 years ago.
B) everyone alive today has mtDNA that descends from a woman (dubbed Eve) who lived in Asia around 50,000 years ago and that her descendants left Asia 100,000 years ago.
C) establishing a "genetic clock" to model human evolution is reliable only when focusing on 50,000 years into the past.
D) everyone alive counts the Neandertal of western Europe as their ancestor.
E) Neandertals coexisted with modern humans in the Middle East for at least 2,000 years.

Question 7

During the Upper Paleolithic, the hominin range

A) was limited to Europe and Africa prior to the anatomically modern humans' stage of human evolution.
B) moved away from the coasts because of natural disasters like flood and drought.
C) reached its territorial maximum by 50,000 B.P.
D) expanded to its maximum when Neandertal foragers entered the New World.
E) expanded significantly, in large part due to Homo's increasing reliance on cultural means of adaptation.

Question 8

There is much debate among scientists about when, where, and how anatomically modern humans achieved behavioral modernity. Some researchers suggest that about 50,000 years ago a genetic mutation acted to rewire the human brain, allowing for an advance in language and other related modern behaviors. Others propose

A) that drastic climatic changes 40,000 years ago led archaic humans to turn to ritual-a definite sign of behavioral modernity-to explain the unforeseen environmental changes that suddenly altered their way of life.
B) that the advent of the nuclear family within larger nomadic groups made possible intense social interactions that triggered more complex social behaviors.
C) a culinary hypothesis, suggesting that Homo's capacity to increase the range of foods in the diet triggered the necessary brain development to make modern behaviors possible.
D) that instead of a sudden event in Europe due to a mutation, behavioral modernity resulted from a slow process of cultural accumulation within Africa, where Homo sapiens became fully human long before 40,000 years ago.
E) a hearth hypothesis, suggesting that the most important trigger to behavioral modernity was Homo's capacity, achieved 50,000 years ago, to manipulate fire and thus live in caves and cook their meat.

Question 9

Although the debate on the origin of behavioral modernity continues, archaeological work in many world areas

A) provides undisputed evidence that human anatomical modernity was achieved in Asia.
B) continues to prove that anatomical modernity preceded behavioral modernity.
C) illustrates how archaeological evidence is often more reliable than fossil evidence.
D) suggests strongly that neither anatomical modernity nor behavioral modernity was a European invention.
E) shows that examples of behavioral modernity are obvious among material remains once they are found.

Question 10

Anthropologists have recently recalibrated the radiocarbon dating of Neandertals and AMHs in Europe. What did they find?

A) Modern humans and Neandertals first coexisted in Europe for 2,000 years, but then the modern humans moved southeast into the Middle East while Neandertals remained in western Europe.
B) Modern humans may have been in Europe longer than previously thought-perhaps for 50,000 years-and their time of overlap with the Neandertals was less than previously thought, perhaps no more than 2,000 years in western Europe.
C) Radiocarbon dating is useless for Neandertal remains, since all these remains are actually much older than 50,000 years.
D) The advent of behavioral modernity-as gleaned from cave art, symbolic artifacts, and personal ornamentation-occurred much later than previously thought.
E) During a spike of human dispersal through Africa that occurred 30,000 years ago, cosmic radiation altered the proportions of carbon 14 to carbon 12, thus introducing a source of error in the carbon dating of fossils from that period.

Question 11

Recent discoveries in a cave at Pinnacle Point, South Africa, suggest that humans had achieved behavioral modernity as early as 164,000 B.P. All of the following were found at this site EXCEPT evidence of

A) a diet that included shellfish and other marine resources.
B) the very early use of pigment, likely for symbolic behavior.
C) animal butchery for the first time.
D) bladelet stone-tool technology, previously dating to 70,000 years ago.
E) the human capacity to exploit coastal environments.

Question 12

In 2003, scientists announced the 1997 discovery in an Ethiopian valley of three anatomically modern skulls-two adults and a child. Known collectively as the Herto skulls, the researchers dated them to 154,000-160,000 B.P. All of the following clues suggested that these skulls in fact were of anatomically modern humans, EXCEPT

A) their long and broad midfaces.
B) their tall and narrow sagittal crests.
C) their high cranial vaults, falling within modern dimensions.
D) their tall and narrow nasal bones.
E) evidence of the skulls' cutting and handling, suggesting they had been detached from their bodies and used-perhaps ritually-after death.

Question 13

Why was the broad-spectrum revolution a significant event in human evolution?

A) It consisted of a massive fluorescence of colored cave paintings beginning about 70,000 B.P., which suggests the evolution of color vision and a truly human-style brain organization.
B) It brought about a new tool tradition based on flaked tools.
C) It provided the environmental circumstances that selected for the evolution of "mitochondrial Eve."
D) It provided new environmental circumstances that made important sociocultural adaptations like the development of plant cultivation more likely.
E) It led to the extinction of the Neandertals, who had survived until then by eating big-game animals.

Question 14

Which of the following characterizes Upper Paleolithic traditions?

A) hand axes
B) pebble tools
C) metallurgy
D) plant domestication
E) blade tools

Question 15

Recent fossil finds from Ethiopia such as the Herto skulls (160,000-154,000 B.P.) and the Omo remains (estimated date 195,000 B.P.) provide accumulated evidence to support the

A) Asia origin of broad-spectrum revolution.
B) idea that Neandertals originated in Africa and never left the continent.
C) African origin of anatomically modern humans (AMHs).
D) European origin of AMHs.
E) crucial role that the manipulation of fire played in the advent of behavioral modernity.

Question 16

Which of the following is NOT a general trend in hominin evolution?

A) a greater reliance on cultural means of adaptation
B) an increase in the quantity and quality of tools
C) an increase in cranial capacity
D) a greater reliance on biological means of adaptation
E) population growth

Question 17

What does the advent of behavioral modernity refer to?

A) when early anatomically modern humans became fully human in behavior (relying on symbolic thought and elaborating cultural creativity) as well as in anatomy
B) when hominids became hominins
C) the beginning of a truly civilized and sedentary life, achieved 10,000 years ago
D) when early anatomically modern humans began to manipulate fire
E) the beginning of life beyond the forest and in the open grasslands

Question 18

How was the blade-core method, which characterizes the tools of Upper Paleolithic traditions, superior to Mousterian technology?

A) The Upper Paleolithic blade-core method was faster and produced 15 times as much cutting edge from the same amount of material.
B) The Upper Paleolithic blade-core method was faster but also more difficult to achieve, resulting in many tries that yielded no results.
C) There was no difference between the two methods, only a greater diversity of tool uses among Upper Paleolithic traditions.
D) The Upper Paleolithic blade-core method produced sharper and longer cores than was typical of the Mousterian method.
E) The Upper Paleolithic blade-core method used naturally occurring metal ores to strike blades off cores.

Question 19

Which of the following has NOT been suggested as an explanation for why Upper Paleolithic people made cave paintings?

A) The paintings were fertility magic, intended to increase the number of game animals.
B) The paintings gave Homo erectus a way of recording and transmitting information across generations.
C) The paintings were historical representations.
D) The paintings were associated with rites of passage.
E) The paintings were magical representations of successful hunts.

Question 20

Climate changes had a profound impact on the hominin way of life. In southwestern Europe, for example,

A) the melting of the ice sheets with the end of the Würm glacial period gradually pushed big game farther north, pressuring hominins to use a greater variety of foods.
B) hominins turned to a more specialized diet based on big-game meat after the glacial retreat.
C) hominins began a sedentary life after the end of the Würm glacial period, forming the first villages in human history.
D) the melting of the ice sheets with the end of the Würm glacial period caused animal diversity to drop, challenging hominins to shift their diets from meat to coarse grasses.
E) hominins were forced to migrate northward during the Würm glacial interval.

Question 21

The Denisovans, distant cousins to Neandertals known only from a finger fragment and a wisdom tooth, lived in Asia 400,000-500,000 years ago. Which modern-day human population inherited one-twentieth of their DNA from Denisovan ancestors?

A) Siberians
B) Native Americans
C) Melanesians
D) Malaysians
E) Mongolians

Question 22

In this chapter's "Focus on Globalization" section, scientists trace the global spread of anatomically modern humans by constructing a global phylogenetic tree based on mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA). What have we learned from this tree?

A) Modern humans spread out of Africa over a million years ago.
B) There was only one wave of migration into North and South America.
C) The Ice Age temporarily halted early human migrations.
D) The Americas were settled by multiple haplogroups rather than a single ancestral population.
E) Human migrations were not influenced by global climate change.

Question 23

Anatomically modern humans (AMHs) evolved from an archaic Homo sapiens African ancestor. Eventually, AMHs spread to other areas, including western Europe, where they replaced, or interbred with, the Neanderthals, whose robust traits eventually disappeared.

Question 24

22. How did modern humans take advantage of global climate change to expand their range?

A) During major glacials, with so much water frozen in ice, land bridges formed, aiding human colonization of new areas, such as Australia by 46,000 B.P. and the Americas perhaps by 18,000 B.P.
B) During interglacial periods the seas rose, encouraging human exploration of the oceans, such as the case of the Pacific islands from Asia by 46,000 B.P.
C) Warmer periods forced people to adapt their diets to a smaller range of staples, forcing them to move to ensure that these staples remained part of their diet, such as the case of the colonization of Sahul by 50,000 years ago.
D) During major glacials, with so much of the earth's soils too frozen for agriculture, humans had to turn to hunting and foraging, which in turn forced them to be on the move once they depleted an area of its food resources.
E) During interglacial periods the sea levels dropped, encouraging human exploration along the coasts, leading to unexpected discoveries such as the case of the Pacific islands from Asia by 46,000 B.P.

Question 25

Although there is evidence now that several human groups colonized the Americas, possibly using different routes, those that crossed over through Beringia to reach the Americas did so

A) because they were fleeing from warlike Cro-Magnon groups.
B) in order to take advantage of large flint deposits in South America.
C) following herds of big-game animals (woolly mammoths, especially).
D) because they were gradually forced into new territories by the expansion of more advanced agricultural groups in Asia.
E) in their search for colder climates, because these were Neandertals adapted to cold weather.

Question 26

With an estimated date of 195,000 B.P., the Omo Kibish remains appear to be the earliest anatomically modern human fossils yet found in Asia.

Question 27

The Monte Verde archaeological site in south-central Chile dates to at least 1,500 years before the Clovis people (which date to 13,250 B.P.). This evidence for the early occupation of southern South America, along with other lines of evidence, suggests that

A) the Clovis people were the first humans into South America.
B) Australopithecus boisei successfully made it to the Americas.
C) the first migration of humans into the Americas may date back 18,000 years.
D) the Clovis tradition, a sophisticated stone technology based on a sharp point that was fastened to the end of a hunting spear, was crucial for migration into South America.
E) the first migration of humans into the Americas made it there from Asia by crossing the Pacific in reed boats.

Question 28

Which of the following is true about the peopling of the Pacific?

A) The earliest-known settlement in Polynesia occurred sometime between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago.
B) Navigation skills played an important role in the peopling of the Pacific.
C) Humans may have reached as far as the Galapagos more than 30,000 years ago.
D) Australia appears to have served as an initial point of expansion, via outrigger canoe, to Samoa and eventually Tahiti, Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island.
E) Once humans reached the Pacific, they did not settle there but moved on to the western coast of South America.

Question 29

What is the name of the land bridge that linked the eastern tip of Siberia to Alaska?

A) Tehuantepec
B) Pont-Terre
C) Clovis
D) Beringia
E) Monte Verde

Question 30

The Clovis tradition, a sophisticated stone technology based on a sharp point that was fastened to the end of a hunting spear, flourished (widely but briefly) in the central plains and in what is now the eastern United States. Until recently, the Clovis people were considered the first settlers of the Americas. Recent research now suggests, however, that

A) the Americas were settled by one haplogroup-a lineage marked by one or more specific genetic mutations.
B) the wheel, which has never been found in Clovis sites, was a critical part of an even earlier arrival to the Americas.
C) the members of the Clovis tradition depended on the domestication of horses to make travel possible.
D) various groups of colonists entered the Americas, but they all used the same route.
E) most likely the Americas was settled by several colonists who came at different times, perhaps by different routes, and had different physiques and genetic markers, which continue to be discovered and debated.

Question 31

The evidence from the Mount Carmel caves in Israel indicates that anatomically modern humans may have inhabited the Middle East before the Neandertals did.

Question 32

When and how was Australia settled?

A) Fossil evidence from Lake Mungo in New South Wales suggests that Australia was settled as early as 100,000 years ago by Melanesian settlers who crossed the exposed land bridges connecting the Pacific islands.
B) An interglacial period around 70,000 B.P. allowed the seafaring people of Tasmania to navigate to the Australian mainland.
C) A glacial period around 50,000 B.P. exposed a land bridge connecting Asia and Australia, making it possible for humans to cross over on foot.
D) Humans crossed the narrow straits separating Asia and the then continent of Sahul (Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania), perhaps in primitive watercraft, around 50,000 B.P.
E) Fossil evidence from Lake Mungo in New South Wales suggests that Australia was settled around 50,000 B.P. by humans from Asia following big game.

Question 33

Recent genetic research comparing Neandertal DNA and modern human DNA supports the theory that Neandertals evolved into the European populations of anatomically modern humans.

Question 34

What species is associated with the cave paintings in western Europe?

A) Homo habilis
B) Homo erectus
C) archaic Homo sapiens
D) anatomically modern humans
E) Australopithecus afarensis

Question 35

In South Africa's Blombos Cave, a 100,000-year-old paint factory was recently discovered. This find indicates that

A) modern behavior is much older than anthropologists used to believe.
B) artistic behaviors developed before anatomically modern bodies.
C) humans made red paint for functional but not symbolic reasons.
D) Neandertals created art and had symbolic thought.
E) Neandertals used paint in different ways than anatomically modern humans.

Question 36

All of the following are true about the peopling of the Americas EXCEPT that

A) the Clovis people were not the first settlers of the Americas.
B) the first migration(s) of people into the Americas may date back 18,000 years.
C) analysis of DNA suggests that the Americas were settled by more than one haplogroup-a lineage marked by one or more specific genetic mutations.
D) researchers calculate that it would have taken from 600 to 1,000 years for the first Americans and their descendants to travel by land from the southern part of the Canadian ice-free corridor to Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America-a distance of more than 8,680 miles.
E) The first migration of people into the Americas reached the continent's southwestern coasts from the Pacific islands.

Question 37

The Clovis tradition-a sophisticated stone technology based on a sharp point that was fastened to the end of a hunting spear-flourished

A) in the central plains, on their western margins, and in what is now the eastern United States between 12,000 and 11,000 B.P.
B) widely all across the Americas, with archaeological evidence of its reach as far south as Tierra del Fuego.
C) as the dominant and exclusive cultural tradition of the Americas between 18,000 and 12,000 B.P.
D) around 18,000 B.P. in northeastern Asia, making possible the successful crossing of the Bering sea into North America.
E) in Sahul, the land mass connecting Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania, around 50,000 B.P.

Question 38

Recent research has pushed back the probable date of the first arrival of anatomically modern humans to the Americas to

A) 12,000 years ago.
B) 10,000 years ago.
C) 5,000 years ago.
D) 18,000 years ago.
E) 3,000 years ago.

Question 39

Using new, refined dating techniques, fossil teeth found in England and Italy indicate that modern humans reached Europe by 45,000 years ago. Currently, these are the oldest dated modern human specimens in Europe. These new dates

A) confirm that Neandertals taught modern humans how to make stone tools.
B) allow more time for anatomically modern humans to be in contact with Neandertals.
C) suggest modern humans followed Neandertal migration routes.
D) call into question the dates of modern human specimens from Romania.
E) suggest anatomically modern humans planned for the Neandertal extinction.

Question 40

Which of the following aided the rapid expansion of human populations throughout North America?

A) the invention of the wheel
B) abundant big-game animals
C) the domestication of primitive horses
D) widespread slash-and-burn horticulture
E) raised-field cultivation

Question 41

Discuss the Neandertals' dating and geographic distributions. Review and evaluate the various positions that have been taken in interpreting the relationship between Neandertals and anatomically modern humans.

Question 42

The stone-tool traditions of the Upper Paleolithic were based primarily on blade tools which, compared to those of the Mousterian, are faster to make and are better at maximizing the amount of cutting edge from the same amount of stone.

Question 43

With the end of the Würm glacial period, human groups shifted their subsistence strategies to a broader spectrum of species that they exploited.

Question 44

How has molecular genetics affected our recent understanding of human evolution?

Question 45

Most researchers today no longer believe that the Upper Paleolithic cave paintings were ritualistic; rather, they argue that these paintings were used to decorate domestic residences.

Question 46

Although scientists agree with what behavioral modernity is, they disagree on how and where it originated.

Question 47

What is behavioral modernity? What are some of the competing theories (and the evidence to support each) of when, where, and how behavioral modernity originated?

Question 48

Some authors attribute the rise of modern human behavior more to increasing social competition than to population increase or a mutation that led to reconfigurations of the brain.

Question 49

Unlike the Mousterian technology, which had many different kinds of stone tools, the tool traditions of the Upper Paleolithic included only a few different kinds of implements.

Question 50

Climate change and human evolution and expansion are intimately related. Give specific examples of this relationship. Consider the current concern with climate change. How might humans adapt to the impending environmental changes that such climate change is already making felt around the world?

Question 51

Recent recalibration of radiocarbon dating has dismissed the previously held belief that Neandertals and anatomically modern humans coexisted in time and place.